Key Feminist Concerns Regarding Core Labour Standards

Decent Work and Corporation Social Responsibility

The Karat Coalition through its membership of WIDE presents this new report. This publication provides a feminist analysis of workers´ rights issues in respect of core labor standards, the decent work paradigm and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in relation to trade policy, especially that of the European Union (EU).







Available HERE.

Who pays for our clothing from Lidl and Kik?

Labour force at a discount price. A good deal for all?

Globalisation and discounting are closely related. About 90 percent of our clothing is produced in Asia, Central America, Eastern Europe and several countries in Africa. The majority of retailing companies, such as also the discounters Lidl and KiK, buy from these countries. The "Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society" (AMRF) examined the buying practices of discounters and the working conditions in six selected suppliers of Lidl and KiK in Bangladesh. The results - massive violations of labour and human rights - are presented in this brochure.

Available HERE.

The Structural Crisis of Labour Flexibility.

Strategies and Prospects for Transnational Labour Organising in the Garment and Sportswear Industries

The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) was launched over 15 years ago. Much has been achieved in this period with regard to awareness raising, network building and a growing group of transnational corporations that recognise their responsibility for the (substandard) working conditions in facilities they do not directly own. At the same time, everyone active in the field knows that working conditions in the garment and athletic footwear industries have in general not improved. The CCC continues to receive reports of worker's rights violations on an almost daily basis.

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Four major steps companies can take to ensure their products are made under humane conditions

Sweatshop abuses are a systemic problem - there are no companies that are totally clean or totally dirty. Every company that sources globally faces problems that need to be addressed. While there are many steps companies can and should take (and to a certain extent have already taken) to improve workers rights, there are no quick-fix solutions. In this guide the Clean Clothes Campaign offers guidelines on what companies can do to better assess, implement, and verify compliance with labour standards in their supply chains, and eliminate abuses where and when they arise.

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Working conditions in Aldi's suppliers in China and Indonesia: Suggestions for consumer and trade union action.

The largest German and European discounter, Aldi, is selling its clothing bargains at a high price: in its study, the SÜDWIND Institute provides evidence of unprecedented violations of labour laws in Chinese and Indonesian factories which supply Aldi. Almost completely unnoticed in the public domain, discounters have taken over the top positions in Germany's textile and clothing retailing in recent years. Part of the basic concept of discounters is the drastic savings in personnel costs - both in German branches and in supplier factories throughout the world. The 96 page study ends with a number of suggestions for consumer and trade unions action.

Available at: www.suedwind-institut.de/downloads/ALDI-publ_engl_2007-08.pdf

Field research in two Romanian work wear producing companies

The document Implementing the codes of conduct: a real challenge for the Romanian Garment Industry Case Study - field research in 2 Romanian work wear producing companies. This 66 page long paper provides detailed information on the Romanian labour law in relation to the core ILO labour standards, the state of the Romanian garment industry post-MFA, the results of the field research carried out at two workwear factories, and a number of suggestions on how to improve working conditions as well as to improve social dialogue between the different stakeholders.

Available at: http://www.cleanclothes.org/ftp/08-08-26_eng_ROMANIAN_STUDY.pdf

Expectations in relation to Factory Closures and Mass-Dismissals

The aim of this CCC E-Bulletin is to define the issues at stake to prevent closures. Secondly this bulletin looks into the issues at stake when garment factories close or significantly reduce their production and therefore drastically reduce the number of employees. This bulletin also seeks to provide an overview of the existing regulations and agreements regarding closure and workers' rights in the international labour rights context. The emphasis of this bulletin is on the role of the brand name companies and retailers that find themselves at the top of the supply chain.

Available at: http://www.cleanclothes.org/ftp/07-09_CCC_
E-bulletin_Closures_and_Mass_dismissals.pdf

Decent Work: The Cambodian Garment Industry

This report is based on research undertaken with garment workers in 2006. It asks whether or not the development of the garment industry in Cambodia has led to the creation of decent work. It also identifies what measures can be taken to ensure that the industry is not built on undermining labour rights and the principles of decent work - employment creation, equality between men and women, social dialogue, rights at work and social protection. Overall the research found that the emergence of a rapidly developing textile industry over the past decade has provided thousands of poor Cambodian women with much needed work and enabled them to send money back to their families in the countryside. However, although improvements have clearly been made, in many cases the industry is still failing to provide decent work as defined by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and its role in future poverty alleviation is unclear.

