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Labor History

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Labor control regimes and worker resistance in global supply chains

Mark Anner

To cite this article: Mark Anner (2015) Labor control regimes and worker resistance in global supply chains, Labor History, 56:3, 292-307, DOI: 10.1080/0023656X.2015.1042771

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1042771

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Labor control regimes and worker resistance in global supply chains

Mark Anner*

School of Labor and Employment Relations, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA

(Received 2 March 2015; accepted 6 April 2015)

Thisarticle seeks to examine two inter-related dynamics, the relationship between the international dispersion of apparel production and labor control regimes, and the relationship between labor control regimes and patterns of worker resistance. The article argues that where apparel production has concentrated in the last decade has as much to do with labor control regimes as with wages and other economic factors. It suggests that there are three main labor control regimes in the sector: state control, market despotism, and employer repression. The article then argues that these systems of labor control are conducive to three patterns of worker resistance: wildcat strikes, international accords, and cross-border campaigns. The article explores these arguments by examining examples of apparel global supply chains in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Honduras.

Keywords: apparel; strikes; resistance; Honduras; Vietnam; Bangladesh

Introduction

Proponents of a race-to-the-bottom argument would suggest that production goes where

wages are lowest, but that argument cannot explain why China continues to dominate

apparel production while its wages are four times higher than in Bangladesh. At the same

time, those who suggest that production goes where logistics are the most efficient and

economies of scale are the greatest (as in China) cannot explain why Vietnam is one of the

fastest growing major apparel exporters in the world, or why Honduras is the largest Latin

American exporter.

Buyers in apparel global value chains want not only to keep costs low, but also to

reduce the likelihood of supply chain disruption caused by worker organization and

mobilization. Indeed, what this article will show is that the 10 top apparel exporters in the

world today reflect three models of labor control. These include state labor control

regimes, market labor control regimes, and employer labor control regimes.

In the case of state labor control regimes, labor is controlled by a system of legal and

extra-legal mechanisms designed to prevent or curtail independent worker organization

and collective action. Extreme examples of such regimes include China and Vietnam,

which I label as authoritarian state labor control regimes. In market labor control regimes,

unfavorable labor market conditions discipline labor; strong worker organizing is curtailed

because workers are afraid that active participation in a union may result in job loss and

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

*Email: [email protected]

Labor History, 2015

Vol. 56, No. 3, 292–307, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2015.1042771

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prolonged unemployment or underemployment. Low-income countries with very weak

labor markets, such as Bangladesh and Indonesia, exemplify despotic versions of market

labor control regimes. Finally, employer labor control regimes in their most extreme form

include highly repressive employer actions against workers, including the use of violence

or the threat of the use of violence. Examples of such repressive employer labor control

regimes can be seen in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia. 1

These three general forms of control are not mutually exclusive or static; all

countries have had elements of each system and all countries go through changes over

the course of their histories. Bangladesh is a market labor control regime, but workers in

Bangladesh also have been killed while organizing collective action. And in Vietnam,

control is mainly exercised through an authoritarian state, but the fear of unemployment

also looms large and serves to increase worker discipline. In sum, these are typologies

of labor control regimes that illustrate dominant, not exclusive or static, models of

control. They should be seen as a heuristic tool used to elucidate the relationships

between ideal-typical labor control regimes, which are present to various degrees in

all cases. 2

This article makes a second claim, that the three models of labor control outlined above

in their more extreme manifestations have engendered three patterns of worker resistance:

wildcat strikes, international accords, and cross-border organizing. That is, how workers

protest is partially shaped by how they are controlled. Workers with extremely weak labor

market power will have limited effectiveness in attempting to organize and protest at firm

level since they can be easily replaced, just as workers facing repressive employers and a

complicit state will be disinclined to believe that they can resolve their demands locally.

Workers in an authoritarian regime who may face imprisonment for developing ties

with outside interests will be reluctant to pursue cross-border campaigns or international

accords to address their grievances. Rather, wildcat strikes are often prevalent in such

regimes, because workers need to circumvent official unions, and labor internationalism it

not an option. That is, since only one official union center is allowed to operate and since

that state-sanctioned center does not effectively represent workers’ interests, workers are

forced to take matters into their own hands by organizing unauthorized strikes. 3 Yet, as we

shall see, they need to do so very carefully, notably by protecting the identities of their

leaders.

International accords build on global framework agreements (GFAs), 4 but they go a

step further in that they hold the lead firms in global value chains partly responsible for the

cost of decent working conditions through binding agreements. The most recognized

example of such an accord can be seen in Bangladesh, which, not coincidently, is one of

the more extreme examples of a market labor control regime. Such an accord was pursued

in Bangladesh because labor market conditions were so unfavorable to labor that it was

necessary to address local market conditions by going outside the national state and using

international pressure.

