Browsing Working papers by Author "Khara, Navjote"
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A Comparative Study of Workers Conditions in Football Manufacturing in China, India and PakistanLund-Thomsen, Peter; Nadvi, Khalid; Chan, Anita; Khara, Navjote; Xue, Hong (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: A critical challenge facing developing country producers is to meet international labour standards and codes of conduct in order to engage in global production networks. Evidence of gains for workers from compliance with such standards and codes remains limited and patchy. This paper focuses on the global football industry, a sector dominated by leading global brands who manage dispersed global production networks. It assesses the work conditions for football stitchers engaged in different forms of work organisation, factories, stitching centres, and home-based settings, in Pakistan, India, and China. It draws on detailed qualitative primary field research with football stitching workers and producers in these three countries. The paper explains how, and why, work conditions of football stitchers differ across these locations through an analytical framework that interweaves both global and local production contexts that influence work condition. In doing so, it argues that current debates on the role of labour in global production networks have to go beyond a narrow focus on labour standards and CSR compliance and engage with economic, technological and social upgrading as factors that could generate sustained improvements in real wages and workers conditions. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8938 Files in this item: 1
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Value Chain Struggles, Work Organization, and Outcomes for Labor in the Football Manufacturing Industry of Jalandhar, IndiaLund-Thomsen, Peter; Khara, Navjote (Frederiksberg, 2011)[More information][Less information]
Abstract: Recent academic writings have emphasized that an increasing proportion of world-wide manufacturing is taking place through extensive subcontracting networks that connect consumers in the United States and Europe with workers laboring in the informal economies of developing countries where they often lack social protection or legal recognition under national labor laws. In this article, we make a contribution to this literature by exploring how three different forms of work organization – factory-based, center-based, and home-based football stitching - came into being in the brand sensitive, export-oriented football manufacturing industry of Jalandhar in North India. We argue that the evolution of supply chain linkages and work forms within this industry can best be understood through the ‘prism’ of value chain struggles between the intra-chain actors such as international buyers and local suppliers and the extra-chain actors such as national governments and international NGOs. In particular, struggles over supplier upgrading and labor standards first led to the creation of football stitching as a cottage industry in the latter part of the 20th century and then its re-establishment as industrial factory-based work in the early parts of the new millennium. We conclude that shifting preferences of the upstream buyers and the global consumers, somewhat ironically, offer a Hobson’s choice to the Jalandhar football manufacturers: either insource football stitching within factory-based settings, adopt new technologies, and comply with labor laws/standards, or perish in the highly competitive global market. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10398/8937 Files in this item: 1
Lund_Thomsen_Final_WP_2011_2.pdf (340.1Kb)
Now showing items 1-2 of 2