From Corporate Social Responsibility Towards Working Solution: A Comment By The Former Executive Director of ‘Action, Collaboration, Transformation’ (ACT)

Frank Hoffer ()
Additional contact information
Frank Hoffer: Global Labour University Online Academy

Chapter Chapter 19 in Economic and Social Upgrading in Global Value Chains, 2022, pp 485-501 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Hazardous working conditions, poverty wages and environmental degradation are the dark side of free markets that allow business to externalise social and environmental costs of production at the expense of workers, society and the planet. Workers pay with their health and lives for the underinvestment in safe and healthy workplaces, while communities suffer from polluted air, soil and water. Least developed countries see no choice but to compete for foreign direct investment or domestic subcontracting for export with low taxes, weak labour rights and poor environmental standards. Regulatory, tariff and tax arbitrage is an integrated part of global brands and retailers’ global business strategies. This chapter looks at the systemic deficiencies of individual corporate social responsibility and voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives, and the limited success of global framework agreements between trade unions and transnational companies. The ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) initiative between fashion brands, the global union federation IndustriALL to achieve living wages and the specific conditions of the Bangladesh Accord as the only binding global agreement are discussed as more advanced attempts to address the systemic deficiencies in the global garment industry. The concluding part focuses on the potential of combining state regulation and negotiated solutions as a way forward.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-87320-2_19

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030873202

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87320-2_19

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().