Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace, 2018-2020

The Operationalising Labour Rights project was undertaken over a period of 30 months to collate information on typical workers' grievances at the workplace level in the garment supply chain. This collection contains 572 detailed case notes, collected from factory workers to track access to remedy and resolution of individual cases at workplace level. A separate set of 688 case notes was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to record data relating worker wellbeing along with COVID-specific grievances. These case notes are accompanied by a set of 27 semi-structured interviews with both workers and worker activists. These interviews were undertaken to explore their experience of workplace conditions and better understand the way grievances are dealt with by shopfloor managers. Interviews focused on the participant's experiences of life and work in their social and economic context.Operationalising Labour Rights: Access to Remedy at the Workplace. As economies grow and capital expands, conditions of employment for those who labour to create wealth remain poor in many industries and locations around the world. This is particularly the case in sectors such as the international garment sector, where the dispersion of labour intensive production along opaque value chains allows conditions at the workplace to be obscured from scrutiny. It is at this level that workers with low associational and structural power struggle to exert representational rights and defend their interests, while the lack of transparency within the global production network facilitates the perpetuation of abusive practices, the worst of which are all too often exposed by tragedy and loss of life, rather than audit. It is in this context that this research project seeks to illuminate local conditions against the backdrop of national and international forms of private and public regulation which fail in the absence of robust mechanisms of enforcement. The research will involve the systematic collection of data on workplace grievances and their outcomes from garment workers employed in factories in the city of Bangalore, south India. Our research partner is a well-established civil-society organisation, Cividep-India (Cividep). A small amount of data on workplace grievances has already been collated in a short pilot study in 2016. In the present research project, we will compile a further, far more comprehensive bank of data on the nature and outcomes of workplace grievances. The collection of data will take place over a period of twenty-four months and will involve establishing communication with factory workers (away from the workplace), organising worker forums, and establishing a range of engagement activities, facilitated by local field workers, through Cividep, as a precursor to data collection from respondents. Cividep will manage and monitor the fieldwork and data input in India and will also engage and manage our group of fieldworkers who will all be former garment workers and are experienced in the conditions that prevail in the sector. The gender composition of fieldwork teams will reflect the gendered nature of factory workforces locally, which is generally around 80% female. The data on workplace grievances, their progress and outcomes will act as a foundation for a detailed understanding of the dynamics of workplace relations. Accordingly, the data will support us in theorising: 1. To what extent access to remedy is possible for the individual worker at the level of the workplace, and by what means. 2. To what extent it is possible to operationalise labour rights, including freedom of association, through dispute resolution at the level of the workplace. In addition to contributing to theory and knowledge of labour's place in global value chains and affording insight into the efficacy of social auditing and statutory regulation in academic debate, the project's requirements of systematic data collection and analysis holds potential for capacity building in the field. It will further develop and hone research skills necessary to advocacy and the delivery of impact with diverse audiences of academia, practitioners and policy makers. It will also provide data affording greater transparency in workplace relations and evidence to support lobbying for meaningful mechanisms of access to remedy at the workplace. The objectives of this study are therefore to provide a deeper theoretical understanding of the challenges involved in operationalising labour rights at the workplace at the base of a feminised labour-intensive supply chain, while also developing skills and capacity in local civil society, supporting its advocacy role and thereby strengthening its transnational relationships and status.