This article examines the burgeoning practice of &dquo;social accounting&dquo; and analyzes its effect on labor relations in the apparel industry. In the past five years transnational apparel corporations have begun to accept some measure of accountability for the conditions under which their garments are made by monitoring their contracting facilities for compliance with labor and health and safety standards. While such monitoring is meant to benefit production workers, mainly third-world women, it does not actively engage these workers in any participatory defense of their rights.The clothing industry has always played an important role in capitalist development and the configuration of relations between workers and employers. The first wave of industrialization in the United States was based on textile production and it is argued that garment was the first production process to become truly globalized (Dicken, 1992). Moreover, the &dquo;prototype of collective bargaining agreements&dquo; emerged in the garment industry (Ross, 1997: 30). In 1910, in the wake cf the uprising of 20,000 shirtwaist makers in New York, more than 40,000 cloak-makers sustained a two-month strike that ended in a general agreement signed between union and manufacturer representatives. The Protocols of Peace mandated preferential hiring for union members, guaranteed workers' participation in overseeing factory conditions, and instituted a joint grievance procedure (Stein, 1977). This pact began the movement toward America's own social contract built on an industrial democracy that involved workers in the regulation of the industry (Ross, 1997;Howard, 1997;Brandeis, 1977).It is not surprising then that a new form of labor relations is now developing within the apparel industry in response to changing economic conditions. Whereas the &dquo;social contract&dquo; that prevailed in the post World War II period brought workers, business, and the government into an alliance, what I am calling the Social accountability contract is a pact strictly between employers, their contractors, and the government, or public interest non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the

This article reviews the last decade of scholarship on a leading corporate social responsibility initiative: the use of codes of conduct and monitoring in the global garment industry. The review focuses on three debates in the field: the evaluation of code and monitoring effectiveness, the problematic of various relationships in transnational anti-sweatshop campaigns, and the meaning of private regulation vis-a-vis state enforcement. The article concludes that codes and monitoring do not constitute a solution to the sweatshop problem and certainly cannot substitute for state enforcement or worker organizing. If private regulation is to contribute to a solution in a meaningful way, it must move from a model that presumes compliance and, therefore, focuses on ferreting out violators, to one that assumes non-compliance, and so concentrates on altering the structure of the industry.

Business process reengineering and lean are increasingly used to restructure public sector work. This article presents a case study of reengineering in a California welfare agency. It finds extensive work intensification and reduced autonomy for the workforce, and deteriorating service for the clientele. Rather than attribute these outcomes as inherent to the business process reengineering model, this article emphasizes how cost cutting and quantitative efficiency were prioritized over worker empowerment and service quality because the organization is a government agency facing severe budgetary pressures under neoliberalism, and the clientele consists of indigent families and individuals who have no choice of an alternative provider.

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