Abstract:
The focus of this dissertation is to look at how the garment supply chain is regulated
and monitored by traditional (governments, trade unions, and international
organizations like the ILO and World Trade Organization) and non- traditional actors
like local and global civil society initiatives, international consumer movements like
the Clean Clothes Campaign, self-regulating corporates, audit and monitoring firms,
Global Unions, and Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives. It reflects on how each of these actors
interacts with the others to come up with standards and how effective they are in
implementing these standards.
It attempts to start this process by contextualising from existing literature, the impact
of the global supply chain (GSC) on women workers in factories in Delhi/NCR and
Bangalore. As a result of identifying gaps in research, it narrows down on regulation of
working conditions and occupational safety for women workers as the focus of the
study. It employs a qualitative research methodology based on an interview method to
gather insights from a wide range of actors in the garment sector.
It settles that non-traditional actors have risen in the garment sector in an attempt to
increase engagement with brands and corporates in an environment where state-based
traditional actors were weakened by the force of the GSC. In the process, it recognizes
that such non-conventional actors like MSIs and NGOs have severe limitations not just
in the issues they can take up with brands but also in the extent to which they can impact
a brand’s commercial decisions. In this regard, traditional actors like trade unions and
labour inspectors still had important roles albeit with fewer resources and lesser support
in the current regime.
It recommends a renewed focus on domestic labour legislation and indicates that
brands and governments must make efforts to reimagine the supply chain from a
gendered policy approach with a focus on transparency, disclosure and worker
representation
