Workplace Bullying and Intensification of Labour Controls in the Clothing Supply Chain: Post-Rana Plaza Disaster

Md Shoaib Ahmed and Shahzad Uddin
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Md Shoaib Ahmed: University of Essex, UK
Shahzad Uddin: University of Essex, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2022, vol. 36, issue 3, 539-556

Abstract: This article examines workplace bullying and the intensification of labour controls in the clothing supply chain. It appears that extreme forms of bullying are deployed to intensify labour controls, including locking workers in, frequent wage cuts, setting moveable targets and carrying out intense observations. The context of this study is surplus value-starved clothing factories in Bangladesh. Global supply chains’ production regimes and the absence of state protections and trade unions enable factory managers to systematically deploy bullying tactics to achieve production targets. Drawing on Burawoy’s works, this article advances the debate of how workplace bullying is impacted by wider structural conditions with managerial strategies of coercion in factories. It is argued here that when the state intervenes in the factory only to protect and preserve capitalists’ interests, explicitly and implicitly, coercive strategies of control turn into extreme bullying on the shopfloor.

Keywords: Bangladesh garment industry; bullying; Burawoy; coercion; labour control; Rana Plaza; supply chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:36:y:2022:i:3:p:539-556

DOI: 10.1177/09500170211038205

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