Global Apparel Industry Research Articles

Two Logics of Labor Organizing in the Global Apparel Industry

What factors account for labor strategies in global industries? While some scholars point to economic factors and others look to political opportunity structures, an examination of union actions in the Central American apparel export industry over a 14-year period suggests that activists’ historical experiences and ideological orientations also strongly influence union dynamics. Left-oriented unions tend to form unions through transnational activism whereas conservative unions most often turn to plant-level cross-class collaboration. Moreover, these two union strategies are interconnected. Successful transnational activism facilitates conservative union formation through a “radical flank” mechanism; the threat of left-union organizing motivates employers to accept unionization by conservative unions to block left unions from gaining influence in the plant. To examine these arguments, this article employs pooled time-series statistical analysis, structured interviews with labor organizers, and process tracing that draws on nine months of field research in Honduras and El Salvador.

Using design for upgrading in the fashion industry

The purpose of the article is to analyze upgrading by looking at the design of fashion garments. To that end, I use the theoretical concept of contextual knowledge to understand the problems faced by firms, and their staff, that want to upgrade through design. Contextual knowledge combines a general knowledge of fashion with the lifeworld that actors use for interpretation of fashion. Lifeworld is a notion which refers to what is taken for granted. Producers and consumers in the global fashion industry live in different lifeworlds. The text discusses upgrading strategies of garment manufacturers, drawing on unique empirical material. It provides a theoretical tool for analyzing culturally primed production in a global setting.

Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry by Caitrin Lynch

<i>Juki</i> Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry by <i>Caitrin Lynch</i>

Jumping Scale and Bridging Space in the Era of Corporate Social Responsibility: cross-border labour struggles in the global garment industry

Global outsourcing arrangements in the garment industry, and elsewhere, provide one type of company—brands or retailers—with the possibility of distancing themselves from the organisational questions related to (mass) labour processes. By externalising the labour-intensive aspects of production, global sourcing companies no longer have to take responsibility for the majority of workers involved in the process. This has given these companies an opportunity to break out of unionised and established industrial areas with strict institutionalised labour processes, and has undermined traditional strategies that labour has used to protect itself against exploitation, turning the global supply chain into a barrier to organising and collective bargaining. Spatial strategies are by no means exclusive to firms. Workers too can pursue their causes on a broader socio-geographic terrain, a process often referred to as ‘jumping scale’ or ‘bridging space’. Drawing upon concepts derived from social and labour geography, this paper is a critical inquiry into the nature, possibility and limits to cross-border solidarity campaigns in the global garment industry. The paper starts by emphasising that workers remain active participants in a process of contestation that constantly reshapes the dynamics of workplace control and its accompanying power balances and relations. Then we discuss how the increased attention being paid to working conditions by activists, consumers, journalists and branded corporations adds an extra-local dimension to workplace relations, (potentially) restricting management from exercising more despotic forms of labour relations. The final part discusses how the Clean Clothes Campaign's urgent appeal system provides a grassroots-based system to build labour solidarity across space, which may help to regain leverage over capital.

Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry. By Caitrin Lynch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii, 281 pp. $55.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry. By Caitrin Lynch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. xiii, 281pp. 19.95 (paper). - Volume 67 Issue 4

Book Review: Lynch, C. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. 281 pp. $19.95 (paperback)

Book Review: Lynch, C. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press. 281 pp. $19.95 (paperback)

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.

Order in Garment Markets

The purpose of this theoretical article is to analyse the social construction of order in two connected markets in the production flow of the global garment industry. The consumer market is identified as a status market, while the production market is defined as a `standard' market. In a `status' market, order is maintained because the identities of actors on both sides of the market are ranked according to status, which is a more entrenched social construction than the commodity traded in the market. In a market characterized by `standard', the situation is the reverse: the commodity is a more entrenched social construction than the identity rankings of actors in the market. The study ties together consumption and production of garments through several markets.

Reconfiguring ‘post‐socialist’ regions: cross‐border networks and regional competition in the Slovak and Ukrainian clothing industry

AbstractThe global garment industry is currently being reshaped in dramatic ways through processes of trade liberalization, delocalization and interfirm and interregional competition. There has been much speculation about the increasing importance of factor (especially labour) costs in fuelling further rounds of de‐localization of garment production towards low‐cost production locations, such as China and India. However, the extent to which these processes mean the end to garment production in higher factor‐cost locations, including those neighbouring the major clothing markets of the USA and the EU, is open to question. In this article we interrogate the interregional shifts in garment sourcing taking place in Europe and its surrounding regions. While factor costs (including labour) are important determinants of the geography of sourcing, a range of other costs (logistical and policy costs) are important in structuring the geographies of global and regional production. Firms in the Slovak Republic are responding to increasing competitive pressures and we assess how trans‐border sourcing, subcontracting and FDI are being integrated into strategies to sustain European production networks. We highlight the emergence of cross‐border production relocation to Ukraine as one specific strategy. We examine the product specificity of these changes and the ways in which they are embedded within already existing production networks, forms of cross‐border contracting and central European trade regimes. In other words, we explore some of the forces that shape the somewhat tentative continuation of garment production for export to EU markets in central Europe despite the ‘spectre of China’.

WEAVING A STRONGER FABRIC: ORGANIZING A GLOBAL SWEAT‐FREE APPAREL PRODUCTION AGREEMENT

There are tens of millions of workers who work under terrible sweatshop conditions in the global apparel industry. Workers are employed at apparel contractors and have been largely unsuccessful in organizing and improving their working conditions. The major apparel manufacturers and retailers have the most power in this industry, and they have adopted corporate social responsibility programs as a false solution to the sweatshop problem. The major North American apparel unions dealt with similar sweatshop conditions a century ago by organizing the contractors and brands into joint association contracts that significantly raised standards. Taking inspiration from their example, workers and their anti‐sweatshop allies need to work together to coordinate a global organizing effort that builds worker power and establishes a global production agreement that negotiates with both contractors and the brands for improved wages, benefits, and working conditions.

The Impact of External Monitoring and Public Reporting on Business Performance in a Global Manufacturing Industry

This study examines the importance of external monitoring and public reporting on the performance of firms in the global apparel industry. By focusing on the relevance of company reputation in the global community, the authors examine financial performance and stock market reaction to the release of information describing the manufacturing practices of firms made available by a third-party monitor. Using agency theory as a predictive framework, industry-wide changes in market measures of company risk as a result of third-party monitoring are found, suggesting that society values such external reports. The authors’ findings are important to business and society because they bridge the gap in knowledge about how voluntary compliance programs are supplemented by external monitoring and reporting for firms operating in the global environment. This work suggests that external monitoring is valuable to business and society by reducing information asymmetry between the two groups and encouraging accurate assessment of the risks associated with global operations.

Surveying the Post-MFA Landscape: What Prospects for the Global South Post-Quota?

The editor's introduction to a special issue on the post-MFA apparel industry, this paper reviews the extant literature on the industry, especially with regard to upgrading and development implications for firms and workers in the global South, before summarizing the main contributions of the collection. The five papers comprising the special issue use a global commodity/global value chain approach to analyze the situation of apparel exporters and garment workers, including in Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa, India and China. These papers share a conceptualization of the global apparel industry as a single organizational field in which the experiences and trajectories of individual firms, countries and regions are tied to the dynamics of international trade and production networks. Taking as its point of departure the phase-out of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, the collection demonstrates how regulatory shifts affect the governance structure of a global commodity/global value chain, how they shape prospects for developing-country firms and regions, and how multilateral liberalization at the global level articulates with regional trade regimes.

Ugly beautiful? Counting the cost of the global fashion industry

ABSTRACTThis article asks you to think geographically about fashion. We all wear clothes, but how often do we reflect on who makes our clothes, where and under what conditions? Why do we buy and wear the clothes we do and how often do we think about where the value lies in a garment? Why do the phrases ‘Made in Italy’ and ‘Made in China’ have such different connotations? How can a child in Cambodia working in a denim factory have any geographical connection to a Prada store on Bond Street? The following article argues for a relational approach to the study of fashion, one that brings these complex connections between production, branding, retailing and wearing into simultaneous and mutually constitutive view. The article shows how the global maps of clothing supply and retailing expose our complicity as consumers in the production of deeply unequal geographies of fashion.

The Rise of a Global Garment Industry and the Reimagination of Worker Solidarity

In 1996, Bill Roseberry published an article in American Anthropologist entitled `The Rise of Yuppie Coffees and the Reimagination of Class in the United States'. In it, he explored the connections that linked the rise of specialty coffees marketed at Zabars and Starbucks to new class configurations of consumerism in the US and to new production arrangements in the coffee-producing countries. The article seeks to apply this approach to the analysis of another commodity chain: that of apparel. It explains how recent changes in the global apparel industry are shaped by power and experienced by workers and consumers. It seeks to bridge the divide between industrialized and developing nations by showing the commonalities (as well as differences) experienced by the industry's workers in the US and abroad. And it shows how global production patterns have given rise to global resistance strategies, as workers forge bonds with social movements outside of the factory and develop transnational alliances. In the spirit of Roseberry's work, this account seeks to meld cultural analysis with political economy, and to attend to historical contingency, without losing sight of corporate and state power.

