Abstract
In the recent decades, fashion brands and retailers in the West have introduced supplier’s Codes of Conduct (CoC) to strengthen international labour standards in their supply chain. Drawing from the concept of workers’ agency and the theory of reciprocity, this paper examines the implementation of CoC from the workers’ perspective and identifies the mechanism used by the workers to negotiate with their employer. Qualitative data was collected from forty semi-structured interviews with mangers, union representative and workers at a garment factory in Vietnam which manufactures clothes to a few well-known fashion brands in the US and Europe. The findings show that, externally, workers are united with the management in hiding non-compliance practices to pass labour audits while, internally, workers challenge the management about long working hours and low pay. This finding highlights the active roles workers play on the two fronts: towards their clients and towards the management. Their collaboration is motivated by the expectation that the management will return the favour by addressing their demands through a reciprocal exchange principle. This paper sheds light on an alternative approach to understanding collective bargaining and labour activism at the bottom of the supply chain and provides recommendations for further research.
Highlights
In recent decades, concerns of labour standards and workers’ rights in global supply chains have resulted in many Western brands and retailers adopting suppliers’ codes of conduct (CoC) as a voluntary-regulatory measure to promote international labour standards in suppliers’ factories.Clothing manufacturing factories in developing countries have long been known to employ low paid young female workers who constantly have to work for long hours under poor workplace conditions, and are often subjected to physical and psychological abuse [1,2]
Many case studies which investigated the implementation of CoC at manufacturing factories flagged up operational and institutional barriers to the improvement in labour standards
This paper offers a different perspective to the understanding of CoC implementation by placing the focus on women workers as active agents pursuing their goals in the employment relation
Summary
Concerns of labour standards and workers’ rights in global supply chains have resulted in many Western brands and retailers adopting suppliers’ codes of conduct (CoC) as a voluntary-regulatory measure to promote international labour standards in suppliers’ factories.Clothing manufacturing factories in developing countries have long been known to employ low paid young female workers who constantly have to work for long hours under poor workplace conditions, and are often subjected to physical and psychological abuse [1,2]. Concerns of labour standards and workers’ rights in global supply chains have resulted in many Western brands and retailers adopting suppliers’ codes of conduct (CoC) as a voluntary-regulatory measure to promote international labour standards in suppliers’ factories. After more than twenty years of research on CoC implementation, from the early works by Hilozitz [3] and Liubicic [4] to the recent developments by Louche [5], Underhill et al [6] and. Egels-Zanden [7], the improvement in labour standards and workers’ rights in the global supply chain remains questionable. Many case studies which investigated the implementation of CoC at manufacturing factories flagged up operational and institutional barriers to the improvement in labour standards
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