Social Science Research Council

"The Impacts of Global Labor-Rights Movements: Focusing on Vietnam's Footwear and Garment Industries"

The 1990s were swept by global labor-rights movements that targeted major brands and retailers to improve working conditions in their factories. These movements have resulted in various codes of conduct and a social-auditing industry. Against this backdrop, my project examines whether, to what extent, and how these movements have made a difference on the shop floor of the factories, focusing on Vietnam's footwear and garment industries. With the premise that the impacts of the movements, if any, should ultimately be visible on the factory floor, I seek first to document what change in employment policies and physical working conditions has been made in the factories and then to examine how factories' ties with different buyers and social-auditing industry explain such change by theories on organizational change. Data will be collected through interviews with managers and workers as well as key social actors such as social auditors and trade-union and government officials in southern Vietnam. I will conduct event-history analysis of change in employment practices and investment in working conditions with factories as units of analysis and small-scale case studies in order to better understand the big picture derived from the quantitative analysis. By taking a "bottom-up" view of how managers and workers in the factories perceive and cope with a set of changes emanating from the global labor-rights movements, my research will speak to growing literature on corporate social responsibility, as well as organizational theories and sociology of development from the other side of the global supply chain.