The Dynamics of Interacting Labor Governance in Global Production: Leveraging External Mechanisms for Bottom-Up Worker Empowerment

Abstract

Despite decades of labor governance initiatives, most attempts to improve working conditions for vulnerable workers in global supply chains have produced limited and short-lived results. This outcome is because prevailing approaches have failed to address the structural factors of hypercompetition among suppliers, monopsony power of lead firms, and state control over labor. However, by analyzing labor campaigns led by apparel workers in Honduras and auto workers in Mexico, the authors identify cases in which change has been both significant and sustained. These cases demonstrate how labor can leverage external governance mechanisms to build bottom-up power that enables workers to organize and bargain collectively. In these successful cases, top-down labor governance mechanisms are displaced by bottom-up labor governance. Findings underscore the importance of dynamic interaction between external enforcement and grassroots organizing in addressing power asymmetries in global supply chains to improve working conditions.