Finally, cross-border organizing campaigns have emerged in repressive employer

labor control regimes, because the threat of bodily harm by employers gives local activists

a means by which to frame their concerns through international campaigns that generate

maximum impact. 5 Honduras exemplifies a case of a repressive employer labor control

regime, because it is the most violent country in the world and employers have used

violence or the threat of violence to control labor. Not coincidentally, Honduras has one of

the most vibrant traditions of effective cross-border organizing campaigns.

Labor History 293

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See Table 1 for a summary of labor control regime types, patterns of resistance, and

country-case illustrations.

Labor control and worker resistance in global supply chains

Traditional theories of labor control – often referred to as labor process theory – begin on

the factory floor. This is where Harry Braverman observed myriad forms of control, most

often linked to de-skilling. 6 Michael Burawoy observed how employers build consent

among workers by, for example, encouraging them to produce more by competing with

one another. In so doing, employers “manufactured consent” by having workers buy into

the system. 7 In the decades that followed, a rich stream of scholarship examined hidden

and informal mechanisms of hegemonic control, consent, and resistance within capital–

labor relationships. 8

This article builds on this tradition by linking domestic patterns of control with the

international dynamics of supply chains. In the context of global competitiveness pressure,

it explores patterns of labor control at the workplace, labor market, and state levels. The

formation of national states, for example, has been notoriously tied to patterns of labor

control, with the state’s use of its security forces to control labor unrest. Communist states

offer an extreme example of labor incorporation and control. In their study of trade unions

in communist countries, Alex Pravda and Blair Ruble observe how such systems adhered

to the Leninist model of dual functioning unions through which unions are subordinate to

the state and must work to defend the socialist system by encouraging labor productivity –

the productivity function. At the same time, unions should protect workers against any

potentially harsh treatment by management – the labor protection function. 9 Over time, in

many socialist countries the productivity function was emphasized over the protection

function, and control over unions shifted from the state to the party. 10

Market labor control regimes are in many ways the opposite of state labor control

regimes in that they often occur in weak states, especially in terms of labor regulation and

enforcement capability. Workers have less bargaining power during economic downturns

as high unemployment forces them to accept poor working conditions and makes them

cautious about organizing labor unions for fear that they might easily be replaced.

Webster, Lambert, and Bezuidenhout find that growing labor market flexibility has led to

“market despotism,” which is a return of an “old” form of control through coercive market

power “where the whip of the market was used to discipline workers.” 11

Any labor market dynamic that increases workers’ sense of vulnerability – be that an

increase in part-time work, short-term contracts, or outsourced labor – will also increase

labor control. Workers in such contexts are inclined to put up with bad conditions and low

wages rather than risk unemployment and poverty out of fear that, should they speak up,

they may lose their jobs as a result. Indicators of a labor market control regime are low

wages and a high proportion of the workforce that is unemployed or underemployed.

Table 1. Labor control regimes, resistance patterns, and country examples.

Regime Pattern of resistance Case studies

Authoritarian state labor control Wildcat strikes Vietnam Despotic market labor control International accords Bangladesh Repressive employer labor control Cross-border organizing Honduras

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Given its low start-up costs and high competitive pressures, the garment industry is

notorious for low wages, outsourcing, and precarious employment practices. Some

countries, however, face far more difficult circumstances than others. Using data on

prevailing and living wages recently compiled by the Worker Rights Consortium, Table 2

shows that Bangladesh has the lowest wage rate in the industry, and that the prevailing

wage covers only 14% of a family’s basic living needs. 12

The final system of labor control is employer workplace repression. As noted above,

most theories of labor control begin with employers and the workplace. This is because it

is precisely at the point of production that capital is most concerned with ensuring worker

discipline in order to realize its gains. As David Harvey observes, hegemonic control never

thoroughly displaced despotic forms of employer control in the global economy. Harvey

argues that much capital is still accumulated by dispossession, that is, through what he

refers to as predation, fraud, and violence. 13 Indeed, in regions of Latin America and Asia,

we are seeing a rise in violence against unionists and worker activists. Colombian

employers have notoriously turned to paramilitary forces to rid themselves of worker

organizers for decades 14 ; and, in El Salvador and Honduras, the two most dangerous

countries in the world, almost every major attempt by workers to form unions since the

early 2000s has entailed the threat of violence against activists. 15

Worker resistance

Systems of labor control are often conducive to worker resistance. Beverly Silver, for

example, argues that, as capital attempts to control labor by moving from one region to

another (the spatial fix), capitalists continually create new working classes that then

challenge capital through waves of protests. 16

Ching Kwan Lee suggests that patterns of

worker resistance are often shaped by the state. In China, she notes, worker resistance fits a

pattern of cellular, or decentralized, activism as a result of decentralized state

bureaucracies and how workers use the law. 17 In my own research, in addition to economic

and state structures, I have found that patterns of resistance are also influenced by labor

union worldviews and workers’ lived experiences. 18

In this article, I explore how the three models of extreme labor control outlined above

are conducive to the three patterns of domestic and transnational worker resistance

outlined above: strikes, international accords, and cross-border campaigns. Strikes have

been a fundamental mechanism through which workers have sought to address their

concerns since the beginning of employment relations. Indeed, whereas scholars such

as James Scott have popularized everyday forms of resistance such as pilfering and

Table 2. Contribution of wages to a family’s basic needs a .

