Local Worker Struggles in the Global South: reconsidering Northern impacts on international labour standards

The offshoring of production from the global North to the South has been crucial to the ‘race to the bottom’ in global labour standards. The corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies of Northern transnational corporations—particularly their ‘corporate codes of conduct’—have received much attention for their putative function of limiting this race by regulating labour standards in Southern workplaces. Similar attention has been given to campaigns by Northern anti-sweatshop ‘transnational advocacy networks’ (TANs) in promoting enforcement of labour standards in the South. However, evidence suggests that these CSR policies have little effect on labour standards enforcement, and that this ineffectiveness is embedded in structural constraints in the global political economy. Case studies of the role of the anti-sweatshop TANs suggests that, while they have provided important support to local worker struggles in the South, that support is less central than has often been understood. Instead, local workers, their organisations and community allies in the South have played more pivotal roles in this ‘globalisation from below’.