Unmaking the Global Sweatshop: Health and Safety of the World's Garment Workers

300 Pages·2017·2.95 MB·English

by  Rebecca Prentice, Geert De Neve

Unmaking the Global Sweatshop
PennSylvania StUdieS in HUman RiGHtS
Bert B. lockwood, Series editor
a complete list of books in the series
is available from the publisher.
UnmakinG tHe
GloBal SweatSHoP
Health and Safety of
the world’s Garment workers

edited by
Rebecca Prentice and Geert de neve
UniveRSity of PennSylvania PReSS
PHiladelPHia
Copyright © 2017 University of Pennsylvania Press

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used
for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this
book may be reproduced in any form by any means without
written permission from the publisher.

Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104- 4112
www .upenn .edu /pennpress

Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978- 0- 8122- 4939- 2
ContentS
Abbreviations vii
Introduction: Rethinking Garment Workers’ Health and Safety 1
Geert De Neve and Rebecca Prentice
Part I. The Rise and Fall of Labor Standards
1. Sweatshops and the Search for Solutions, Yesterday and Today 29
Jennifer Bair, Mark Anner, and Jeremy Blasi
2. Voluntary Versus Binding Forms of Regulation
in Global Production Networks: Exploring the “Paradoxes
of Partnership” in the European Anti-Sweatshop Movement 57
Florence Palpacuer
3. Sourcing Ethical Fashion for Collegiate Apparel:
“School House” Lessons in Business and Ethics 87
Caitrin Lynch and Ingrid Hagen- Keith
Part II. From Structures to Actors, and Back
4. Capital over Labor: Health and Safety in Export Processing
Zone Garment Production since 1947 123
Patrick Neveling
5. Discourses of Compensation and the Normalization
of Negligence: The Experience of the Tazreen Factory Fire 147
Mahmudul H. Sumon, Nazneen Shifa, and Saydia Gulrukh
vi Contents
6. Garment Sweatshop Regimes, the Laboring Body,
and the Externalization of Social Responsibility over Health
and Safety Provisions 173
Alessandra Mezzadri
Part III. Rethinking Health as Well- Being
at Work and Home
7. Limited Leave? Clinical Provisioning and Healthy Bodies
in Sri Lanka’s Apparel Sector 203
Kanchana N. Ruwanpura
8. Toward Meaningful Health and Safety Measures:
Stigma and the Devaluation of Garment Work
in Sri Lanka’s Global Factories 226
Sandya Hewamanne
9. Beyond Building Safety: An Ethnographic Account of Health
and Well- Being on the Bangladesh Garment Shop Floor 250
Hasan Ashraf
Afterword: Politics After Rana Plaza 275
Dina M. Siddiqi
List of Contributors 283
Index 287
Acknowledgments 291
aBBReviationS
Accord Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh
Alliance Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety
BDT Bangladesh Taka
BGMEA Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association
BKMEA Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association
BLA Bangladesh Labour Act
BOI Board of Investment (Sri Lanka)
CCC Clean Clothes Campaign
CSR Corporate social responsibility
EPD UNIDO’s Export Promotions Division
EPZ Export processing zone
ETI Ethical Trading Initiative
FTZ Free trade zone
GPN Global production network
HR Human resources
ILO International Labour Organization
IndustriALL IndustriALL Global Union
ITGLWF International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers’ Federation
MoLE Ministry of Labour and Employment (Bangladesh)
MSI Multi- stakeholder initiative
MFA Multi- Fibre Arrangement
NAP National Tripartite Plan of Action on Fire Safety and Structural Integ-
rity (Bangladesh)
NCR National Capital Region (India)
NGO Nongovernmental organization
NTUI New Trade Union Initiative (India)
viii abbreviations
OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
PIL Public Interest Litigation
RMG Ready- made garment
SEZ Special economic zone
SEWA Self Employed Women’s Association
TNC Transnational corporation
UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organization
WRC Worker Rights Consortium
WTO World Trade Organization
introduction: Rethinking Garment workers’
Health and Safety
Geert De Neve and Rebecca Prentice
Academic writing, media representations, and consumer activist discus-
sions of labor conditions in the global South almost always center on pay
and the living wage, overtime and working hours, freedom of association,
unfree labor, and, above all, child labor, with Western consumers being
particularly concerned about buying products tainted with the blood and
sweat of children. The health and safety of workers employed in export-
oriented garment industries usually receives scant attention. The Interna-
tional Labour Organization (ILO) does not even consider the right not to
be injured at work a “core” labor right (Spieler 2006). When catastrophic
industrial disasters occur, such as the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza build-
ing in Bangladesh, public outcry sometimes leads to greater scrutiny of the
structural safety of buildings, equipment, and workplaces, but the everyday
health and well- being of garment workers continues to be neglected. This
volume, by contrast, seeks to rethink this perspective by giving visibility to
the health concerns of garment workers across the globe and by placing the
whole spectrum of work- related health and well- being issues at the center
of analysis.1
Health—while sometimes mentioned indirectly as part of assessments of
working conditions and production pressures—has rarely been studied as a
direct entry into garment workers’ lives. And, yet, most of the issues around
working conditions listed above have an immediate effect on workers’ health
and on their well- being more generally. Overtime pressures and the lack of a
living wage, for example, are largely experienced through bodily and embod-
ied processes. They often translate directly into poor physical health or man-
ifest themselves as mental health issues experienced through anxiety, fear,