Reassembling social defragmented responsibilities: the indecent labour footprint of US multinationals overseas

Ángela García-Alaminos, Mateo Ortiz, Guadalupe Arce and Jorge Zafrilla

Economic Systems Research, 2021, vol. 33, issue 4, 536-554

Abstract: Multinational corporations (MNEs) have been at the forefront of the geographical disintegration of production chains in search of lower salaries, among other reasons, which led to a global race to the bottom in labour standards. Therefore, significant amounts of indecent work are currently embodied in MNEs’ global value chains, compromising not only the brands’ corporative image but also the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. In this work, we shed light on this matter by estimating the indecent-work-conditions related impacts linked to the foreign activities of MNEs from the United States. Using a socially extended MRIO model that integrates three social indicators (forced labour, fatal and nonfatal occupational injuries), we found that these activities show increasing trends between 2009 and 2013 on indecent labour, contributing with 1.1%–1.3% of the global cases. United States affiliates located in India, China and Brazil, show the highest ratios per unit of value-added.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09535314.2020.1827224 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:536-554

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CESR20

DOI: 10.1080/09535314.2020.1827224

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Systems Research is currently edited by Bart Los and Manfred Lenzen

More articles in Economic Systems Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().