ABSTRACT
The career of a Southeast Asian garment worker is notoriously short, often starting at around age 15 and ending in the mid to late 20s. Over the past four decades the literature has well documented the preference of garment employers for young, usually single, women who can be paid low wages and tend to leave (voluntarily or not) their employment upon marriage and childbearing. Among the many reasons put forward for this phenomenon most either refer to the internal processes of the firms or to structural conditions of the labour and capital markets. Both explanations leave the workers with little ability to bargain for better pay and conditions or improved career prospects. Examples of the ‘internal process’ argument include employer preferences for ‘nimble fingers’ or a supposedly docile workforce, or piece-rate regimes that lead to ‘self-exploitation’ and early ill health (Chand 2012). Rather more convincing are the more ‘structural’ arguments that rely on the footloose nature of highly labour-intensive production, the abundant supply of cheap labour among young village women, and an international division of labour organized through ‘buyer-driven’ GVCs (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994) which gives low-wage countries a comparative advantage in garment production (Rasiah 1993). The introduction of monitored labour standards through various programmes known as CSR targets the structural processes of firms in response to a growing segment of developed-country consumers who demand ‘sweat-free’ labour, whether for purely ethical or for protectionist reasons. BFC, a programme established in 2001 under the auspices of the ILO, is one of the most influential attempts at creating a transparent and independent monitoring system for improving labour standards in global supply chains.