Prevailing wage Wage/Basic needs

Bangladesh $51.67 14% China $214.49 36% Honduras $250.01 47% Indonesia $142.32 22% Mexico $376.27 67% Vietnam $112.09 29%

a WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers.

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absenteeism, 19

Elizabeth Perry rightly contends, “The strike is only one weapon in the

arsenal of workers, but it is an especially efficacious and important one.” 20

The reason

wildcat strikes are the most common form of worker resistance in state labor control

regimes is twofold. First, official unions – because of their ties to the state and the party

and their resulting interest in maintaining “harmonious” employment relations – do not

respond to the needs of workers, especially workers in foreign-owned private enterprises

where unions are especially weak and working conditions notoriously harsh. Second, the

state prevents workers from having strong, direct ties with international advocacy groups.

Thus, on the one hand, the state blocks access to formal national institutional mechanisms

that might address workers’ concerns, and, on the other hand, the state blocks workers’

ability to pursue a Keck and Sikkink “boomerang.” 21

That is, it prevents them from

bringing pressure to bear on the state from the outside via transnational alliances. This

leaves workers one option: to take matters into their own hands via localized collective

actions.

International accords build on GFAs. In an effort to hold lead firms in global supply

chains accountable for employment relations practices and conditions in suppliers,

international trade unions have established GFAs with multinational companies

(MNCs). 22

These agreements reach beyond the enterprise and national state levels to

achieve labor agreements at the transnational level, and, unlike corporate social

responsibility programs, these agreements are negotiated between labor and MNCs. Yet,

the clauses in these agreements can be vague, are not legally binding, and do not address

pricing issues.

A substantive transformation took place when labor unions negotiated the Bangladesh

Building and Fire Safety Accord with MNCs in 2013. Through this accord, which I have

labeled with Jennifer Bair and Jeremy Blasi as a Buyer Responsibility Agreement, lead

firms (the buyers in global supply chains) are held jointly liable for conditions in their

supply chain and partly responsible for the costs of producing their products under decent

working conditions. 23

The accord focuses on safe buildings in Bangladesh, but its

framework could easily be expanded to cover other issues and more countries.

It is not coincidental that such an accord has been designed to address issues in

Bangladesh, with its despotic market labor control regime. No doubt, the dramatic

building collapse at Rana Plaza motivated the accord, but this event itself did not dictate

the outcome, a major international agreement in which northern MNCs (mostly European)

agreed to increase the price they pay for the production of their product in order to ensure

safe buildings. The reason that worker activists and their allies pursued a transnational

accord of this nature is because domestic market conditions have made labor so weak that

a more traditional domestic approach would only have reflected this weakness and thus

done little to address the problems faced by workers. Hence, transnational leverage in the

form of a binding agreement was a logical choice for worker activists in this context.

The third pattern of worker resistance, cross-border organizing campaigns, builds on a

long and complex history of labor internationalism that goes back 200 years. As Lewis

Lorwin documents, centuries of labor internationalism were shaped by mass worker

migration, competitive world markets, wars, and socialist ideals on the emancipation of

labor. 24 And, as Roland Erne finds, although labor movements have been primarily tied to

their nation state through neocorporatist social pacts and nationalist worldviews, the

pressures created by the most recent era of economic globalization have also pushed them

to build ties across borders. 25

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The more complex questions are when will labor pursue internationalism and, if it does

occur, what form will it take? Building on the transnational advocacy and global supply

chain literatures, I have argued that labor is more likely to pursue transnational solidarity

when blocked from resolving its demands through domestic structures and when labor

movements are influenced by class-based ideologies. 26

What I also suggest here is that

extreme forms of employer labor control regimes that involve violence or the threat of

violence provide labor movements with a mechanism to frame their issue that is

particularly conducive to effective cross-border campaigns.

Labor control regimes and apparel global supply chain restructuring

Current patterns of labor control regimes in the apparel sector are largely a consequence of

the recent hyper-competitiveness dynamics fomented by restructuring and changing trade

rules. In 2001, the World Trade Organization (WTO) admitted China as a member.

China’s position was enhanced when WTO member states negotiated the Agreement on

Textiles and Clothing that, on 1 January 2005, phased out the system of quota-based trade

in apparel. By 2003, China passed Mexico as the largest exporter to the USA and became

the largest apparel exporter to the world. Asian competitiveness increased further with the

USA–Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement of 2001. Like China, Vietnam offered labor

control through state-controlled unions, but with much lower wages.

