Multinational corporations (MNCs) in the West have introduced voluntary codes of conduct (CoC) in global supply chains to promote the application of international labour standards and labour rights in their suppliers’ factories. Previous studies on CoC implementation have addressed various problems of its effectiveness but they are limited to a rather narrow context of business relationships between MNCs and factory-based suppliers. My research examines CoC implementation in a wider global supply chain and domestic institutional context. It aims to: firstly, assess how CoC is implemented throughout the multi-layered clothing supply chain and, secondly, identify structural and institutional constraints which hinder the effectiveness of CoC. The thesis employs qualitative analyses of 398 web-based documents from the 75 largest clothing brands and retailers in US and UK markets. It also provides data from 62 in-depth and semi-structured interviews of garment factories managers, workers, vendors, labour auditors and local officials in Vietnam, as well as representatives from UK retailers and campaign groups. The thesis analyses various sets of relationship among these actors and in two dimensions of the environments in which CoC operates: global supply network structure and domestic employment relations system. My thesis makes three original contributions. Firstly it challenges the presumed logic of CoC aimed at supporting workers, because it shows evidence from the workers’ perspective that CoC not only fails to support workers’ needs but also faces resistance from them in non-complying factories in Vietnam. Secondly, I argue that the oversimplified assumption of principal-agent control model between MNCs and suppliers’ factories, which underpins the CoC arrangement, fails to recognise the complex structure of supply network with interdependent operations and multi-level flow of commands. Finally, my thesis exposes the weakness of market initiatives like CoC: when their pledges to improve working conditions and promote workers’ rights clash with economic and socio-political priorities of the local government, the latter prevails. Taking the business and institutional dimensions together I have developed a framework for a more comprehensive assessment of CoC and similar voluntary initiatives that can be applied by other researchers in similar contexts.

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine both the gendered and racialized nature of workplace risk and compensation in the manufacturing industry of apparel. The author selects this industry because of its low-wage, labor intensive, and "deskilled" work, performed in often unsafe employment environments with minimal governmental regulations and limited unionization. The apparel industry is also characterized by its large percentage of racial and ethnic minorities, especially immigrant employees, that further disadvantage them in terms of communication barriers, threat of deportation, and the multiple and intersecting marginalizations associated with occupying a low-wage, minority and/or immigrant status. The gendered effects of workplace risk are addressed in the garment industry, as women and girls largely comprise these workers. Using governmental data, including Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the author measures the incidences, rates, and demographic characteristics associated with workplace injuries and illnesses for the years 1993-2002. In addition to occupational injuries and illnesses in these industries, the author examines Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division data to examine the incidences and types of compensation violations from the years 1993-2002. Finally, the author examines the limitations of government safety and compensation regulations and enforcement, and the corrective measures that are needed to uphold and safeguard the occupational health, safety, and compensation rights of these workers.

