Anti-sweatshop Activism Research Articles

Anti-sweatshop activism and the safety-employment tradeoff: Evidence from Bangladesh's Rana Plaza disaster

This study investigates the impact of anti-sweatshop activism on garment industry employment and the number of firms in Bangladesh following the 2013 Rana Plaza factory disaster. The disaster led to activism that created two major brand-enforced factory fire and safety agreements. We employ a synthetic control methodology to investigate the tradeoffs associated with the reaction to the disaster and find that it led to 33.3 percent fewer garment factories in Bangladesh by 2016 and 28.3 percent fewer people employed in Bangladesh's garment industry by 2017. Given the importance of the garment industry in Bangladesh's development in providing a pathway out of extreme property, our finding raises important questions about the efficacy of anti-sweatshop activism.

Anti-Sweatshop Activism and the Safety-Employment Tradeoff: Evidence from Bangladesh's Rana Plaza Disaster

Anti-Sweatshop Activism and the Safety-Employment Tradeoff: Evidence from Bangladesh's Rana Plaza Disaster

Conductive Activism: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns across Hong Kong and Mainland China

ABSTRACTThis study looks at trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and the transformation of cross-border activism between Hong Kong and mainland China. Examining two cases, it demonstrates the mechanism and processes of trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and networks involving non-governmental agencies, student groups and workers. The study suggests that anti-sweatshop activism has been conductive and transferrable from Hong Kong to China in a way that has mobilised local civil society power, cultivated mainland activists and nurtured localised pro-labour activism. With Hong Kong activists acting as movement conveyers and mainland activists acting as adapters, anti-sweatshop activism has evolved. Once centred on marketplaces and consumers, it is now centred on production sites, and has moved domestic actors (including workers, students, scholars, media and consumers) from the margins to the centre. Anti-sweatshop activism has moulded itself to local contexts by rebuilding its strategies and tactics while coalescing with overseas networks to integrate strengths across the Hong Kong-Chinese border. Although the anti-sweatshop movement in China has its weaknesses, its evolution has the potential to gradually alter the power asymmetries between domestic and overseas activists.

Shaming the Corporation

As social movements co-evolve with changes in states and markets, it is crucial to examine how they make particular kinds of actors into focal points for the expression of grievances and the demand for rights. But researchers often bracket the question of why some kinds of organizations are more likely than others to become targets of social movement pressure. We theorize the “social production of targets” by social movements, rejecting a simple “reflection” model to focus on configurations of power and vulnerability that shape repertoires of contention. Empirically, we extend structural accounts of global commodity chains and cultural accounts of markets to analyze the production of targets in the case of the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s. Using a longitudinal, firm-level dataset and unique data on anti-sweatshop activism, we identify factors that attracted social movement pressure to particular companies. Firms’ power and positions strongly shaped their likelihood of becoming targets of anti-sweatshop activism. But the likelihood of being a target also depended on the cultural organization of markets, which made some firms more “shamable” than others. Contrary to suggestions of an anti-globalization backlash, globalization on its own, and related predictions about protectionism, cannot explain the pattern of activism.

Book Review: Advocacy Across Borders: NGOs, Anti-Sweatshop Activism, and the Global Garment Industry, by Shae Garwood

Book Review: <i>Advocacy Across Borders: NGOs, Anti-Sweatshop Activism, and the Global Garment Industry</i>, by Shae Garwood

From Varieties of Capitalism to Varieties of Activism

Recent decades have witnessed an upsurge in activism around labor issues in global production networks. A particularly prominent example is the antisweatshop movement, a diverse collection of efforts to promote labor rights and improve working conditions in international supply chains for apparel and footwear products. Much of the literature on the antisweatshop movement emphasizes its global nature and the reliance of activists on transnational advocacy networks involving coalitions of Northern (usually U.S.-based) consumers and Southern workers. Drawing theoretical inspiration from the varieties of capitalism literature, we examine instead the emergence and institutionalization of antisweatshop politics within the global North. Based on interviews with groups in eight countries, we analyze the trajectories of antisweatshop activism in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada, finding marked variation in the leadership and composition of the movement across regions. Antisweatshop politics were particularly contentious in the United States, where labor leaders were active in framing the sweatshop scourge as a domestic as well as an international social problem. In Europe and Canada, the key role was played not by organized labor, but by other civil society groups that encouraged a multistakeholder approach to what was perceived primarily as an issue of social and economic development in the global South. Overall, our analysis highlights how national institutions and political cultures shape the way that actors assess a social problem and evaluate the possibilities available to effect meaningful change.

