Retailers, manufacturers and labour : an early case of regulation of labour standards in the clothing industry

New South Wales is at the forefront globally in the protection of labour standards in the clothing industry by regulating the supply chain from the bottom to the top, from home workers to clothing retailers. This is the first case in which retailers are effectively brought under a legal regulatory framework in which they are acknowledged as having responsibilities in which the clothing that they sell is manufactured. This is the critical difference between and the great advantage of this model over other models that have attempted to regulate the manufacturing nodes in the supply chain or which rely solely upon voluntary codes. In Canada during the Great Depression and subsequently in the 1930s, a regulatory system was developed in Quebec, which attempted to restrict the more destructive of competitive practices between manufacturers and to (and in part through) generalise negotiated labour standards throughout the industry by way of a Parity Committee. This case holds particular significance for current supply chain regulation developments in New South Wales, Australia and, indeed, globally. Its significance lies in the documented evidence of the exertion of the retail sector over the manufacturers in the clothing industry in Quebec, the practices of manufacturers and contractors to attempt to respond to the demands of the retailers by reducing labour costs, and by the dynamism of a labour movement that was able to win a system of regulation to protect unionised and non-unionised workers within the clothing supply chain. Its significance for current initiatives, however, also lies in what the model was unable to achieve, in particular, bringing the retail sector into the regulatory framework, and, the industrial model of regulation which, which sought supply chain regulation without accounting for all nodes of the chain