Labor regimes

Labor regimes describe the organisational processes and institutional forms that are necessary to bring workers into places of production and make sure they have the rights skills, but also to motivate and control them. These regimes are profoundly shaped by GVC dynamics, including power relations, purchasing practices and governance mechanisms, which calls for a sector-specific approach to understand them. Apparel GVCs have particular features that intensify the asymmetrical power relations between buyers and suppliers and which shape labor regimes in apparel factories. However, apparel global supply chain dynamics intersect with characteristics that are specific to each country and even production locations within a country. Supplier country governments profoundly affect labor regimes and their impacts through formulating laws and regulations as well as wage setting mechanisms and interactions with factory owner associations and trade unions.

 

Our research examines the nature of labor regimes in the apparel export factories in Ethiopia and Kenya, focusing on labor outcomes and the extent to which they vary across supplier factories and countries. The nature and extent of variation can tell us about how much apparel GVCs shape labor outcomes and the room for maneuver at the national level, where capital-state-labor relations play out.

​

​In doing so, we consider the importance of the structural and material conditions in supplier countries, in particular labor markets, in not only explaining labor regimes in apparel factories but also change in labor regimes over time.

​

We are also interested in understanding how different approaches to attracting, training, motivating, and controlling workers are used in Ethiopia and Kenya, and whether and how they vary by specific production locations and individual supplier firms.

 

Finally, we also examine how labor regimes affect the ability of workers to live decent lives, take care of their loved ones, and invest in their own futures.