A System of Transnational Business Interactions: The Case of the Living Wage

The subject of transnational business governance (TBG) interactions is an emerging field of study. These interactions are complex, involving multiple public and private actors crossing vast geopolitical spaces, with sometimes shared, but often conflicting interests. This complexity makes TBG interactions both an exciting new field of inquiry for scholars, but also an extremely challenging one. In these early days of theory development, it is useful to engage in a mapping exercise that will help scholars identify and test the relationships between the many inputs and outputs of TBG interactions. This new systems framework is demonstrated by reference to the complex story of the \u27living wage\u27 standard in private governance schemes targeting labour practices in global supply chains

The Stubborn Persistence of the Lawyer Exemption in Canadian Collective Bargaining Legislation

In 1948, the Canadian government introduced transformative collective bargaining legislation that would serve as a template for provincial labour law in the postwar period. However, some employees were excluded entirely from this legislation, including employees in five professions, law among them. By the 1970s, the federal government and most provinces had repealed the professional exclusion from the primary collective bargaining legislation. However, four jurisdictions—Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (Exclusionary Provinces)—have stubbornly preserved the exclusion. This essay traces the history and justifications proffered for the lawyer exclusion from Canadian collective bargaining legislation from the 1940s to present day. It examines lawyer collective bargaining in practice and concludes with an assessment of the lawyer exclusion considering recent decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada expanding the scope of section 2(d) freedom of association under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. En 1948, le gouvernement canadien a introduit une loi transformatrice sur la négociation collective qui allait servir de modèle au droit du travail provincial durant la période d’après-guerre. Cependant, certains employés étaient entièrement exclus de cette législation, notamment les employés de cinq professions, dont les avocats. Dans les années 1970, le gouvernement fédéral et la plupart des provinces ont abrogé l’exclusion des professionnels prévue dans la loi initiale sur la négociation collective. Cependant, quatre juridictions—l’Ontario, l’Alberta, la Nouvelle-Écosse et l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard—ont obstinément conservé l’exclusion. Dans le présent article, nous retraçons l’historique et les justifications avancées pour l’exclusion des avocats de la législation canadienne sur la négociation collective, des années 1940 à aujourd’hui. Nous examinons la négociation collective des avocats dans la pratique et concluons par une évaluation de l’exclusion des avocats en tenant compte des décisions récentes de la Cour suprême du Canada qui élargissent la portée de la liberté d’association prévue à l’alinéa 2d) de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés

Who Made That?: Influencing Foreign Labour Practices through Reflexive Domestic Disclosure Regulation

An important tool of decentred regulation, including reflexive law, is corporate information disclosure. Disclosure regulation can have an important normative influence on corporate behaviour because it introduces a risk element that must be managed by corporate leaders. The challenge for regulators is to identify the scope of disclosure that will cause corporate responses of the sort desired by the state. This article considers the potential role of disclosure regulation as a tool for influencing labour practices beyond the borders of the regulating state and, in particular, within the vast global supply chains of multinational corporations. In the context of improving labour practices in developing states, the goal of regulation must be foremost the empowerment of the workers and their organizations in those states, and of the indigenous and emerging global social movements that assist them. The article examines three recent proposals for mandatory disclosure of information about global labour practices, and concludes that the least ambitious of them (disclosure of factory addresses) may contribute to this goal more effectively than broader proposals that seek to inject raw information about actual labour practices into the consumer and investor markets of advanced economic states

In Defense of Transnational Domestic Labor Regulation

Transnational domestic labor regulation (TDLR) is unilateral regulation introduced by a government to influence labor practices in foreign jurisdictions. TDLR has the potential to empower foreign workers and influence the balance of power in foreign industrial relations systems in ways that might lead to improved labor conditions. Particularly interesting is the potential for TDLR to harness or steer private labor regulation--the many non-state sources of labor practice governance already active in shaping labor conditions within global supply chains. However, whether governments should try to influence foreign labor practices at all is a controversial question. This Article explores the arguments both for and against a unilateral legislative strategy that aims to improve working conditions in foreign countries. While the Article ultimately supports this strategy, it concludes that the design of the model must have as its principal objective the empowerment of the foreign workers themselves. TDLR that is poorly designed or loses sight of this objective can produce harmful results that leave the workers even worse off