Shae Garwood, Advocacy Across Borders: NGOs, Anti-Sweatshop Activism, and the Global Garment Industry

Shae Garwood, Advocacy Across Borders: NGOs, Anti-Sweatshop Activism, and the Global Garment Industry

Advocacy across borders: NGOs, anti-sweatshop activism and the global garment industry

The clothing and textile industry employs nearly 30 million people worldwide, mostly in Asia and Central America. Workers frequently face long hours, inadequate wages, harassment and abuse. While some resist such conditions by joining labor unions, many are prevented from doing so or find it difficult to adjust to transitory manufacturers. Because of these challenges, garment workers have reached out to allies across political borders in order to apply more pressure on garment manufacturers. The transnational anti-sweatshop network is at a critical stage in its development and is due for serious analysis. Advocacy Across Borders reveals the relationships that Northern-based NGOs forge in order to exert influence on powerful actors in the industry. An exhaustive dissection of the strategies of many organizations involved in this extensive network, Garwood s study points the way forward for civil society actors reaching across borders to advocate for a better world.

Multinationals and Anti-Sweatshop Activism

During the 1990s, anti-sweatshop activists campaigned to improve conditions for workers in developing countries. This paper analyzes the impact of anti-sweatshop campaigns in Indonesia on wages and employment. Identification is based on comparing the wage growth of workers in foreign-owned and exporting firms in targeted regions or sectors before and after the initiation of anti-sweatshop campaigns. We find the campaigns led to large real wage increases for targeted enterprises. There were some costs in terms of reduced investment, falling profits, and increased probability of closure for smaller plants, but we fail to find significant effects on employment. (JEL F23, J31, J81, L67, O14, O15)

Finding an anti-sweatshop strategy that works

That nearly twenty years of anti-sweatshop activism has come to naught is suggested by the cost breakdown of a $37.99 University of Connecticut hoodie that appeared in the Hartford Courant a couple of years ago: the workers received a mere 18 cents, while the university received $2.28 in licensing fees. (Mexican factory: profit, 70 cents; overhead, $2.12; material, $5.50—importer [Champion]: overhead, $5.10; profit, $1.75—retailer [UCONN Co-Op]: overhead, $14.49; profit, $4.50). Use of the logo was 80 cents, and the royalty to the National Collegiate Athletic Association was 57 cents. The workers' share could hardly have been lower when the movement began.

THE QUANDARIES OF CONSUMER-BASED LABOR ACTIVISM

This essay takes anti-sweatshop activism as a case-study of a labor movement that engages consumer politics with mixed results. It reviews the success of the media-honed strategies deployed to raise public concern about substandard workplace conditions in the global garment industry, and summarizes corporate efforts to redeem their tarnished image through the public relations vehicle of ‘corporate social responsibility’. The record of attention to labor abuses with the history of the consumer movement confirms the existence of a longstanding dialogue between advocacy organizations oriented to the politics of production and consumption respectively. But there is also a history of missed opportunities on the labor side to question the dominant materialist lifestyle of a consumer civilization. This shortcoming is highlighted by the rise of the anti-consumer movement, which evangelizes sweeping changes in lifestyle, trading, and modes of livelihood, and sees ethical consumption as little more than a way to greenwash the status quo. The essay argues that anti-sweatshop activists (who give short shrift to foundational challenges to the prevailing system) and anti-consumerists (often insensitive to the livelihoods that are tied to servicing the goods economy) would each benefit from integrating more of the others’ philosophies and goals. Concerns about the unsustainability of a consumer civilization can and should be addressed at the point of production. On the other side, anti-consumerists ought to consider production workers and labor-based organizations as likely allies rather than as hapless victims of false consciousness.

NO SWEAT? Corporate Social Responsibility and the Dilemma of Anti-Sweatshop Activism

NO SWEAT? Corporate Social Responsibility and the Dilemma of Anti-Sweatshop Activism

Stitching Together a Movement? Three Works about Globalization, the Apparel Industry, and Anti-sweatshop Activism

