Rising Powers, Labour Standards and the Governance of Global Production Networks

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

China, India and Brazil are amongst the leading economies on the world stage today. China is known as the 'factory of the world'. Brazil has grown rapidly in recent years with its exports of primary commodities while Indian firms have acquired some of our best known British brands (from Tetley tea to Jaguar and Land Rover cars). The continuing dynamism and resilience of these emerging economies, or Rising Powers, is underlined by their sustained growth rates during the current, and on-going, global recession. These countries are now seen by many as the new engines of global growth. As they continue to flex their economic muscle, China, India and Brazil are challenging existing forms of global economic governance and power. This has important consequences for us in the UK, in our ability to compete in the global economy, and in terms of the welfare and wellbeing of our workers and consumers. This project is interested in understanding whether, and how, these Rising Powers are changing the 'rules of the game' and with what consequences. We focus on one particular set of 'rules' that have become increasingly important to global trade relations over the past two decades - global labour and social standards. Western, and especially British, consumers are increasingly made aware of how the foods they eat, the clothes they wear and the goods they consume are produced, and under what conditions workers produce such goods. For many leading Western brands ensuring that their widely dispersed global suppliers conform to accepted norms on good working conditions, such as the exclusion of child workers, not using forced labour, and providing a safe working environment, is important for protecting the integrity and image of their brands and avoiding consumer boycotts. Meeting such globally recognised labour standards has become an important agenda in the world of global production relations. However, with the growth of leading manufacturing firms from the Rising Powers and the rapid expansion of middle class consumption within these economies there is a persistent fear that there will be a 'race to the bottom', marked in particular by declining global labour standards and diminishing concerns with working conditions in global production. We intend to examine this. Our hunch is that rather than a race to the bottom, we are likely to observe a new era of more differentiated labour and social standards as the Rising Powers take an increasingly more active role in the global economy. This will have consequences not only for Rising Power states, workers and consumers, but also for us in the UK and OECD economies.We aim to study this through research undertaken in Brazil, China, India, the UK and the EU. We focus our attention on a range of actors. First, we will study the ways in which large firms (including the new multinationals) as well as small and medium enterprises from the Rising Powers engage with, and shape, labour and social standards in their systems of globalised production arrangements. Second, we will investigate how civil society bodies in these countries affect this process and if and how they shape local attitudes and norms on working conditions. Third, we will examine the ways in which governments in the Rising Powers define and implement labour standards within the domestic economy as well as how they interact in leading global institutions where many such international standards are formulated. Fourth, we will identify what these developments imply for the ways in which globalised production arrangements will most likely be organised in the future and how subsequent generations of global labour and social standards are likely to be shaped. Finally, we will consider what the implications are of the dynamism of the Rising Powers, and the ways in which they interact with global labour and social standards, for other developing countries, and in particular for us in the UK and for the competitiveness of UK and EU firms.