An additional factor shaping competitiveness dynamics in the apparel sector is brand

and especially retailer concentration relative to suppliers. Since start-up costs in apparel

are relatively low, apparel production has been greatly dispersed to a very large number of

factories in developing countries. By 2006, there were a total of 3500 export processing

zones, each with many independent factories within them, employing 66 million workers

in 130 countries. 27

At the same time that production dispersed, retailers greatly

concentrated their power through advances in logistics and technology. 28 The result was a

dramatic increase in value chain monopsony (power consolidation of lead firms relative to

downstream suppliers), exemplified by the enormous number of small apparel producers

who are forced to compete with one another for contracts with a limited number of

retailers and manufacturers. In such a context, the retailers and other buyers largely dictate

the price they will pay per garment. 29

These macro-level political and structural changes have had two dominant effects on

workplace dynamics. First, the ability of lead (upstream) firms to set the price paid to

smaller production contractors has generated persistently low wages. Second, the push for

lead firms to demand just-in-time inventory has generated a work-intensity crisis in

workplaces. The real dollar price per square meter of apparel entering the US market

declined by 46.20% between 1989 and 2011. 30

This suggests that apparel suppliers are

indeed producing under increasingly tight economic margins as competitiveness at the

supplier level intensifies.

One of the most direct impacts of the shift to shorter lead times, more styles, and more

volatile orders is in the area of working hours. Forced, excessive, and inadequately

compensated overtime is an endemic problem in the global apparel industry. Because each

new worker hired incurs training costs and fixed benefit costs for employers, many firms

prefer to maintain a smaller workforce and demand that these employees work excessive

hours during periods of peak demand. In effect, just-in-time inventory practices have

meant that upstream lead firms are increasingly able to shift the risks associated with

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volatile product demand onto their suppliers, and the suppliers in turn shift the burden onto

their workers.

The result of this heightened competiveness and the resulting pricing and sourcing

dynamics is that all major apparel exporting countries now fit into at least one of the three

models of extreme labor control regimes outlined above. A graph of apparel exports to the

USA over the last 20 years displays the largest apparel exporters to the USA. The first two

countries on the list are China and Vietnam, which have authoritarian state labor control

regimes. Indeed, approximately half of all apparel imported into the USA comes from

these two countries. The third and fourth largest apparel exporters to the USA are

Bangladesh and Indonesia, despotic market labor control regimes. The fifth largest

exporter of apparel to the USA is Honduras, which has a repressive employer labor control

regime. Honduras is also the largest apparel exporter to the USA from Latin America,

having surpassed in recent years previous apparel powerhouses in the region, notably

Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Indeed, Mexico is noticeable for the dramatic

decline in its apparel exports to the USA. See Figure 1. 31

Certainly, part of these shifting trade dynamics can be explained by costs. Mexico

has one of the highest prevailing wage rates in the apparel sector, and it has not been able

to compete with other countries; notably in 2011, as we can derive from Table 2, the

wage rate in Bangladesh was 14% of that in Mexico. However, a simple race-to-the-

bottom wage argument clearly does not tell the entire story, because the largest share of

apparel is produced in China and wages are much higher in China than in Bangladesh.

Nor does the wage story explain how Honduras came to dominate exports in Latin

America, since its wages are higher than other regional apparel-exporting countries such

as Nicaragua.

Sourcing decisions are no doubt the result of several factors, including production

scale, logistical capabilities, infrastructure, and so forth; but these traditional sourcing

arguments do not tell the entire story either. This is because, in addition to keeping costs

down, investors want to limit the potential for disruption to their value chain operations

that strong, active unions may cause. In addition to production costs and infrastructural

advantages, all major apparel-exporting countries offer investors some form of labor

control.

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Figure 1. Main apparel exporters to the USA (millions sq. meters). Source: OTEXA.

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In the section that follows, I explore each of the three cases of labor control and worker

resistance through three case studies: authoritarian state labor control and wildcat strikes

in Vietnam, despotic market labor control and international accords in Bangladesh, and

repressive employer labor control and cross-border organizing campaigns in Honduras.

Authoritarian state labor control and wildcat strikes: Vietnam

By 2011, the apparel sector in Vietnam employed two million workers, making it the

largest source of formal sector employment in the country. 32

Apparel production in

Vietnam has remained mostly in the low-end, Cut-Make-Trim segment. 33

Wages have

failed to keep pace with the inflation rate and, as shown in Table 2, cover only 29% of

workers’ basic living needs. Other problems in the sector include chronic overtime,

abusive managers, and poor food quality in workplace cafeterias. 34

Workers’ ability to respond to these concerns, however, is limited by the state labor

control regime. The Communist Party’s control over trade unions is firmly established in

law and practice. The labor law states, “Trade unions are . . . an integral part of the

political system of the Vietnamese society under the leadership of the Communist Party of

Vietnam.” Article 4.6 of the revised labor law states that the purpose of the labor law is, “to

develop harmonious, stable and advanced labour relations.” The law also allows for only

one national labor center, the Vietnamese General Confederation of Labor, to which the

