Labour, social upgrading and indecent work in global value chains

Kristoffer Marslev and Cornelia Staritz

Chapter 24 in The Elgar Companion to Decent Work and the Sustainable Development Goals, 2025, pp 299-311 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter introduces debates on labour and (in)decent work in global value chains (GVCs). After a survey of prevalent labour issues in GVCs, it discusses the concept of social upgrading, advanced by GVC scholars to bring labour into analytical purview, and some critiques against it. It then provides an overview of the plethora of governance mechanisms - private, social and public - that have emerged to address decent work deficits in GVCs, highlighting research on their (limited) effectiveness. Against this backdrop, the chapter presents a conceptual framework that locates worker outcomes in GVCs at the intersection of two variables: worker power, formed in an interplay with capital and the state, and value capture, reflecting the power asymmetries embodied in GVCs, which set the scope of social gains. Such a framing awards causal primacy to workers’ agency, but acknowledges that the achievement of decent work ultimately requires a redistribution of value along GVCs.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Economics and Finance; Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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