Sunday, May 16, 2021

Precarious Work in the Walmart Global Value Chain

441 Views46 Pages
This report presents new research on violations of international labour standards in Walmart garment supplier factories. Information was collected through interviews and focus group discussions including 344 workers engaged in Walmart supply chains in Bangladesh, Cambodia and India; and an in-depth case study, spanning 8 months, of working conditions in an Indonesian Walmart supplier employing 3,800 Indonesian contract workers. These recent findings, collected between December 2012 and May 2016, are situated in context of both previous studies on Walmart supply chains and the broader context of the global production network.




Workers' Lives, Walmart's Pocket: Garments’ Global Chain, from Savar to New York

1,542 Views8 Pages
In its spatial expansion, capital has globalised the production and distribution chain. The division of labour has been restructured throughout the world, factories have shifted from North to South, structural unemployment has increased in the North and cheap labour has been exploited to the hilt in the South. Bangladesh has thereby become the second-largest ready-made garment exporter in the world after China, supplying garments to major Western clothing brands. On 24 April 2013, the collapse of Rana Plaza that housed five garment factories killed at least 1,134 workers and injured many more. It exposed the vulnerability of the industry as well as the global lack of responsibility and accountability. This article investigates the global chain of the industry in order to understand the linkages between the lives of workers in the South and the profits of the monopolies of the North. The article also makes an attempt to understand the roles played by the local and global profiteers in the supply chain.

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