ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the challenge of realising labour rights (including collective bargaining) for homeworkers in global value chains. Labour law’s binary categorisation of workers into employees and independent contractors means that homeworkers are categorised as independent contractors, and their work is governed by the ordinary rules of contract. The terms of the contract, which is embedded within the broader power relations endogenous to global value chains, are unilaterally imposed by the intermediary (who is often also a money lender) on a take-it-or-leave it basis: the piece-rate is almost always below the equivalent minimum wage for the sector and does not cover either the production costs borne by homeworkers or the costs of social protection. The chapter analyses the potential of two international human rights law instruments and three different regulatory approaches at a national level to realise labour rights for homeworkers. It concludes that a plural conception of governance and a more expansive menu of enforcement options are needed to regulate multinational corporations whose procurement practices determine the distribution of value along the chain.