In Defence of Transnational Domestic Labor Regulations

Transnational domestic labor regulation (TDLR) is unilateral regulation introduced by a national government that is designed to influence labor practices in foreign jurisdictions. Many governments already use a variety of measures to try and influence foreign labor practices. TDLR has the potential to empower foreign workers and influence the balance of power in foreign industrial relations system in ways that might lead to improvements in labor conditions over time. Particularly interesting is the potential for TDLR to harness or steer the many private sources of labor practice governance already active in shaping labor conditions within global supply chains. However, whether governments should be trying to influence foreign labor practices at all is a controversial question. Does such a strategy not amount to unwarranted interference in the sovereign right of the foreign governments to regulate labor conditions within their own borders? Is this not just another form of Northern protectionism designed to undermine the comparative advantage of developing countries? This article explores the arguments both for and against a unilateral legislative strategy that aims to improve working conditions in foreign countries. While, ultimately, the author is supportive of the strategy, he concludes that the design of the model must incorporate the legitimate warnings in many of the criticisms of the strategy

Can Factory List Disclosure Improve Labor Practices in the Apparel Industry? A Case Study of Nike and Levi-Strauss

How would multinational apparel companies and retailers react to a requirement to disclose the identity and address of the factories in their global supply chain? Could disclosure regulation of this sort cause management changes that could lead to improved labor practices in those factories? Disclosure regulation is a common tool in the arsenal of so-called decentered regulatory strategies, which emphasize ways that law can be used to guide and influence the private development of behavioral norms that are consistent with the state\u27s policy objectives. The author traces the history of factory disclosure, and theorizes that mandatory factory list disclosure introduces into the management system a new risk vims that companies will seek to manage through systems changes that can ultimately lead to improvements on the factory floors. To explore this theory, the author conducted extensive interviews with senior executives of Nike, Inc. and Levi-Strauss, two companies that recently released their global factory lists voluntarily . The research indicates that these companies prepared extensively for the moment of disclosure by significantly improving and investing in their global labor practices monitoring and inspection systems. Neither company identified any negative business effects from the factory disclosure, but both emphasized that the disclosure had facilitated greater collaboration within the industry emphasizing shared strategies to improve supply chain labor practices. These outcomes are potentially useful in the straggle to improve labor practices. Therefore, the author proposes factory list disclosure regulation as an attainable and relatively subtle use of law that might nevertheless contribute in meaningful ways to the challenge of improving working conditions around the world

Who Made That?: Influencing Foreign Labour Practices through Reflexive Domestic Disclosure Regulation

An important tool of decentred regulation, including reflexive law, is corporate information disclosure. Disclosure regulation can have an important normative influence on corporate behaviour because it introduces a risk element that must be managed by corporate leaders. The challenge for regulators is to identify the scope of disclosure that will cause corporate responses of the sort desired by the state. This article considers the potential role of disclosure regulation as a tool for influencing labour practices beyond the borders of the regulating state and, in particular, within the vast global supply chains of multinational corporations. In the context of improving labour practices in developing states, the goal of regulation must be foremost the empowerment of the workers and their organizations in those states, and of the indigenous and emerging global social movements that assist them. The article examines three recent proposals for mandatory disclosure of information about global labour practices, and concludes that the least ambitious of them (disclosure of factory addresses) may contribute to this goal more effectively than broader proposals that seek to inject raw information about actual labour practices into the consumer and investor markets of advanced economic states

A System of Transnational Business Interactions: The Case of the Living Wage

The subject of transnational business governance (TBG) interactions is an emerging field of study. These interactions are complex, involving multiple public and private actors crossing vast geopolitical spaces, with sometimes shared, but often conflicting interests. This complexity makes TBG interactions both an exciting new field of inquiry for scholars, but also an extremely challenging one. In these early days of theory development, it is useful to engage in a mapping exercise that will help scholars identify and test the relationships between the many inputs and outputs of TBG interactions. This paper contributes to this exercise by proposing and developing a systems framework for analyzing TBG interactions. This new systems framework is demonstrated by reference to the complex story of the ‘living wage’ standard in private governance schemes targeting labour practices in global supply chains

A Model of Responsive Workplace Law

The North American model of workplace law is broken, characterized by declining frequency of collective bargaining, high levels of non-compliance with employment regulation, and political deadlock. This paper explores whether the theory of “decentred regulation” offers useful insights into the challenge of improving compliance with employment standards laws. It argues that the dominant political perspective on workplace regulation today is managerialist. Politicians with a managerialist orientation reject both the pluralist idea that collective bargaining is always preferred and the neoclassical view that it never is. Managerialists accept a role for employment regulation and unions, particularly in dealing with recalcitrant employers who mistreat their employees. The fact that managerialists and pluralists agree on this latter point creates a space for potential movement on workplace law reform. A law that encourages “high road” employment practices, while fast-tracking access to collective bargaining for “low road” employers could encourage greater compliance with employment regulation, while also facilitating collective bargaining at high-risk workplaces. This article examines lessons from scholarship on decentred regulation for the design of a legal model capable of achieving these results. In particular, it develops and assesses a dual regulatory stream model that restricts existing rights of employers to resist their employees’ efforts to unionize once they have been found in violation of targeted employment regulation