With the expiration of the Multi-Fiber Agreement, 2005 was to be the Year of Apparel. The global structure of the industry was to undergo significant changes with considerable consequences for workers, consumers and national economies. The actual extent and magnitude of these changes is still playing out, so conclusions about the industry’s direction may have to wait. In the meantime, three recent books offer an opportunity to get up to speed on the apparel industry, how it has shaped and been shaped by globalization, and most importantly, the ways in which labor activists have intervened in these processes. Of the three, Jane L Collins’ Threads: Gender, Labor and Power in the Global Apparel Industry focuses most on the structure and dynamics of the industry. Collins examines the realities of competitive pressures in the industry, how individual firms choose to respond to these pressures, and the ways in which such choices determine the fates of their businesses. While providing this analysis, Collins remains a storyteller, deeply concerned with the lives and livelihoods of the garment and textile workers struggling to better themselves by entering the industry’s “global labor market”. She profiles two clothing firms based in the US. The first, Tultex, carried out direct production within the United States. A chapter is devoted to their factory in Martinsville, Virginia, which was shut down in 1999. The second, Liz Claiborne, is a prototypical garment manufacturer in that it does not own any of the plants in which production is carried out. One chapter is dedicated to the history of the company. Two factories in Aguascalientes, Mexico, are then profiled: Confitek, which for a few years produced garments for Tultex, and Burlmex, which did so for Liz

Improving the Conditions of Workers? Minimum Wage Legislation and Anti-Sweatshop Activism

Many claim that international labor standards are a remedy to address poor working conditions and low wages in developing countries. Others have argued that efforts to impose a '' living or improve working conditions in developing countries can lead to higher labor costs, which could in turn hurt the very workers these movements seek to protect by relegating these workers to even worse jobs or no jobs at all. Many labor rights activists have turned to public relations campaigns and boycotts that target multinational companies in order to pressure them to improve the conditions of their workers. In the 1990s, Indonesia—home to dozens of Nike, Reebok, and Adidas subcontractors—was a primary target for these activists. At the same time, the Indonesian government—prompted by the U.S. government—greatly increased its minimum wage. These two different interventions led to a doubling of wages for unskilled workers in Indonesia. While the minimum wage increases did lead to employment losses, this article reports on a study that shows that employment remained steady in textiles and apparel, indicating that anti-sweatshop activism in Indonesia was a win-win situation.

"That's How We Do Things Here: Local Culture and the Construction of Sweatshops and Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Two Campus Communities"*

This paper uses data from campus newspapers at two large Midwestern universities to examine local claimsmaking about the problem of sweatshops and anti-sweatshop activism on each campus. Although student activists at both schools sought to solve the same problem (i.e., the manufacture of university-licensed apparel by sweatshop labor) with the same solution (i.e., convincing their university administrations to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium, a sweatshop monitoring organization), what was ostensibly the same issue was constructed in very different ways in the claims found in the two newspapers. Drawing on the concept of “local culture,” our analysis illustrates how claimsmakers at each campus used locally and situationally embedded interpretive resources both to establish the problem of sweatshops and to present solutions to this problem. We use these findings to draw implications for both social problems theory and the study of social movements.

A Wrench in the Global Works: Anti‐Sweatshop Activism on Campus

AntipodeVolume 36, Issue 2 p. 191-197 A Wrench in the Global Works: Anti-Sweatshop Activism on Campus Rachel Silvey, Rachel Silvey Department of Geography, University of Colorado, USASearch for more papers by this author Rachel Silvey, Rachel Silvey Department of Geography, University of Colorado, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 13 April 2004 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2004.00398.xCitations: 26AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume36, Issue2March 2004Pages 191-197 RelatedInformation

Locating the Publicity of US‐Based Anti‐Sweatshop Activism

All the ruling classes, who are paying lip-sympathy to their hollow slogans of self-reliance and sovereignty, just to hood-wink the people, have to be exposed by forcing them to translate their slogans into reality and use their influence to persuade other developing countries to come out of WTO. (Draft Declaration of Indian People

Promotionalism and Subpolitics

This article examines why Nike, the leading sports shoe and apparel merchandiser, has become a principal target of activism against sweatshop labor conditions in developing countries and why it has faced persistent public relations problems in its response to antisweatshop criticism. Nike has become a major target because it has successfully integrated different forms of corporate communication into the promotion of a high-profile corporate identity. The reflexive character of Nike’s promotionalism, however, has allowed for activist criticism that contrasts Nike’s claims of social responsibility with the labor conditions in its manufacturing operations. Antisweatshop activism, an example of what Beck calls subpolitics , is motivated by ethical interests, has a decentered network form of organization, and has a pluralistic, tactical focus. The effect of this activism has been to turn the debate over Nike’s labor practices into a dialectic between issues and crisis management, which accounts for Nike’s public relations problems.