Globalisation

Workers face tremendous challenges in their fight to organise, both in terms of personal risk and the sheer number of obstacles. Overcoming such challenges requires multiple strategies and broad-ranging collaboration. In this article we begin by reviewing the repression workers face. We then look at how voluntary workplace codes might help workers organise. Using the SA8000 standard as an example, we look at some of the elements that could be most useful in organising workers.

The proliferation of corporate codes of conduct generates both alliance and tension between trade unions and NGOs that deal with workers' rights in the global economy. Alliance, because trade unions and NGOs share a common desire to halt abusive behaviour by multinational companies and a broader goal of checking corporate power in the global economy. Tension, because unions and NGOs have differing institutional interests, different analyses of problems and potential solutions, and different ways of thinking and talking about social justice in the global economy.

In the context of globalisation, transnational social regulation is increasingly the product of NGOs intervening in the sphere of global trade. Drawing on empirical research in SE Asia, the author contends that what matters as much as codes of conduct are spillover effects whose force extends beyond building walls into the broader society of the host country.

Full-text sample article FREE from Taylor & Francis. The debate over workplace codes of conduct has created tensions between trade unions and human rights NGOs. These tensions result from the inherent structural differences between interest-driven trade unions and ideals-driven human righst NGOs. The differences play themselves out in how these actors pursue social justice in a globalised economy. Human rights NGOs tend to see codes of conduct as a method to prevent violations, akin to their traditional work on legal reform and human rights monitoring.

Concern about working conditions in a global supply chain has brought unions and NGOs in the North around the same table. Collaborative initiatives include campaigns such as the European-wide Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) and ethical trade forums, like the UK Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI). Relationships have not always been easy. Unions and NGOs have different ways of working, and there have been insensitivities on both sides.

The garment and textile factories and assembly plants in the Central American free trade zones, known as the maquila industry, have given rise to new actors on the labour scene, as women's organisations and local monitoring groups now work alongside the traditional trade union sector. Furthermore, some of these new organisations are linked to networks based elsewhere, mainly in the USA and Europe, and are actively involved in transnational campaigns to improve working conditions in the maquila.

This article describes an action-research project which has the multiple objectives of mapping the range of home-based work in different countries, investigating the ways in which such work is embodied in local or international production chains, and developing a methodology which will facilitate the establishment of sustainable organisations of home-based workers. The article focuses mainly on Latin America and in Eastern Europe, though the project is also active in India and has begun to explore the possibilities of working in China.

Zhuhai was designated a special economic zone (SEZ) as an experimentation point of economic liberalisation. This articles traces the development of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone from a humble village to a significant economic power in southern China, focusing on industry, trade, education, and logistics.

Large companies have accelerated their control of the basic commodities markets in the last decade. The author describes what this means for smallholder farmers in the developing world who depend on these markets for some cash income each year. The consequences of the growing power of distributors (the grocery or supermarket chains) and dominant brand-owners are persistent rural poverty and the ideological and economic devaluation of the sustainable and small-scale agricultural production methods that are so essential to the 70 per cent of the worlds poor who live in rural areas.