Esta pesquisa tem três objetivos centrais. O primeiro é compreender o fenômeno que foi denominado de migração da costura. Evidencia-se o funcionamento dos mecanismos de atração dessa força de trabalho transnacional, situados na dinâmica urbana da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Trata-se de perspectiva que retira os aspectos nacionais e étnicos para explicar o fluxo migratório que se insere na cidade através do trabalho na indústria de confecções. A hipótese defendida é que foi estabelecida uma afinidade eletiva entre as transformações ocorridas no setor, a partir da reestruturação produtiva, e o modo pelo qual se estrutura a migração transnacional circulante assentada no que se denominou de dispositivo oficina de costura. Esse dispositivo oferece as condições para a realização do projeto migratório: deslocamento, qualificação, trabalho, moradia e alimentação. O segundo objetivo repousa na compreensão das relações entre o dispositivo oficina de costura e a ideia de trabalho escravo. A proposta é rastrear o início do debate sobre o trabalho escravo da modalidade rural à urbana, tendo como referência os migrantes da costura e identificar tratados, marcos e leis nacionais e internacionais que incidem sobre essas populações. Em seguida, evidenciam-se algumas representações de migrantes sobre a temática. O último ponto propõe uma abordagem sobre o trabalho escravo a partir do caso da fiscalização da grife espanhola Zara. São examinadas as transformações da atuação dos agentes estatais no combate ao trabalho escravo: da repressão e criminalização à gestão do fluxo e da inserção dos migrantes na cidade, que ocorre a partir da mobilização de ONGs e de grandes empresas. Trata-se de compreender o trabalho escravo como aglutinador de uma série de políticas de inclusão, referidas no mercado, que buscam organizar esse mercado de trabalho, além de gerir o fluxo migratório. Abordam-se os limites e contradições dessas ações. A metodologia utilizada foi predominantemente qualitativa, baseada em pesquisa de campo, análise documental e entrevistas semiestruturadas. / This research has three main objectives. The first is to understand the garment workers migration. It analyzes the functioning of the sector that attracts this transnational workforce, located in the urban dynamic of Metropolitan Area of São Paulo. Our approach denies national and ethnic aspects to explain the migration flow that enters the city through the work in the garment industry. The hypothesis is that it was established an elective affinity between the changes in this industry, since the restructuring process, and the way in which is structured the transnational circulating migration, settled in what was called as the garment workshop dispositif. This dispositif provides the conditions for the realization of the migratory project: mobility, qualification, work, housing and nourishment. The second aim lies in understanding the relationship of the garment workshop dispositif with the idea of slave labour. The debate on slave labour is tracked from the rural to the urban mode, with reference to the garment workers migration. It is showed the treaties, national and international laws that concern these migrants. Then, some representations of these migrants about this subject are evidenced. The last aim shifts the understanding of slave labour. We put forward the Zara case, an inspection that identified slave labour in Zara´s chain production. We examine the transformations of the performance of state agents in the fight against slave labour: from repression and criminalization to the government of the flow and the incorporation of migrants with the mobilization of the large companies and NGOs. Slave labour is understood as agglutinating the various politics of inclusion, referred on the market, which seek to organize this labour market and govern the migration flow. This research seeks to highlight the limits and contradictions of these actions. The methodology used was largely qualitative, based on field research, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews.

Esta pesquisa tem três objetivos centrais. O primeiro é compreender o fenômeno que foi denominado de migração da costura. Evidencia-se o funcionamento dos mecanismos de atração dessa força de trabalho transnacional, situados na dinâmica urbana da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Trata-se de perspectiva que retira os aspectos nacionais e étnicos para explicar o fluxo migratório que se insere na cidade através do trabalho na indústria de confecções. A hipótese defendida é que foi estabelecida uma afinidade eletiva entre as transformações ocorridas no setor, a partir da reestruturação produtiva, e o modo pelo qual se estrutura a migração transnacional circulante assentada no que se denominou de dispositivo oficina de costura. Esse dispositivo oferece as condições para a realização do projeto migratório: deslocamento, qualificação, trabalho, moradia e alimentação. O segundo objetivo repousa na compreensão das relações entre o dispositivo oficina de costura e a ideia de trabalho escravo. A proposta é rastrear o início do debate sobre o trabalho escravo da modalidade rural à urbana, tendo como referência os migrantes da costura e identificar tratados, marcos e leis nacionais e internacionais que incidem sobre essas populações. Em seguida, evidenciam-se algumas representações de migrantes sobre a temática. O último ponto propõe uma abordagem sobre o trabalho escravo a partir do caso da fiscalização da grife espanhola Zara. São examinadas as transformações da atuação dos agentes estatais no combate ao trabalho escravo: da repressão e criminalização à gestão do fluxo e da inserção dos migrantes na cidade, que ocorre a partir da mobilização de ONGs e de grandes empresas. Trata-se de compreender o trabalho escravo como aglutinador de uma série de políticas de inclusão, referidas no mercado, que buscam organizar esse mercado de trabalho, além de gerir o fluxo migratório. Abordam-se os limites e contradições dessas ações. A metodologia utilizada foi predominantemente qualitativa, baseada em pesquisa de campo, análise documental e entrevistas semiestruturadas. / This research has three main objectives. The first is to understand the garment workers migration. It analyzes the functioning of the sector that attracts this transnational workforce, located in the urban dynamic of Metropolitan Area of São Paulo. Our approach denies national and ethnic aspects to explain the migration flow that enters the city through the work in the garment industry. The hypothesis is that it was established an elective affinity between the changes in this industry, since the restructuring process, and the way in which is structured the transnational circulating migration, settled in what was called as the garment workshop dispositif. This dispositif provides the conditions for the realization of the migratory project: mobility, qualification, work, housing and nourishment. The second aim lies in understanding the relationship of the garment workshop dispositif with the idea of slave labour. The debate on slave labour is tracked from the rural to the urban mode, with reference to the garment workers migration. It is showed the treaties, national and international laws that concern these migrants. Then, some representations of these migrants about this subject are evidenced. The last aim shifts the understanding of slave labour. We put forward the Zara case, an inspection that identified slave labour in Zara´s chain production. We examine the transformations of the performance of state agents in the fight against slave labour: from repression and criminalization to the government of the flow and the incorporation of migrants with the mobilization of the large companies and NGOs. Slave labour is understood as agglutinating the various politics of inclusion, referred on the market, which seek to organize this labour market and govern the migration flow. This research seeks to highlight the limits and contradictions of these actions. The methodology used was largely qualitative, based on field research, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews.