Communist Party appoints national leaders. Strikes are legal in Vietnam. However, they

must be organized or approved by the official unions. And trade unions, following the

dictates of the Communist Party and its desire for social control and labor peace, do not

organize strikes. The regime tolerates isolated enterprise-level strikes that focus on

economic demands and grievances, but there is no tolerance for coordinated strikes, strikes

that involve any form of violence, or strikes with political demands. The leaders of such

actions could be arrested and face lengthy prison terms. 35

In this context of state labor control via party-controlled labor unions, Vietnam has

experienced one of its greatest wildcat strike waves in its contemporary history. From

fewer than 100 strikes per year in the 1990s, in 2006 there were 387 strikes, and in 2011

the country experienced 978 strikes. Strikes focus on common worker issues, such as

wages and benefits. Workers will also strike over bad cafeteria food and an abusive

supervisor. Notably, strikes tend to be short – on average three days long – and

remarkably successful. In 95% of the 97 strikes that I studied, workers achieved at least

one of their demands. 36

Since workers are afraid to identify themselves as strike leaders,

employers are often forced to discuss strike demands with large groups of workers, often

determining how to respond to strike demands by the level of applause given by the

workers when issues are mentioned. 37

This form of worker action can be understood in terms not only of the harsh conditions

and low wages, but also of the nature of the labor control regime. They are worker-led

strikes because official unions do not organize strikes. They are isolated to one factory

because isolated strikes are tolerated by the state whereas coordinated strike activity is not.

And they are perceived as largely leaderless strikes because an outspoken leader would be

perceived as a troublemaker and could face imprisonment.

The short lead times given to suppliers by buyers are also a source of worker power

that is leveraged by wildcat strikers. As Howard Kimeldorf argues, time-sensitive tasks

give workers a source of disruptive power. 38

In the apparel sector, the need for urgent

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orders to meet retailer needs in a lean retailing system of constantly changing fashions and

seasons means a short strike can put a lot of pressure on employers to get workers back on

the production lines quickly. Indeed, my field research in Vietnam suggests that brands

and retailers may even communicate with contractors experiencing a strike to demand that

they resolve it quickly in order to get the order out on time. This is another reason why

wildcat strikes in Vietnam have such a high success rate.

The question that remains is what wildcat strikes leave in their wake. Although they

are remarkably successful, they are also short actions that lead to quick fixes. The result is

that the problems repeat themselves, and workers have to make the effort to strike again

and again to meet basic demands. More sustained solutions would necessarily involve

transforming the system of state labor control. Here, the impact of the current strike wave

is more limited, but it is not insignificant. Indeed, a strike wave in the early 1990s

contributed to a National Assembly decision to legalize strikes in 1994. 39 The strike wave

of 2005–2006 led to a significant increase in national minimum wages. 40

Most recently,

striking workers helped to motivate the National Assembly to adopt the Dialogue in the

Workplace chapter in the revised Labor Code, which went into effect on 1 May 2013. 41

The revised law requires the election of worker representatives and worker–management

meetings once every three months to discuss production, implementation of collective

bargaining agreements, working conditions, and other issues requested by worker

representatives. 42

Despotic market labor control and international accords: Bangladesh

Bangladesh provides an extreme example of a market labor control regime. With a

population of 155 million and a labor force of over 76 million, some 32% of workers are

underemployed, 31.5% of the population lives in poverty, and the annual per capita Gross

National Income stands at $840. 43

With an average monthly wage rate of $52 in 2011,

Bangladesh has long had the reputation for paying the lowest wages among major

producers in the industry. And, as shown in Table 2, these wages cover only 14% of basic

living needs. 44

Outsourcing, part-time work, temporary employment, and informality all

contribute to workers’ sense of extreme vulnerability characteristic of a despotic market

labor control regime.

Labor market vulnerability has also contributed to a very fragmented labor movement.

This has greatly curtailed labor’s ability to organize and demand greater social protection

as part of a countermovement as might have been anticipated by Karl Polanyi. 45

Countermovements, however, often presuppose a certain degree of structural power to be

effective. Apparel workers lacking labor market power also lack the power to demand

more effective state protection. The result in Bangladesh has been a weak and corrupt

labor inspectorate and poor social protection. Workers cannot expect a solution to their

most pressing concerns from the state.

The hyper competitiveness of the global apparel industry contributes to a system that

seeks to save on costs not only through low wages, but also through low building rents.

This is because, after wages, rents are one of the major costs of doing business in the

apparel industry. The push to keep rents to their lowest possible level has resulted in

extremely unsafe buildings. This was brutally illustrated on 24 April 2013, when

Bangladeshi apparel workers were victims of the worst industrial disaster in the history of

the industry. An eight-story building with five garment factories, Rana Plaza, collapsed

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and killed over 1100 workers; and the Rana Plaza disaster was not the only one of its kind.

Since 2005, there have been 11 major factory disasters in the industry, which took the lives

of 1728 workers.

