Stitching Governance for Labour Rights??

At the April 2023 Skoll Centre Insights for Action research seminar, ?Professors Marya Hill-Popper Besharov and Juliane Reinecke spoke with Dr Mahreen Khan and Miriam Neale to discuss and celebrate Juliane’s new book Stitching Governance for Labour Rights: Towards Transnational Industrial Democracy? (Reinecke and Donaghey 2023).

Democratic governance of global supply chains: Researched and written during the ten years since the 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, the book explores the development of transnational industrial democracy, which places the representation of garment sector workers at the centre of global supply chain governance.

This was done through the Bangladesh Accord , an independent, agreement between brands and trade unions to work toward a safe and healthy garment and textile industry in Bangladesh. The Accord broke new ground in several ways: it addressed power imbalances by including garment sector workers, unions, and brands at the same table; it was legally binding, ensuring a real accountability mechanism; and it was transparent, releasing auditing reports to the public.

Together, these factors led to a ‘shift change’ in global labour governance, creating a new standard for what global governance initiatives can achieve and showing how they can include the voices of diverse stakeholders.

Organising for change: The Bangladesh Accord mobilised and convened a range of different stakeholders. Two of these key groups were trade unions, who functioned as industry ‘insiders’ holding existing relationships with brands, and campaigning organisations, who acted as agitators, mobilising consumer and broader public outrage following the Rana Plaza disaster. In this case, these two groups complemented each other, with trade unions able to translate public sentiment into legal agreement. As Juliane said:

"We often don’t see this complementarity but here it really made the accord possible through the labour caucus, along with retailers and other actors in the accord… these parties coming together can really create transformative change."

Scale begets scale: This transformative change happened at scale in the ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh. From the outset, the Accord was set up to work at scale, starting with a high-level risk assessment of every factory in Bangladesh. This did two important things: First, it raised awareness of safety issues across the industry – from workers, to mid-level managers, to factory owners. Second, it levelled the playing field commercially, as both factories and suppliers knew their competitors were also engaged in the same process, at the same time. As Miriam explained, this process could have only happened at scale:

"I found it really fascinating as the Accord was growing just how momentum built: scale beget scale, in that the more companies that signed up, the easier it was for other companies to make the decision because it seemed to be a new norm in the industry."

Missed the main event? No problem. You can watch the recording online .

Want to read more? You can buy Juliane’s book (or borrow the Skoll Centre’s copy from The Nest).

Want to join us next time? Join us on 9 June 2023 for a Skoll Centre Insights for Action research seminar on wellness and wellbeing in the social impact sector. Register for the seminar .

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