Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy / / ed. by Richard P. Appelbaum, Nelson Lichtenstein.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2016
• MitwirkendeR: Anner, Mark,; Appelbaum, Richard P.,; Bair, Jennifer,; Bignami, Renato,; Blasi, Jeremy,; Chan, Anita,; Chan, Jenny,; Esbenshade, Jill,; Gereffi, Gary,; Hermanson, Jeff,; Kibbey, Jason,; Lichtenstein, Nelson,; Luo, Xubei,; Nova, Scott,; Posthuma, Anne Caroline,; Pun, Ngai,; Quan, Katie,; Rogers, Brishen,; Ross, Robert J. S.,; Selden, Mark,; Wegemer, Chris,
• HerausgeberIn: Appelbaum, Richard P.,; Lichtenstein, Nelson,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (344 p.) :; 1 map, 10 tables, 10 charts

The world was shocked in April 2013 when more than 1,100 garment workers lost their lives in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka. It was the worst industrial tragedy in the two-hundred-year history of mass apparel manufacture. This so-called accident was, in fact, just waiting to happen, and not merely because of the corruption and exploitation of workers so common in the garment industry. In Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy, Richard P. Appelbaum and Nelson Lichtenstein argue that such tragic events, as well as the low wages, poor working conditions, and voicelessness endemic to the vast majority of workers who labor in the export industries of the global South arise from the very nature of world trade and production.Given their enormous power to squeeze prices and wages, northern brands and retailers today occupy the commanding heights of global capitalism. Retail-dominated supply chains-such as those with Walmart, Apple, and Nike at their heads-generate at least half of all world trade and include hundreds of millions of workers at thousands of contract manufacturers from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Sao Paulo and San Pedro Sula. This book offers an incisive analysis of this pernicious system along with essays that outline a set of practical guides to its radical reform.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy -- Part I. Self-Governance: The Challenges and Limitations of Corporate Social Responsibility -- 1. Outsourcing Horror: Why Apparel Workers Are Still Dying, One Hundred Years after Triangle Shirtwaist -- 2. From Public Regulation to Private Enforcement: How CSR Became Managerial Orthodoxy -- 3. Corporate Social Responsibility: Moving from Checklist Monitoring to Contractual Obligation? -- 4. The Twilight of CSR: Life and Death Illuminated by Fire -- Part II. Governance of Global Production Networks -- 5. The Demise of Tripartite Governance and the Rise of the Corporate Social Responsibility Regime -- 6. Deepening Compliance?: Potential for Multistakeholder Communication in Monitoring Labor Standards in the Value Chains of Brazil's Apparel Industry -- 7. Law and the Global Sweatshop Problem -- 8. Assessing the Risks of Participation in Global Value Chains -- Part III. Prospects for Workers' Rights in China -- 9. Apple, Foxconn, and China's New Working Class -- 10. Labor Transformation in China: Voices from the Frontlines -- 11. CSR and Trade Union Elections at Foreign-Owned Chinese Factories -- Part IV. A Way Forward -- 12. The Sustainable Apparel Coalition and Higg Index: A New Approach for the Apparel and Footwear Industry -- 13. Learning from the Past: The Relevance of Twentieth-Century New York Jobbers' Agreements for Twenty-First-Century Global Supply Chains -- 14. Workers of the World Unite!: The Strategy of the International Union League for Brand Responsibility -- Notes -- References -- Contributors -- Index