Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
engender a new geo-political force of 'contested globalization' that
places social justice at the heart of the agenda (Sadler, 2004). The focus
of anti-globalization movements on multinational corporations, due in
part to a backlash against widely advertised worker exploitation in
campaigns such as Oxfam's 'Make Trade Fair' advocacy and 'Let's
Clean up Fashion', have provoked governments and the business com-
munity to re-address workers' rights through Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR). Despite scepticism over the real impact of CSR,
there is a move towards new alliances between local, grassroots move-
ments and more top-down programmes on international labour stand-
ards driven by the ILO, to promote global economic democracy, gender
equity and the introduction of a 'living wage' for workers. For example,
a grassroots workers' organization 'Homenet' has been working with
the UK's 'Ethical Trading Initiative' and the 'Clean Clothes Campaign'
to explore possibilities for protecting homeworkers linked to the global
fashion industry.
Improving workers' rights, including their right to
unionize, is seen by many agencies as the fundamental goal of social
protection (Kabeer, 2008b). Although there are voluntary international
codes of conduct for MNCs, such as the United Nation's 'Global
Compact', many NGOs argue for compulsory regulation for businesses
that govern wages, working conditions and rights (see Chapter 3.5).
The overarching goal of such a policy approach should be to main-
stream
gender sensitive
and
participatory
programmes
that take into
account the diversity of roles and responsibilities of workers in different
spaces of the global economy.
129
'Footloose Capital' in a Hungry World
A global neoliberal consensus driven since the early 1990s, which
rewards capital relative to labour, has empowered multinational cor-
porations over workers, leading to a global cheap labour economy. As
this chapter has highlighted, the NIDL has simultaneously marginal-
ized and pauperized many vulnerable workers while providing oppor-
tunities for others. In her analysis, Huws (2007) uses the metaphor
'defragmenting' to describe the contemporary global division of labour,
whereby units of human skill and knowledge are broken down into
increasingly interchangeable units and then combined and reconfig-
ured across countries. While the NIDL exacerbated uneven spatial
