Metal free factories:Straddling worker rights and consumer safety?

AbstractThe Sri Lankan apparel sector positions itself as the “World’s #1 Ethically Sourced Destination”, where it is striving to make the “Made in Sri Lanka” label synonymous with quality and reliability, plus social and environmental accountability. A cornerstone of the sector’s efforts to be ethically compliant involves strict adherence to the stringent health and safety provisions of numerous ethical trading initiatives. An aspect of these health and safety codes is making factories ‘metal-free’, assuring the safe handling and disposal of broken needles, purportedly for the benefit of workers. Using workplace ethnography and engaging with debates on governmentality, this article shows the practical implementation of global governance regimes. Management at supplier factories attempt to bestride worker welfare and consumer rights, which suggests that ethical trade initiatives need to pay adequate attention to the politics of global suppliers placed in an uneven development landscape. Consequently this paper shows how efforts to make factories ‘metal-free’ result in nebulous outcomes because of the divergent health and safety priorities of managers and labour

Scripted performances? Local readings of “global” health and safety standards (the apparel sector in Sri Lanka)

Ensuring a healthy working environment in the apparel sector is advocated by various multi-stakeholder initiatives and retailers because of apparent concerns for the health and welfare of workers. As an ‘ethically sourced’ supplier in the global garment industry, the Sri Lankan industry has by and large taken great efforts to improve the provision of safety and hygiene to enhance worker welfare. The physical provisos and built environments with regard to health and safety issues are superlatively impressive in many Sri Lankan factories. Yet ethnographic fieldwork suggests that upholding this ethical code is messily enforced, with a lower prioritization of worker welfare. Consequently, in promoting ‘global’ health and safety standards, the lack of attention to existing social hierarchies and local context results in an absence of genuine commitment to labour rights – even where working conditions may seem superlatively impressive. Local enforcement of the health and safety code as it transmits across global spaces then can not be separated from inequities embedded in uneven development processe