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This article analyzes the impact of the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse on garment lead firms’ labor standards policies in the light of new governance approaches, particularly the pathbreaking Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Based on a sample of 20 Australian and German garment firms, the authors find that firms with low prior baseline standards revised their supply chain and sourcing policies and signed the Accord. Firms with medium and high baseline standards responded variously, from making no changes to revising their policies and signing the Accord. Firm response variation can be explained by stakeholder pressure occurring in different national industrial and institutional contexts following the Rana Plaza incident, which served as a focusing event. Results suggest the wider applicability of the focusing event framework for industrial relations scholarship and highlight some of the mechanisms driving changes in industrial relations institutions.

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The April 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 garment workers and injured many more, shocked the world. Since then, lead firms, supplier factories, governments and multiple other stakeholders have sought to improve building safety in Bangladesh and to strengthen the governance of labour standards in garment supply chains. This report summarizes the results of the Garment Supply Chain Governance Project, which provides the most thorough analysis of lead firms’ current practices and their impact on garment factories and workers in the context of various public and private labour governance initiatives to date.

Since the Rana Plaza disaster, buyer-supplier relations, lead firm labour governance approaches and worker outcomes in Bangladeshi garment factories have changed. These changes can be attributed to an intensified climate for compliance regarding primarily building safety, but also other aspects of working conditions. While it is difficult to tease out precisely the causal impact of each initiative implemented in Bangladesh since Rana Plaza, our data indicate that this climate of compliance and the resulting changes can be strongly associated to lead firms’ engagement in the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (Accord).

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Despite economic growth and declining poverty levels across Asia, inequality continues to grow, with large groups of society remaining marginalized in economic and social terms.

Women in Asia continue to experience massive structural disadvantages, from early childhood education through their retirement from work—if they wanted and were allowed to work—and into their older age. It is mainly women who are exploited as cheap labour in Asia’s export industries and low-skill sectors, especially agriculture, textiles and the footwear and electronic industries. They are paid subsistence wages and experience increasing precariousness of their working as well as living conditions.

On the heels of all the economic progress now comes rapid technological transformation that is altering the present and future nature of work in ways that offer a multitude of opportunities but also add new levels of risks for social groups across the Global South.

Women are particularly vulnerable and disproportionally affected by these changes, both in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and in the ever-expanding care work across the formal and informal sectors.

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Die Untersuchung zeigt, dass die Staaten bisher im Alleingang unterschiedliche Regulierungsansätze hinsichtlich der menschenrechtlichen Sorgfaltspflichten verfolgen und sich dabei vielfach auf einen thematischen, teilweise auch regionalen Gegenstand der Sorgfalt beschränken. Obgleich die Vorgaben der Sorgfalt einander im Kern gleichen, werden sie unterschiedlich formuliert und inhaltlich ausgestaltet. Auf dem so gebildeten Flickenteppich stehen die Rechtsanwender_innen vor der Herausforderung, Anforderungen verschiedener fremder Rechtsordnungen verstehen und er­füllen zu müssen. Eine transnationale gesetzliche Harmoni­sierung, insbesondere der Kernelemente der Sorgfalt, wäre eine Erleichterung für alle Beteiligten. Dabei sollte auf eine kluge Mischung aus freiwilligen Initiativen und zwingen­den Vorgaben geachtet werden, auf nationaler und trans­nationaler Ebene.

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As the Syrian civil war enters its ninth year, more than half of the Syrian population has been forcefully displaced from their homes, with 5.6 million seeking refuge abroad. With its open door policy, Turkey has contributed significantly to humanitarian relief for more than 3.5 million civilians affected by the war in Syria.

The vast majority of Syrians in Turkey reside outside of refugee camps, making their living from waged labour in towns and cities across Turkey, including work in the garment industry. Turkey’s garment industry has become one of the largest sources of income for Syrians, with an estimated 250,000–400,000 Syrian workers.

Focusing on how refugee workers experience and navigate their precarious situations, this report sheds light on both the individual as well as the structural factors that enable and constrain refugee workers in their struggle for a decent life in Turkey. Hence, while the purchasing practices of brands and the domestic policy framework remain decisive in shaping the conditions on the factory floor, refugees’ own agency and struggles must be understood as a constitutive element of their workplace experience.

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