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