The tragedies were especially horrific because in many cases employers had been

informed that their buildings were unsafe but, in order to meet the tight lead times imposed

on them by buyers, they refused to stop production. For example, the day before its

collapse, Rana Plaza was inspected and deemed unsafe by a government official. The

bottom floor of the building was occupied by a bank, which immediately instructed all its

workers to leave. The upper floors were occupied by garment factories. In those cases, the

factories were attempting to meet the production deadlines imposed by the brands and

retailers. They were afraid that not only would they not be paid should they miss their

deadlines, but also that the powerful lead firms might subsequently be disinclined to renew

their orders. This illustrates how dynamics upstream in value chains impact working

conditions. That is, the despotic market control regime is the result not only of domestic

labor market conditions, but also of the exigencies of global value chain pricing and

sourcing practices.

What is also important about the Rana Plaza incident is the labor response that followed.

Workers protested to demand better state protections, and the international labor movement

and labor NGOs immediately began pressuring lead firms to accept greater responsibility

for the safety conditions under which their clothing was produced. The idea for a building

and fire safety accord had already been pursued by international labor NGOs. When Rana

Plaza happened, European firms quickly responded to labor pressure and public outrage and

signed up to what became the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.

The accord is a significant improvement on a generation of GFAs. Like GFAs, the

accord was negotiated with labor unions, and thus it is a step up from traditional corporate

codes of conduct, which are either unilateral or the result of partnerships with NGOs but

not labor. Where the accord differs from other initiatives is that it is legally binding and

includes a pricing clause. The brands and retailers that signed the accord are committed to

paying contract prices that would allow contractors to produce in safe buildings.

Some observers consider the accord as a top-down solution. Yet, it is important to note

that Bangladesh has experienced a considerable wave of labor protests, and in this regard it

has something in common with Vietnam’s strike wave. However, the vast majority of

factories are not unionized, and, in the few unionized factories that do exist, the unions are

relatively weak and fragmented. Hence, the wave of protest was weaker relative to

Vietnam because market despotism contributes to weaker domestic bargaining power.

As a result, Bangladeshi workers went beyond the national state, partnered with

international labor unions and NGOs, and sought to address some of their demands with an

outside-in solution.

What is also notable is the role of symbolic power and framing. When Bangladeshi

worker activists pursued labor transnationalism in Bangladesh, images of the human

horror created by the building collapse were used to shame brands and retailers in the

Global North. In sum, international labor and NGO pressure, and worker mobilization,

resulted in changes for workers in the country despite their extremely disadvantageous

market power. Buyers are now committed through a legally binding accord to pay the price

for safe buildings, and the country’s minimum wage was increased by 77% in January

2014. Labor laws were also reformed, although some of the reforms were inadequate and

enforcement remains an issue.

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Repressive employer labor control and cross-border solidarity: Honduras

Honduras, which is registered as the most violent country in the world on the basis of its

annual rate of homicides per capita, represents the use of violence and the climate of

violence for controlling labor. Although Honduras did not experience the extreme death

squad repression of neighboring countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala during the

1980s, state security forces and paramilitary groups did repress labor. 46 Yet, Honduras has

had one of the relatively strongest labor movements in Central America, which can be

traced back to the great banana workers’ strike of the 1950s. 47

Partly as a result of this

legacy, in the 1990s, Honduran unions were organizing far more apparel export plants than

any other country in the region. 48

Unlike Vietnam, there has been a vibrant tradition of

independent unionism in Honduras. And, unlike Bangladesh, the union movement has

been relatively less fragmented. This has provided the foundation for sustained domestic

organizing campaigns.

No doubt, despotic labor market conditions have hurt organizing attempts. Yet, wages

are higher and labor markets somewhat better in Honduras relative to Bangladesh. What

have been more significant in controlling labor are efforts by employers, who have pursued

a range of union avoidance techniques, including the aggressive promotion of company

unions. 49

Anti-union violence also escalated significantly after the 2009 coup d’état that

removed a pro-labor reformer, Manuel Zelaya, from power. It was in the years following

the coup that Honduras became the most violent country in the world. 50

In major

campaigns to organize workers in the apparel sector, union leaders faced death threats. For

example, Norma Mejia, a garment worker who attempted to organize a Russell Athletic

factory, found a note on her sewing machine during the organizing campaign with a stick

figure with its head cut off. 51 When she still refused to stop her organizing efforts, she and

all other union members were fired and the factory was closed.

The threat of violence and other repressive actions are similar to conditions faced by

worker activists in Central America in the 1980s, but the difference is that the violence

during that period was tied to the state, whose leaders saw workers’ organizing as a

political threat to their regimes. In this regard, the 1980s reflected a period of state labor

control. In the 2000s, labor control shifted to the employers, who now fire workers and

then blacklist them, and also at times threaten them. The state creates a permissive

environment through its inaction, as a result of either a lack of capacity or a lack of

willingness to punish the perpetrators of the violence.

The question remains as to what sort of response labor can pursue in such a context.

