Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations

Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-01-18

Total Pages: 408

ISBN-13: 9004448047

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This edited volume provides a collection of historical and contemporary commodity chain studies placing labor at the centre of their analysis. It represents an important contribution to commodity chain research, but also to the fields of social-economic and global labour history.

Workers' Rights and Labor Compliance in Global Supply Chains

Workers' Rights and Labor Compliance in Global Supply Chains PDF

Author: Jennifer Bair

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 113501289X

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This book provides insight into the potential for the market to protect and improve labour standards and working conditions in global apparel supply chains. It examines the possibilities and limitations of market approaches to securing social compliance in global manufacturing industries. It does so by tracing the historic origins of social labelling both in trade union and consumer constituencies, considering industry and consumer perspectives on the benefits and drawbacks of social labelling, comparing efforts to develop and implement labelling initiatives in various countries, and locating social labelling within contemporary debates and controversies about the implications of globalization for workers worldwide. Scholars and students of globalisation, development, corporate social responsibility, human geography, labour and industrial relations, business ethics, consumer behaviour and fashion will find its contents of relevance. CSR practitioners in the clothing and other industries will also find this useful in developing policy with respect to supply chain assurance.

Frontiers of Commodity Chain Research

Frontiers of Commodity Chain Research PDF

Author: Jennifer Bair

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0804759243

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Featuring new contributions by leading globalization scholars, this timely volume analyzes the organization, geography, politics, and power dynamics of international trade and production networks understood as global commodity chains.

Value Chains

Value Chains PDF

Author: Intan Suwandi

Publisher: Monthly Review Press

Published: 2019-08-22

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1583677828

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Award-winning book showcases case studies uncovering the exploitation of labor and class in the Global South Winner of the 2018 Paul M. Sweezy—Paul A. Baran Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, Value Chains examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains, this book offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of exploitation. Value Chains uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power—the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself. Suwandi’s book depicts in concrete detail the relations of unequal exchange that structure today’s world economy. This study, up-to-date and richly documented, puts labor and class back at the center of our understanding of the world capitalist system.

Gendered Commodity Chains

Gendered Commodity Chains PDF

Author: Wilma Dunaway

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2013-12-18

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780804787949

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Gendered Commodity Chains is the first book to consider the fundamental role of gender in global commodity chains. It challenges long-held assumptions of global economic systems by identifying the crucial role social reproduction plays in production and by declaring the household as an important site of production. In affirming the importance of women's work in global production, this cutting-edge volume fills an important gender gap in the field of global commodity and value chain analysis. With thirteen chapters by an international group of scholars from sociology, anthropology, economics, women's studies, and geography, this volume begins with an eye-opening feminist critique of existing commodity chain literature. Throughout its remaining five parts, Gendered Commodity Chains addresses ways women's work can be integrated into commodity chain research, the forms women's labor takes, threats to social reproduction, the impact of indigenous and peasant households on commodity chains, the rapidly expanding arenas of global carework and sex trafficking, and finally, opportunities for worker resistance. This broadly interdisciplinary volume provides conceptual and methodological guides for academics, graduate students, researchers, and activists interested in the gendered nature of commodity chains.

Global Production

Global Production PDF

Author: Edna Bonacich

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 1994-06

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9781439901106

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Pacific Rim scholars look at globalization's impact on international economics.

Putting Labour in its Place

Putting Labour in its Place PDF

Author: Kirsty Newsome

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-09-16

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1137410361

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Part of the Comparative Work and Employment Relations series, Putting Labour in its Place is an edited collection, containing cutting-edge research and theoretical innovation on global value chains, the nature of work and labour process theory. It addresses the different processes around the world that each add value to the goods or services being produced; whilst also analysing the idea of labour itself and the exploitation surrounding it. Key benefits: - Written by leading international academics. - A landmark text combining the growing interest in global value chains with labour process theory. - Provides up-to-date critical analysis of global developments.

Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains

Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains PDF

Author: Sarosh Kuruvilla

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 1501754548

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Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains examines the effectiveness of corporate social responsibility on improving labor standards in global supply chains. Sarosh Kuruvilla charts the development and effectiveness of corporate codes of conduct to ameliorate "sweatshop" conditions in global supply chains. This form of private voluntary regulation, spearheaded by Nike and Reebok, became necessary given the inability of third world countries to enforce their own laws and the absence of a global regulatory system for labor standards. Although private regulation programs have been adopted by other companies in many different industries, we know relatively little regarding the effectiveness of these programs because companies don't disclose information about their efforts and outcomes in regulating labor conditions in their supply chains. Private Regulation of Labor Standards in Global Supply Chains presents data from companies, multi-stakeholder institutions, and auditing firms in a comprehensive, investigative dive into the world of private voluntary regulation of labor conditions. The picture he paints is wholistic and raw, but it considers several ways in which this private voluntary system can be improved to improve the lives of workers in global supply chains.

International Trade, Labor Relations, and Bargaining Power

International Trade, Labor Relations, and Bargaining Power PDF

Author: Matthew M. Fischer-Daly

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-04-28

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 1000875156

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International Trade, Labor Relations, and Bargaining Power: International Strawberry Commodity Networks examines power in the commercial food system through the history of always available strawberries. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to case studies on strawberry production and sales in Mexico, Spain, and the United States, the author untangles the symbiotic relationships between the economic boom and labor strife in the sector. By comparing workers’ struggles in the sector, he develops a novel model of workplace bargaining power in which the process of dignity catalyzes change. Since international trade in strawberries began three decades ago, the sector’s growth has paralleled the rise of retailer dominance of food sales. Highlighting inequitable gains from the sales boom, workers have organized mass strikes, boycotts, and pressure campaigns. The divergent results ranged from ephemeral acknowledgments of workers’ concerns to the establishment of union collective bargaining and steadily improving working conditions. Grounded in extensive research, the book provides fresh analytical approaches to understanding the social dimensions of international trade and workplace bargaining power. The book unpacks the relationship between poor working conditions and economic growth by applying a new method, international commodity network analysis, which builds on prior global supply chain approaches. It explains differences in workers’ initiatives to improve employment conditions by identifying the process of dignity in the creation of solidarity.

Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism

Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism PDF

Author: Gary Gereffi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 1993-11-30

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0313389934

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The current restructuring of the world-economy under global capitalism has further integrated international trade and production. It thus has brought to the fore the key role of commodity chains in the relationships of capital, labor, and states. Commodity chains are most simply defined as the link between successive processes of manufacturing that result in a final product available for individual consumption. Each production site in the chain involves organizing the acquisition of necessary raw materials plus semifinished inputs, the recruitment of labor power and its provisioning, arranging transportation to the next site, and the construction of modes of distribution (via markets and transfers) and consumption. The contributors to this volume explore and elaborate the global commodity chains (GCCs) approach, which reformulates the basic conceptual categories for analyzing varied patterns of global organization and change. The GCC framework allows the authors to pose questions about development issues, past and present, that are not easily handled by previous paradigms and to more adequately forge the macro-micro links between processes that are generally assumed to be discretely contained within global, national, and local units of analysis. The paradigm that GCCs embody is a network-centered, historical approach that probes above and below the level of the nation-state to better analyze structure and change in the contemporary world.