Women Working in the Shadows: The Informal Economy and Export Processing Zones

A publication providing a description of women’s work in the world economy and the manner by which their rights are systematically violated. Suggests that the ILO Agenda for Decent Work and the recommendations of the UN Development Fund for Women be used as guidelines to ensure womens’ rights in the workplace

Labour and Women’s Rights in the Discount Business: Aldi’s special bargains from China

Based on surveys of 80 workers in the Pearl River Delta region of China, this report uncovers extensive labor violations in factories that supply Aldi, the top German discount retailer. The study is part of an ongoing CCC effort to push retailers to take responsibility for conditions in their garment supply chain. The report also promotes cross-sector initiatives to strengthen the movement towards corporate global accountability

Global Game for Cuffs and Collars: The phase-out of the WTO Agreement on Textiles and Clothing aggravates social divisions

CCC_globalgameforcuffsandcollars.pdf: 219 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Frauenarbeit in Freien Exportzonen: Eine Übersicht

The article gives a review of the existing export processing zones all over the world. The biggest part of the labor force of such zones are young women, who work under bad conditions. Wages are low and usually trade unions are suppressed

Stewards of Virtue? The Ethical Dilemma of CSR in African Agriculture

In recent years companies have responded to increasingly powerful consumer politics by expanding the scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to include ethical trade. This article examines the ethic embedded in and promulgated through ethical trade by use of a case study of African agriculture. Building on recent conceptualizations of globalization, neoliberalism and anthropological analyses of the audit economy, the authors put forward three inter‐related arguments. First, that there is a clear, if largely unacknowledged, ethic that positions ethical trade as an inherently neo‐utilitarian response to the economic and political imperatives of globalization, with important implications for its intended beneficiaries in the South and advocates in the North. Second, that this ethic is at the core of a form of governmentality that advances the project of neoliberalism, not by force but rather through the technologies and embedded norms of voluntary regulation, resulting in a model of governance that is fundamentally constrained by structurally embedded limitations. And third, that attempts to remove these limitations may be less likely to achieve the democratic, empowering outcomes of ethical trade's proponents than to serve the interests of the internationally dispersed ‘stewards of virtue’ that grant ethical trade its legitimacy