Reflections on Globalisation and Labour Standards in the Indian Garment Industry: Codes of Conduct Versus ‘Codes of Practice’ Imposed by the Firm

Abstract

The 'globalisation' of the garment industry has taken place in a context of increasing flexibilisation and informalisation of labour. Concerns of corporate social responsibility, especially in the form of codes of conduct, have been presented as a potential way to address this 'race to the bottom' for labour. Focusing on the experience of two important garment producing areas in India, Delhi and Bangalore, this paper shows that these codes have limited impact on improving working standards. This is due to a sharp mismatch between codes of conduct and the effective 'codes of practice' imposed by firms to deploy labour and organise the labour process. Firstly, codes are mainly elaborated as factorybased regulations, and are inapplicable to non-factory realms of production. However, these are remarkably significant in India. In Delhi, armies of urban and rural homeworkers are employed in highly complex production networks. Secondly, even in the factory-based realm of production, codes are only designed to target a workforce enjoying permanent status. However, in the Indian garment sector, the very meaning of 'permanent work' is currently being challenged by exporters in new innovative ways. In Bangalore, exporters engage in different processes of feminisation and re-feminisation of the factory workforce in order to minimise their responsibility towards labour. The analysis shows how local architectures of production crucially mediate the impact of given formal regulatory measures. Moreover, it also highlights how the firm can effectively be used as a fundamental prism through which to study labour and labour standards.

Scripted Performances? Local Readings of ‘Global’ Health and Safety Standards in the Apparel Sector in Sri Lanka

“…While the cultural politics of Sri Lanka's garment industry workers have been subject to scholarly scrutiny (Lynch 2007, Hewamanne 2008, our awareness of labour-management responses to global governance initiatives is limited. This is unlike neighbouring countries in South Asia, where there is coverage on the politics of global labour standards and compliance in the apparel industry (De Neve 2009, Mezzadri 2012, Miller 2012. Because there are limited studies about how the garment sector in Sri Lanka has responded to the demands of consumers and retailers to provide safe and hygienic working environments, this paper seeks to address a significant gap.…”

“…Injured workers get the medical care and attention they need, but they are not able to collect the unpaid leave for recuperation that they are entitled to and their injuries are not adequately recorded for auditing purposes. Existing management-labour power dynamics, gender relations and social hierarchies in the workplace suggest that the spaces of rupture in the implementation of ethical codes are continuously constrained by wider social and material relations, in this case the increasing pressures on managers to meet production targets (Brooks 2010, De Neve 2001, Mezzadri 2012. Adopting an ethnographic approach to the study of health and safety allows us to recognize that codes are 'always provisional -never stable, and never fixed' and as 'social products...their meaning becomes realized in specific places' (Prentice 2010: 10).…”

“…As I show in this paper, socio-cultural politics within factory sites are also an important lens through which to appreciate the workings of labour agency. Hence, unravelling how workers encounter corporate codes in the global garment industry requires considering not simply how capital embeds locally (Herod 2012, Mezzadri 2012, but also how labour negotiates industrial relations.…”

“…13 Deploying a discourse of 'choices' also ignores the sociality of the workplace politics, through which gendered hierarchies and authority thwart workers' actual perceptions of their options (De Neve 2001, Mezzadri 2012.…”

Precarious Bodies: Occupational Risk Assemblages in Bolivia and Trinidad

“…These conditions can affect workplace health and safety through high employee turnover, inadequate training and weak enforcement of labour protections (Quinlan, Mayhew and Bohle, 2001;Howse, Jeebhay and Neis, 2012;Benach et al, 2014). In global supply chains, safety compliance is commonly monitored by private mechanisms that can amount to unaccountable corporate self-regulation (Walters and James, 2009;Mezzadri, 2012;De Neve and Prentice, 2017). The individualisation and privatisation of workplace bargaining relations coincides with an increasing emphasis on "behavioural" methods of occupational health and safety, whereby workers who have little control over the organisation of production are made responsible for managing risks to their safety by disciplining their own behaviour (Tombs and White, 2007;Cross, 2010;Howard, 2014).…”