What we find is that Honduran workers have developed a practice of combining sustained

local organizing with transnational pressure on brands, a pattern of resistance to which I

refer as cross-border organizing campaigns. Like Vietnam, strike actions may be common,

but strikes are used when necessary to complement an organizing drive. They are not the

main mechanism to achieve workers’ goals. And like Bangladesh, there is international

pressure on buyers that often results in signed agreements. Unlike the accord however, the

goal is not to directly influence the price paid for production in order to improve working

conditions, but rather to ensure respect for the right to organize and bargain collectively,

which in turn should improve wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Perhaps the best illustration of such a campaign was the abovementioned campaign

to unionize Russell factories in Honduras. Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times

(18 November 2009) proclaimed this campaign to be one of the more important victories in

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the history of the anti-sweatshop movement. In this case, while maintaining their workplace

organizing drive in Honduras, local unionists reached out to US labor and student activists.

The worker–student alliance made sense because Russell was one of the largest producers

of American collegiate apparel. This gave the students a source of economic leverage that

they could exploit by demanding universities cut their contracts with Russell until such

time as Russell respected internationally recognized workers’ rights.

One particularly effective campaign strategy was to bring Honduran union leaders

from the Russell factory to the USA to speak on university campuses. The campaign

achieved two objectives. First, it personalized and legitimized the workers’ demands.

Many campuses cut or suspended their contracts with Russell days after such speaking

events on their campuses. Second, it ensured that the Honduran unionists were integrally

involved in the campaign. Thus, although the campaign did involve external pressure

on the factories, this was not a top-down solution devoid of significant local worker

participation.

Approximately 100 major US universities terminated their licensing agreement with

Russell on the basis of evidence of anti-union activities in Honduras. And in November

2009, after years of union organizing efforts and an intense one-year transnational

campaign, Russell announced it would re-open the factory and re-hire 1200 workers.

Russell also agreed to recognize the union, begin collective bargaining, and adhere to a

neutrality clause for all of its other seven factories in Honduras. 52

The question that remains for Honduras is the sustainability of this pattern of

resistance. Organizing cross-border campaigns for every apparel factory to obtain a union

is impractical because of the cost and coordination constraints of such efforts. The most

logical response would be to campaign toward better labor laws and stricter enforcement

that would facilitate domestic organizing. This was part of labor’s efforts when it lobbied

around free trade agreements with the USA, such as CAFTA-DR. Yet, the greater

challenge is to work toward modifying the economic dynamics around which the market

liberalization model is based, and that would entail engaging in direct bargaining with lead

firms in supply chains.

Conclusions

This article explored how changing dynamics in the global apparel industry has

engendered three models of labor control: authoritarian state labor control, despotic

market labor control, and repressive employer labor control. It also explored how

variations in labor control regimes shaped variations in forms of worker resistance. In our

cases, the system of state labor control was conducive to worker mobilization from below

in the form of wildcat strikes. The system of market labor control contributed to

international buyer accords that force brands and retailers to pay the price for safe

buildings. Finally, the repressive employer labor control regime resulted in cross-border

organizing campaigns that combined international and domestic labor organizing.

The results were substantial. Not only did Vietnamese garment workers achieve

increased wages, better benefits, and other workplace improvements in 95% of their

strikes, but they also forced the government to reform its labor laws to allow for more

worker participation in workplace governance. In Bangladesh, workers and their

transnational allies forced brands for the first time to accept a legally binding accord that

holds them accountable for safe factories. And, in Honduras, workers and their allies

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forced the country’s largest private sector employer to re-open a factory, re-hire fired

workers, recognize the union, bargain for substantially increased wages, and agree to a

companywide neutrality clause that is allowing workers to expand unionization and

collective bargaining to other Russell-owned facilities in the country.

There are, no doubt, limits to these patterns of resistance. The wages of Bangladeshi

workers remain below subsistence level. Strikes in Vietnam ebb and flow depending on

market conditions and the state’s shifting tolerance for contained protests and its desire to

provide stability to investors. In Honduras, although some unions are growing, so too is the

climate of violence that restrains all but the boldest of workers from protesting. Indeed, the

challenge facing labor is not only to achieve limited protection or economic gains within

the current model of market liberalization, but also to work toward a modification of the

model itself.

Much more research remains to be done, notably on other sectors and other regions of

the world. In many ways, the apparel sector provides for sharper examples because the

industry is extremely competitive and notorious for paying low wages and providing poor

working conditions. This helps to explain the more extreme forms of labor control that

can be found in this sector, but such labor control can be found in other sectors facing

similar conditions, notably agriculture and extractive industries. The brutal conditions

faced by the Marikana miners in South Africa, fomented by a despotic labor market, no

doubt contributed to the contentious strike, which in turned resulted in violent state

repression.

