IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ecsysr/v33y2021i4p536-554.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reassembling social defragmented responsibilities: the indecent labour footprint of US multinationals overseas

Author

Listed:
  • Ángela García-Alaminos
  • Mateo Ortiz
  • Guadalupe Arce
  • Jorge Zafrilla

Abstract

Multinational corporations (MNEs) have been at the forefront of the geographical disintegration of production chains in search of lower salaries, among other reasons, which led to a global race to the bottom in labour standards. Therefore, significant amounts of indecent work are currently embodied in MNEs’ global value chains, compromising not only the brands’ corporative image but also the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. In this work, we shed light on this matter by estimating the indecent-work-conditions related impacts linked to the foreign activities of MNEs from the United States. Using a socially extended MRIO model that integrates three social indicators (forced labour, fatal and nonfatal occupational injuries), we found that these activities show increasing trends between 2009 and 2013 on indecent labour, contributing with 1.1%–1.3% of the global cases. United States affiliates located in India, China and Brazil, show the highest ratios per unit of value-added.

Suggested Citation

  • Ángela García-Alaminos & Mateo Ortiz & Guadalupe Arce & Jorge Zafrilla, 2021. "Reassembling social defragmented responsibilities: the indecent labour footprint of US multinationals overseas," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(4), pages 536-554, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:536-554
    DOI: 10.1080/09535314.2020.1827224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09535314.2020.1827224
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09535314.2020.1827224?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Osorio, Pilar & Tobarra, María-Ángeles & Tomás, Manuel, 2024. "Are there gender differences in household carbon footprints? Evidence from Spain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 219(C).
    2. Ángela García‐Alaminos & Fabio Monsalve & Jorge Zafrilla, 2024. "Disentangling social impacts in global value chains through structural path analysis: Investigating forced labor in the cotton industry," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 28(2), pages 303-319, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:33:y:2021:i:4:p:536-554. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CESR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.