ABSTRACT

In the face of pressure from civil society, unions and consumers to improve labour standards for the workers producing their goods, companies at the helm of global garment supply chains have made commitments to pay living wages within their supply chains. Harnessing insights from the critical political economy literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR), we investigate the actions of garment companies to meet these commitments. We do so through analysis of original data from a survey of 20 leading garment companies, which we co-developed in 2018–2019, as well as publicly available information for garment companies and relevant multi-stakeholder initiatives. Based on this data, we argue there is very little evidence to suggest companies have made meaningful progress towards achieving commitments to pay living wages in their supply chains, challenging widespread assumptions about CSR’s benefits to workers. We argue that in the face of mounting evidence of CSR ineffectiveness, including our own, there is a need for new political economy research into the benefits that companies derive from CSR commitments that deflect attention from their core business models and the uneven value distribution within global supply chains.

摘要

面对来自民间社会、工会和消费者要求提高生产其产品的工人的劳工标准的压力，全球服装供应链的掌舵公司已承诺在其供应链内支付生活工资。利用来自关于企业社会责任 (CSR) 的关键政治经济学文献的见解，我们调查了服装公司为履行这些承诺而采取的行动。我们通过分析我们在 2018-2019 年共同开发的 20 家领先服装公司调查的原始数据，以及服装公司和相关多利益相关方倡议的公开信息来实现这一目标。根据这些数据，我们认为几乎没有证据表明公司在实现供应链支付生活工资的承诺方面取得了有意义的进展，挑战关于企业社会责任对工人的好处的普遍假设。我们认为，面对越来越多的 CSR 无效证据，包括我们自己的，有必要对公司从 CSR 承诺中获得的好处进行新的政治经济学研究，这些承诺转移了对其核心业务模式的注意力以及全球范围内的价值分配不均。供应链。