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Transnational Private Regulation and the Participation of Civil Society in China: From Worker Support to Business Service Provision
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Zajak, Sabrina |
| Copyright Year | 2011 |
| