Documents clothing worker 16 results

"Wages for garment workers continue to languish at levels often way below those of a living wage. Efforts by individual multinational corporations to improve conditions in their supply chains have failed to have any significant impact on the predominant model of low-wage manufacturing that drives garment production worldwide. Recognizing that nothing less than a fundamental change to the way that production is organized in garment supply chains will ever deliver sustained and enforceable improvement to wages and conditions, IndustriALL is working with major clothing brands in a process known as ACT to develop systems of industry-wide collective agreements that are linked to purchasing practices to ensure that a larger share of the value generated is passed on to workers. The ACT process is a significant step towards creating genuine supply chain industrial relations in the garment industry."

"This article examines the relationship between labour control regimes and patterns of worker resistance in apparel global supply chains. Concentration of the geographical locations of apparel production in the last decade has as much to do with labour control regimes as with wages and other economic factors. There are three main labour control regimes in the sector: state-party control; market despotism; and repressive employer control. The article then argues that these systems of labour control are conducive to three patterns of worker resistance: wildcat strikes, international accords and transnational corporate campaigns. The article explores these arguments by examining the struggles of apparel workers in Viet Nam, Bangladesh and Honduras."

"Vertical specialization generated by the international fragmentation of production within global networks is driven not only by comparative advantage, but also by the locational decisions of lead firms which determine the role and bargaining power of local producers in their value chain. This study examines the consequences of such specialization in textiles and clothing for 26 labour-abundant countries from 1990 to 2007. Fixed effects regressions based on panel data reveal that the industry does not always reap the benefits of the resulting international trade integration. Rather, the authors observe a negative relationship between vertical specialization and relative real wages in the textile and clothing industry."

"Fatal disasters in Bangladesh garment factories demand we learn from recent antisweatshop breakthroughs. Beginning in 2007, workers at Fruit of the Loom (FOTL) factories in Honduras built a uniquely successful global campaign. FOTL closed a factory and laid off 1,200 workers in response to workers' efforts to improve working conditions, a textbook move in the industry's “race to the bottom.” But nine months later, after the largest collegiate boycott of a single company in history, FOTL reopened the factory and extended union neutrality to all its Honduran factories. We argue that the campaign, which resulted in a reversal of the transnational's decision to abandon the unionized factory and the direct negotiation between FOTL top executives and workers, provides an unprecedented model for labor to rein in the apparel industry's hyper-mobile capital. Since their negotiated agreement with FOTL, workers have won significant improvements in wages and working conditions, and inspired groundbreaking new campaigns to challenge the transnationals whose products they assemble."

"This article assesses the AFL–CIO's in Bangladesh's readymade garment (RMG) industry over the past two decades, drawing upon documentary sources and in-depth interviews conducted in 2007. Our research indicates that AFL–CIO actions clearly match four of the five characteristics of hegemonic trade union imperialism, including initiating its own organizations that it can directly control instead of working with existing unions; and employing bureaucratic and legalistic methods when pursuing workplace grievances. Nevertheless, while we characterize the AFL–CIO's actions in Bangladesh as renewed trade union imperialism, this thrust has been tempered with reformist achievements. These include path-breaking attention to the development of women workers' leadership skills. We conclude that the labor movement in the RMG industry in Bangladesh will have to find ways to accumulate new resources and credibility and to overcome its historical subservience to the two major Bangladeshi political parties if it is to effectively counter the AFL–CIO's trade union imperialism."

"Detailing events from the 1950s through the 1980s, this history outlines Alfred Gardner's personal life and work in London's East End textile industry. With humor and candor, Gardner describes the ins and outs of textile firms, including poor working conditions, design preparation, cloth cutting, specialized machines, commissions, deliveries, and payments. In addition, this witty and engaging narrative details Gardner's interactions with coworkers, bosses, shop keepers, friends, lovers, vicars, and prostitutes. From a 14-year-old boy saving to buy a suit to becoming a garment business owner himself, Gardner confronts different aspects of a changing world and reflects upon those experiences in this memoir."

""Monitoring Sweatshops" offers the first comprehensive assessment of efforts to address and improve conditions in garment factories. Jill Esbenshade describes the government's efforts to persuade retailers and clothing companies to participate in private monitoring programs. She shows the different approaches to monitoring that firms have taken, and the variety of private monitors employed, from large accounting companies to local non-profits. Esbenshade also shows how the efforts of the anti-sweatshop movement have forced companies to employ monitors overseas as well. When monitoring is understood as the result of the withdrawal of governments from enforcing labor standards as well as the weakening of labor unions, it becomes clear that the United States is experiencing a shift from a social contract between workers, businesses, and government to one that Jill Esbenshade calls the social responsibility contract. She illustrates this by presenting the recent history of monitoring, with considerable attention to the most thorough of the Department of Labor's programs, the one in Los Angeles. Esbenshade also explains the maze of alternative approaches being employed worldwide to decide the questions of what should be monitored and by whom."

"The 2005 and 1936 "labor ruptures" from the House of Labor occurred under parallel conditions that expressed and reaffirmed the model of universalistic industrial unionism in the U.S. This essay extracts from these parallels a sociological analysis of the recurring configuration of organizational, social, demographic, and economic conditions that have generated the fractious rebirthing of universalistic industrial unionism in the modern U.S. labor movement. The origins of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Congress of Industrial Organizations, and Change to Win illustrate this rebirthing. The recurring configuration of rebirthing conditions includes high rates of immigration, seismic restructuring of the national economy, the creation of a vulnerable and marginalized segment of the national labor force, heightened identity politics, sharpening income inequality, and a bureaucratized and stalled labor movement struggling to revitalize itself. Under these conditions, both labor ruptures expressed universalistic industrial unionism as a strategy for organizing the most marginalized groups of workers."