Managing complexity in agile global fashion industry supply chains

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the agile supply chain management practices adopted by UK clothing retailers in order to effectively manage the supply of innovative, high‐margin, high‐fashion content product offerings in a complex global environment.Design/methodology/approachA case study approach was adopted examining the whole of the global retail fashion supply chain, from typical UK‐based retailers through to their main production and logistics suppliers based in two low‐cost locations, China and Romania. The cases of the UK retailers were followed by a study tour of China and Romania, where ten cases of fabric and finishing manufacturers, intermediaries and logistic providers were carried out.FindingsMany aspects of accepted risk management and agile practice, such as market sensitivity, postponement activities and collaborative information‐sharing partnerships were apparent in the early product definition and the later product delivery stages of the supply chain. However, the responsibility for supply, including the key aspect of managing the complex supply network, was almost exclusively left to intermediaries located in low‐cost countries. These intermediaries in the main could best achieve agile supply from a significantly underutilized low‐cost country supply network through a traditional adversarial price and lead time auction sourcing process.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the cases considered reflected what seemed to be a typical and widely adopted approach to managing such a supply chain, this may not, of course, be the only approach taken by organisations in the clothing industry.Originality/valueBy examining a whole supply chain associated with agile supply in an important sector, the paper identifies the relative importance of some existing practices and brings into sharper focus those most relevant to this type of supply. The paper also identifies key elements of contemporary supply chain management practice, namely the growing use of global supply for innovative products and the essential and valuable role played by intermediaries in such supply chains.

Threads of Labour, Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers' Perspective

List of Illustrations. List of Tables. List of Boxes. Notes on Contributors. Acknowledgements. Abbreviations. 1 Threads of Labour in the Global Garment Industry (Jane Wills with Angela Hale). 2 The Changing Face of the Global Garment Industry (Jennifer Hurley with Doug Miller). 3 Organising and Networking in Support of Garment Workers (Angela Hale). 4 Action Research. Tracing the Threads of Labour in the Global Garment Industry (Jane Wills with Jennifer Hurley). 5 Unravelling the Web. Supply Chains and Workers' Lives in the Garment Industry (Jennifer Hurley). 6 Coming Undone. The Implications of Garment Industry Subcontracting for UK Workers (Camille Warren). 7 The Impact of Full-package Production in Mexico's Blue Jean Capital (Lynda Yanz with Bob Jeffcott). 8 Defending Workers' Rights in Subcontracted Workplaces (Rohini Hensman, Women Working Worldwide). 9 The Phase-out of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement from the Perspective of Workers (Angela Hale with Maggie Burns). 10 Conclusion (Angela Hale with Jane Will). References. Index.

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

754 Many thanks to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Geoff Eley, Dana Luciano, Nasser Hussain, Roger Rouse, Adam Thurschwell, and Martha Umphrey for their meticulous engagements, as well as to audiences at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, American Political Science Association, American Studies Association, and Cleveland State. Special nostalgic thanks to Virginia Chang, my original collaborator in the Obesity and Poverty conference (2002). 1. See David Harvey, “The Body as Accumulation Strategy,” Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 97–116. To call Harvey polemical is not to devalue his profound contributions to understanding the productive destructiveness of capital; in his work, a polemic is a call for precision, not a way of drowning it out. Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Book Review: Threads: Gender, Labor, and Power in the Global Apparel Industry by Jane L. Collins

Book Review: <i>Threads: Gender, Labor, and Power in the Global Apparel Industry</i> by Jane L. Collins

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

No Sweat: Hard Lessons from Garment Industry History

This thanksgiving 2006 will witness the anniversary almost to the day ninety-seven years ago, when the immigrant shopgirls of New York's shirtwaist factories called a general strike. This past April, and then on May Day, immigrant workers, 120 years after the first strike movement for the eight-hour day (May Day, 1886), asserted their claim to just treatment. The fall and rise of sweatshop labor in New York and elsewhere in the global garment industry is a story with lessons for our time, for the struggles over the sweatshop issue today echo the issues and contentions of a century ago. Then, as now, there was tension between workers and their middle-class allies.