This thesis analyzes class experiences of workers under flexible and precarious conditions of global neoliberal capitalism and tries to answer to what extent these conditions erode their capacities to develop antagonistic class consciousness and collective struggles. Specifically, based on a fieldwork consisting of semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 workers living in slums of Istanbul, it deals with cultural analysis of working and daily-life experiences of workers involved in the global production of garments. Three categories of analysis are used: experiences of shame, time and necessity, which respectively suggest that, under conditions of precarity and flexibility, the workers, 1. perceive their class positions as personal and feel themselves inadequate, leading to questioning of self-worth, injuries in the self and individual - but not collective - emancipation attempts to escape from the injuring effects of class / 2. have lost not only their control over their present time through extremely long and irregular working hours / but also are ripped of their capacity to plan/organize their future / 3. live under the burden of continuous and persistent concern over necessities, which results in deep-seated sense of deprivation, impoverishment of life experiences, lack of meaning in this life, killing of hopes and consequentially experience of powerlessness. Yet, despite all these alienating experiences, there are also inchoate seeds of revolt and an alternative worldview, which confirms that class struggle exists even &ndash / and indeed (!) &ndash / in most severe conditions of alienation and will be decisive on the emancipatory dialectics of alienation / nonalienation and making / unmaking of class.

This thesis seeks to document the life and work of veteran Durban trade unionist Harriet Bolton, with a particular focus on the years from 1944 to 1974. Harriet Bolton lived and worked through many of the crucial developments in South Africa’s labour history, and her personal history is closely entwined with this broader history. Her recorded memories of her years as a trade unionist offer a unique ‘way in’ to revisiting South Africa’s labour history and particularly the critical period of Durban’s early 1970s. Harriet’s testimony, gathered through a series of interviews, forms a core narrative throughout the thesis. However, archive and newspaper material provide detailed contextualisation for the interviews and opportunity to gain some perspective on questions of memory and of Harriet’s own relationship with history. Her recorded memories of these years substantially concern her experience as a trade unionist, but also as a working woman who was a wife and mother, later a widow as well as an engaged citizen of Durban society through her involvement in community organisations and welfare groups. As such, deeper insight into what it meant to be a working woman of her generation is gained. An important component of the thesis is a consideration of the history and politics of the Garment Workers Industrial Union (Natal) and its workers. The union was founded by Harriet’s husband Jimmy Bolton, and was for forty years closely associated with the name and legacy of the Boltons. I examine Harriet’s leadership of this union in the context of the shifting demographics of the union, and a changed political and economic landscape in South Africa. This thesis is also concerned with the role that the Trade Union Council of South Africa played during the period under consideration. Harriet’s relationship with TUCSA and her experience as a white woman trade unionist organising black trade unions ‘within’ the structures of this organisation provide the historian with a unique perspective on TUCSA’s somewhat under-researched history. Harriet’s role as a trade unionist during the tumultuous and critical period of the early 1970s, and a consideration of her contribution to the emerging non-racial trade union movement, is an important component of the thesis. The years both pre and post the 1973 strike wave are revisited through Harriet’s lens. Insights in to the question of women’s roles and contribution to South Africa’s labour movement are generated through gaining an understanding of Harriet’s perspectives. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009

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