Introduction to the Special Issue: Public and Private Labor Standards Policy in the Global Economy
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12406 |
| Author | Luc Fransen,Brian Burgoon |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
Introduction to the Special Issue: Public and
Private Labor Standards Policy in the Global
Economy
Luc Fransen and Brian Burgoon
University of Amsterdam
Abstract
This article introduces a Global Policy Special Issue on public and private protections of labor and social standards in the glo-
bal economy, exploring whether public and private regulations of such standards develop in harmony or tension with one
another. It promotes an approach to studying public-private interactions in global labor governance that is sensitive to how
interactions are important at different stages in the making of public and private regulation; how the causal interaction can
go from the public to the private and from the private to the public; how such interaction varies in quality and promise across
different parts of the world, labor issue areas and policy instruments; and how public-private interaction can only be captured
by combining case histories with large-N analysis. The evidence from the Special Issue’s articles leads to a set of generic
propositions, describing how public interventions tend to strengthen private labor policy, while private interventions tend to
either modestly substitute for or have little effect upon public labor and social protections. The article then discusses how
these dynamics may be influenced by the political contentiousness of the specific labor issue and the characteristics of the
state.
In a widely-aired episode of his satirical news show, come-
dian John Oliver spent 20 minutes discussing the history of
worker rights advancement in the global supply chains of
famous global product brands, starting in the early 1990s.
With his agitation increasing as his account of this history
progressed from past to present, he lamented constantly-
recurring labor violations, and, in response, recurring pro-
mises of policy makers to step-up their game and stop
abuse. The episode depicted the paradox that labor-abuse
appears to be an enduring facet of global production, while
policy efforts by both private and public actors to protect
labor abuse are constantly expanding.
This paradox became most abundantly visible in the after-
math of the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory
in Bangladesh in 2013. With more than 1,000 workers killed
and 2,000 injured, the private sector responded with a host of
different industry initiatives to increase factory safety in Ban-
gladesh and beyond. At the same time, various Western gov-
ernments and international organizations also developed new
labor-protection programs, creating instruments for corporate
transparency, enhancement of government enforcement
capability in Bangladesh, and on-site factory capacity-building
(for an overview see Ter Haar and Keune, 2014). Key to the
paradox of recurring labor violations and proliferating protec-
tions is that the protections themselves involve an every den-
ser mix of public and private initiatives.
This raises major challenges for labor standards in global
capitalism: how do these (proliferating) public and private
efforts at global labor policy actually relate to each other?
To what extent might they affect each other and in what
ways? Should we look at these efforts as instances of ‘the
more, the better’, whereby public and private efforts tend to
strengthen each other? Or are more complex and divisive
dynamics at play when both public and private policies
address labor conditions? These issues are crucial to the
advancement of worker rights and broader economic equity
in the global economy, and to whether these initiatives,
both on their own and in concert, are leading to any good.
In an age of proliferating public and private rule-making,
however, the issues of how public and private initiatives
interact and with what consequences are also pertinent to
most any area of global governance where public and pri-
vate initiatives are frequently intertwined –from financial
regulations, to intellectual property rights, to environmental
stewardship (Eberlein et al. 2014).
This Special Issue explores the interaction of public and
private regulation in global economic life, focusing on the
labor corner of such life. This focus makes sense because
the regulation of labor standards and working conditions
has long involved both public and private forms of regula-
tion. Public regulations involve domestic social policies and
laws to promote social standards, workplace safety and
union rights at home, and foreign aid and trade policies
and conditionality to promote the same standards, safety
and rights abroad. Private regulations promote the same
labor rights and standards through a proliferating thicket
Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12406 ©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 3 . May 2017 5
Special Issue Article
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