In larger economies, such as the USA, we find more mixed models of labor control

regimes and worker resistance. In higher end sectors such as autos, we can still find

elements of hegemonic control and traditional union organizing, especially in northern,

more unionized, regions of the country; but we also see labor market despotism in low-end

sectors such as the fast food industry with patterns of worker resistance based on disruptive

street protests. For workers based in the largely non-union south of the USA, we see unions

building cross-border solidarity with unions not only in countries such as Germany to help

organize workers, but also in Brazil. US security industry workers have also used the rules

provided by international accords, notably GFAs, to subordinate capital to worker and

union oversight. 53

This article illustrates that patterns of global production are not based solely on costs,

but also on labor control. Labor control regimes will vary depending on local contexts, but

all major apparel exporters subject their workers to one form of control or another.

However, just as labor control regimes vary, so too do patterns of worker resistance.

Workers are finding the appropriate mechanisms to circumvent their particular form of

control; and, in many cases, they are achieving many of their most immediate demands.

More sustained solutions would require re-structuring the economic model that has

engendered these labor control regimes.

Funding

I would like to thank the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State University for the funding that made field research in Central America and Asia possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Notes on contributor

Mark Anner is an Associate Professor of labor and employment relations at The Pennsylvania State University, and he is the Director for the Center for Global Workers’ Rights. His publications include Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (Cornell University Press, 2011).

Notes

1. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent. 2. The author thanks an anonymous reviewer for this point. 3. Of course, wildcat strikes require a certain degree of tolerance on the part of the regime, as

we shall see. Highly repressive authoritarian regimes would arrest anyone attempting a strike.

4. Hammer, “International Framework Agreements.” 5. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 6. Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital. 7. Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent. 8. Thompson and Smith, “Debating Labour Process Theory.” 9. Pravda and Ruble, “Communist Trade Unions.” 10. Ibid. 11. Webster et al., Grounding Globalization, 52. 12. WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers. 13. Harvey, The New Imperialism. 14. Gill, “Right there with you.” 15. Anner, Unholy Alliances; AFL-CIO, Trade, Violence and Migration. http://www.aflcio.org/

Blog/Global-Action/Trade-Violence-and-Migration-The-Broken-Promises-to-Honduran- Workers.

16. Silver, Forces of Labor. 17. Lee, Against the Law. 18. Anner, Solidarity Transformed. 19. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. 20. Perry, Shanghai on Strike, 7. 21. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 22. Hammer, “International Framework Agreements.” 23. Anner et al., “Toward Joint Liability.” 24. Lorwin, Labor and Internationalism. 25. Erne, Europeans Unions; Anner, Solidarity Transformed. 26. Anner, Solidarity Transformed. 27. Milberg and Amengual, Economic Development and Working Conditions. Apparel makes up a

large share, but not all, of export processing zone (EPZ) production. Consumer electronics and other light manufacturing can be also found in EPZs.

28. Abernathy et al., A Stitch in Time. 29. Locke, The Promise and Limits. 30. Anner et al., “Toward Joint Liability.” 31. I have relied on export data to the USA because the US government provides exports in square

meters, which is a more reliable measure of the scale of exports than price since some countries (such as Italy) export relatively less but at a high price; this distorts their true weight in the global apparel industry. However, the patterns depicted here are largely matched on a global scale. According to World Trade Organization data, which measure apparel exports in terms of value not volume, 38% of global apparel exports come from China (43% if we include Hong Kong). Bangladesh is the second largest apparel exporter, followed by Turkey and Vietnam. In general, exports from Latin America are lower to Europe relative to the USA, with Mexico, Honduras, and El Salvador as the top exporters from the region. http://www.wto.org/english/ res_e/statis_e/its2013_e/its13_merch_trade_product_e.htm

32. Better Work Vietnam, Better Work Vietnam.

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33. Gereffi and Frederick, The Global Apparel Value Chain. 34. Anner, “Wildcat Strikes and Social Dialogue.” 35. Human Rights Watch, Not Yet a Workers’ Paradise. 36. Anner, “Wildcat Strikes and Social Dialogue.” 37. Author’s interviews, Ho Chi Minh City, March and April 2014. 38. Kimeldorf, “Worker Replacement Costs and Unionization.” 39. Kerkvliet, “An Approach for Analysing State–Society Relations in Vietnam.” 40. Tran, “The Third Sleeve.” 41. Author’s interviews, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, March and April 2014. 42. Labor Code of Vietnam, Chapter V, Articles 63–65; Decree 60/2013/ND-CP. 43. World Development Indicators, World Bank. http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-

development-indicators 44. WRC, Global Wage Trends for Apparel Workers. 45. Polanyi, The Great Transformation. 46. Acker, Honduras. 47. MacCameron, Bananas, Labor, and Politics. 48. Anner, Solidarity Transformed. 49. Ibid. 50. http://www.unodc.org/ 51. “Warren Buffett Confronted by Factory Worker.” www.youtube.com/watch?v¼JxOYt5vpox8 52. Author’s interviews with labor organizers, San Pedro Sula, July 2009. See also: Hobbs, “Russell

Factory in Honduras”; Russell Athletic, http://www.workersrights.org/linkeddocs/ RussellPublicAnnouncement.pdf

53. McCallum, Global Unions, Local Power.

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