Corporations have increasingly turned to voluntary, multi-stakeholder governance programs to monitor workers’ rights and standards in global supply chains. This article argues that the emphasis of these programs varies significantly depending on stakeholder involvement and issue areas under examination. Corporate-influenced programs are more likely to emphasize detection of violations of minimal standards in the areas of wages, hours, and occupational safety and health because focusing on these issues provides corporations with legitimacy and reduces the risks of uncertainty created by activist campaigns. In contrast, these programs are less likely to emphasize workers’ rights to form democratic and independent unions, bargain, and strike because these rights are perceived as lessening managerial control without providing firms with significant reputational value. This argument is explored by coding 805 factory audits of the Fair Labor Association between 2002 and 2010, followed by case studies of Russell Athletic in Honduras, Apple in China, and worker rights monitoring in Vietnam.

post

page

attachment

revision

nav_menu_item

custom_css

customize_changeset

oembed_cache

user_request

wp_block

wp_template

wp_template_part

wp_global_styles

wp_navigation

wp_font_family

wp_font_face

acf-taxonomy

acf-post-type

acf-field-group

acf-field

ai1ec_event

exactmetrics_note

The Other Migrant Crisis – Protecting Migrant Workers against Exploitation in the Middle East and North Africa
Publications

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continues to host groups highly vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. Migrant workers, particularly domestic workers, are known to be among those who are most at risk. While the region is co...Read More

Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region: Why is this Happening?
Publications

The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has created an ex- pansive system of unprecedented state control over the 13 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other minoritized eth- nic and religious groups of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autono- mous Region (Uyghur...Read More

TAGS:
Unlocking What Works: How Community-Based Interventions are Ending Bonded Labour in India
Publications

New findings from external evaluations of the Freedom Fund’s hotspot programs by leading research organisations have validated our model of working with vulnerable communities. The headline findings from these evaluations are: Between 2015...Read More

TAGS: Asia
People for Profit: North Korean Forced Labour on a Global Scale
Publications

The practice of sending large numbers of labourers abroad is a direct consequence of the situation the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) faces domestically and is made possible by the international networks that DPRK institutions, busin...Read More

TAGS: Asia