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In this book, I use the term ‘labour governance’ to capture the public and private standards regulations, responses and forms of power (including rules, norms and actions) that surround labour standards in the global economy, including its worst forms, which are frequently referred to as forced labour and modern slavery.

Within this, I primarily focus on what is called ‘transnational private regulation’ within the academic political science literature.⁸ This term refers to rules and authority within the global economy designed to transcend constraints associated with nation-states, amidst the cross-border movement of labour and capital. Over recent decades, as the limits of national regulation to govern a globalized economy and multinational companies has become clear, nonstate actors have taken on new roles as regulators within global supply chains, setting and enforcing standards around labour, the environment and other issues.

Transnational private regulation includes CSR. As I’ve described elsewhere, along with my co-authors Jane Lister and Peter Dauvergne, as part of the trend towards private transnational governance, ‘corporations have sought power and authority to make their own rules, and with this have implemented private supply chain governance mechanisms – including multistakeholder initiatives (MSI), standards, certifications, and codes of conduct – which purport to manage and solve environmental and social problems’.⁹ But it also includes actors and dynamics beyond CSR, such as binding agreements between trade unions, workers and business actors, codes and standards developed by civil society, and a plethora of other initiatives designed to govern labour standards.

I also use the term labour governance to encompass more traditional forms of state-based regulation, enforcement and power relations, which CSR frequently attempts to take an end run around. This includes national and local laws, such as those pertaining to wages and health and safety, and their enforcement or lack thereof. There is no doubt that laws pertaining to labour standards and workers’ rights are routinely not enforced in some contexts and are sometimes accompanied by competing social norms. But as sociology professor Tim Bartley has argued, in contrast to scholarly portrayals of governance in our globalized world as something that has totally bypassed states, in most places, ‘one is more likely to find a plethora of half-enforced and contradictory rules than a true regulatory void’.¹⁰ I include these public regulations and forms of power where they are relevant to the conditions of vulnerable workers and labour abuse.

Finally, the term labour governance also refers to international conventions related to labour standards, and to corporate accountability, such as those passed by the European Commission or the ILO, or included within trade agreements.

Not all labour governance fits neatly into either ‘public’ or ‘private’ governance. Indeed, perhaps increasingly, as governance actors champion a ‘smart mix’ of public and private regulation, many initiatives incorporate elements from both categories and are therefore hybrid. An example of a hybrid governance instrument is what is often referred to as ‘home state’ regulation, through which countries seek to change the behaviour of corporations headquartered within their borders by spurring private governance activity. For instance, recent home state regulation focused on transparency and forced labour is hard law, enacted by states, but it is designed to create change by stimulating corporations to bolster their own labour standards in global supply chains through tools and steps they choose themselves, which include social auditing, codes of conduct and ethical certification.¹¹

My definition of labour governance is intentionally broad. While law scholars have traditionally focused on national law, and business scholars often confine their focus to CSR, I am keen to capture both public and private as well as their intersections, as they are relevant to severe labour exploitation in the global economy. All of the forms of governance described above shape the conditions that workers face in contemporary global supply chains. And failures in both public and private governance lie behind the prevalence and patterns of labour exploitation today. So only a broad definition can capture the trends and dynamics I’m interested in here.

With so many actors contributing to labour governance, and given that it takes so many forms today, one might think it would be strong and well developed. But although labour governance is a crowded and complex space, this flurry of activity and effort hasn’t yielded a world free of labour exploitation. Contemporary labour governance systems are plagued by deficiencies.

A string of recent incidents suggests that there are problems with prevailing initiatives to combat modern slavery, tackle labour exploitation and create safe and decent working conditions in global supply chains. To name just a few of dozens of examples of the gaps recently exposed in ethical certification schemes, forced labour has been discovered on some tea plantations ethically certified by Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance.¹² Child labour and producer poverty are well documented at the base of ethically certified coffee supply chains in Mexico, linked to major brands.¹³ The list could go on and on, and many more examples are shared later in this book. The reality, in sharp contrast to the idyllic photos of agricultural fields and happy workers found on ethical certification websites promoting fair trade and conscious consumerism, is that workers covered by well-developed labour governance systems are frequently mistreated and vulnerable to abuse. Incidents such as the discovery of widespread slavery in the Thai prawn industry, which supplies to Walmart, Tesco and Costco, Apple’s detection of endemic debt bondage at its major subsidiary factories in China, and the skyrocketing death rate for workers constructing stadiums for Qatar’s World Cup have all drawn international attention to the severe labour exploitation that continues to prevail in the face of supplier codes of conduct, ethical auditing and other CSR initiatives. As investigative journalists and workers expose more and more problems with labour abuse in global supply chains, it’s hard to overlook the fact that the labour governance systems we rely on to detect and address abuses are falling dramatically short.¹⁴