This work categorizes and comprehensively analyzes all of the practical aspects of international labour regulation for researchers and students of human resource management (HRM). It offers realistic policy guidelines for non-academic HRM practitioners, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade unions and governments. The book focuses primarily upon the issues, organizations and individuals in the US that influence labour regulation - NAFTA, the US GSP programme, trade unions, activists and "grass roots" movements. Major attention is also given to corresponding European Union and International Labour Organisation issues, organizations and individuals.

The world was shocked in April 2013 when more than 1100 garment workers lost their lives in the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka. It was the worst industrial tragedy in the two-hundred-year history of mass apparel manufacture. This so-called accident was, in fact, just waiting to happen, and not merely because of the corruption and exploitation of workers so common in the garment industry. In Achieving Workers' Rights in the Global Economy, Richard P. Appelbaum and Nelson Lichtenstein argue that such tragic events, as well as the low wages, poor working conditions, and voicelessness endemic to the vast majority of workers who labor in the export industries of the global South arise from the very nature of world trade and production. Given their enormous power to squeeze prices and wages, northern brands and retailers today occupy the commanding heights of global capitalism. Retail-dominated supply chains—such as those with Walmart, Apple, and Nike at their heads—generate at least half of all world trade and include hundreds of millions of workers at thousands of contract manufacturers from Shenzhen and Shanghai to Sao Paulo and San Pedro Sula. This book offers an incisive analysis of this pernicious system along with essays that outline a set of practical guides to its radical reform.

This book is about what it really means when companies claim to be promoting sustainability and fairness in their global operations.

"Globalization and Labor Conditions explains how the three main mechanisms of globalization - trade, international migration, and international capital flows - alter working conditions (particularly wages, work hours, and job safety) and labor rights (freedom of association, nondiscrimination, and the elimination of forced and child labor). An important subtheme is the relative importance of international markets and international regulation in providing improvements in labor conditions around the world. Robert Flanagan draws on analyses from his own database on international labor conditions assembled for this project and research on globalization and labor conditions. The book presents evidence on how conditions changed during late 20th-century globalization, and on how economic growth, international trade, migration, and multinational companies influence labor conditions."--BOOK JACKET.

This book provides a set of proposals for how best to guarantee effective enforcement of labour rights worldwide. The linkage between labour standards and global trade has been recurrent for some 200-years. At a time when the world is struggling to find a way out of crisis and is striving for economic growth, more than ever there is a need for up-to-date research on how to protect and promote labour rights in the global economy. This book explores the history of the fi eld and also provides an overview of emerging trends and opportunities. It discusses the most recent problems including: the effectiveness and the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the second century of its existence, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its potential relevance in the protection of labour rights, the effectiveness of the US and the EU Generalised System of Preferences, the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) instruments on labour rights, and labour provisions in the international trade agreements concluded by the US and the EU. The book argues, inter alia, that trade agreements seem to be a useful tool to help pave the way out of the crisis and that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) can be perceived as a model agreement and a symbol of a shift in perspective from long global supply chains to a focus on regional ones, local production, jobs and a rise in wages. The book will be essential reading for academics and students in the fi elds of human rights law, international labour law, industrial relations law, international sustainable development law, international economic law and international trade law. It will also be of interest to practitioners, non-government organisations (NGOs) and policy makers.

Stories and images of collapsed factories, burned down sweatshops, imprisoned migrant workers, child workers and many other violations of internationally recognized labour rights continue to spread across the globe. This highly topical book examines the different instruments which are intended to protect labour rights on a transnational scale, and asks whether they make a difference. With perspectives from law, management, sociology, political science and political economy, the topics discussed include the protection of international labour rights in a globalizing economy, the EU’s social dimension in its external trade relations, Asian and US perspectives on labour rights in international trade agreements, the role of (trade) unions in global labour governance and the transformative capacity of private labour governance regimes. Academics and advanced students from different disciplines will benefit from the up-to-date empirical material in this study. Policymakers, NGOs and Unions will find the discussions of the instruments used to protect labour rights of great value to their work.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the new methods of transnational labour regulation that are emerging in response to globalisation.