The report is available at: http://www.oneworldaction.org/_uploads/documents/Decentwork.pdf

Labor Monitoring In Cambodia's Garment Industry: Lession for Africa

Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative has publised a paper on the advances and setbacks in labor monitoring in Cambodia. It is based on research undertaken in the field, and identifies lessons that can be applied to the garment industry in Africa and other regions. In a broader context, the paper draws attention to development paradigms that can undermine workers' rights, and the recent attempts to
use improved labor standards as a competitive advantage in international trade. The paper highlights the need for greater international collaboration in this area.

Available at: http://www.realizingrights.org/pdf/Labor_Monitoring
_in_the_Garment_Industry_May2007_A_Marston.pdf

Organising Ethical Trade: a UK-US Comparison

This (acadamic) report aims to evaluate the different ways in which ethical trade is approached and organised by leading food and clothing retailers in the UK and USA. It investigates the ways in which corporate approaches to ethical trade have developed in contrasting ways in the UK and USA. Among other things, the paper identifies differences in: the sectors engaged in ethical trade, the models adopted by multi-stakeholder initiatives, the emphasis placed on transparency and legal compliance by stakeholders, and the ways in which new approaches to ethical trade have developed.

Available at:www.cleanclothes.org/ftp/07-ESRCStakeholderReport.pdf

Women Migrant Workers under the Chinese Social Apartheid

This report by Committee for Asian Women (CAW) aims at identifying how the combined results of the one-party state and the capitalist reforms since the 1990's has deeply affected women rural migrant workers, and how these women workers have responded to these changes. The report further identifies seven elements of the repressive regime at the national, municipal and local levels, and argue that the combined results of these elements have given rise to a kind of spatial and social apartheid which systematically discriminates against the rural population, with women being the most oppressed. One of the case studies discusses the Stella struggle.

Available at: http://www.cawinfo.org/pdf/final_10.pdf

Undue influence: corporations gain ground in battle over China's new labor law - but human rights and labor advocates are pushing back

Global Labor Strategies has produced a paper concerning the behind-the-scenes battle that is raging over reforms in China's labour law. U.S.-based and other global corporations have been aggressively lobbying the Chinese government to weaken or abandon significant pro-worker reforms it had proposed in March 2006. In opposition are pro-worker rights forces in China, backed by labour, human rights, and political forces in the U.S. and around the world. Corporate lobbying has already resulted in a weakening of the proposed new law. However, US corporate groups have launched an unpublicised new attack demanding further amendment. The authors see the current focus on the role of global corporations in China as evidence of a "new paradigm" for analysing current forms of globalisation. Increasingly, they argue, the debate is not about free trade versus protectionism, but about the activities of a global "sweatshop lobby", which is deliberately shaping labour law and labour markets around the world.

Available at:
http://www.eldis.org/cf/rdr/rdr.cfm?doc=DOC24154&em=260407&sub=csr

Emergency Assistance, Redress and Prevention in the Hermosa Manufacturing Case

The closure of the Hermosa Manufacturing facility in El Salvador in May 2005 left former Hermosa workers without jobs, without back wages, without severance pay, without health insurance and without employee pensions. Workers have lost their homes, their health, and many - in particular those who had organized a union at the factory - remain unemployed to this day. Based on interviews with FLA Participating Companies, staff and NGO members, other companies that had sourced from the Hermosa factory in El Salvador, and the various international and Salvadoran stakeholders in this case, this Maquila Solidarity Network provides an interesting evaluation and gives good analysis of what happens when campaigning on issues related to severance, closures, blacklisting and a number of other issues that were succesfully highlighted as part of the Hermosa appeal. It provides a good insight into the debates around creating funds, the role of the state vs the role of the brands and different positions from unions vs ngos.

Available at: http://en.maquilasolidarity.org/sites/
maquilasolidarity.org/files/HermosaReportFinal_1.pdf

Available at: http://fashioninganethicalindustry.org/resources/teachingmaterials/

The true cost of cheap clothes at Primark,Asda and Tesco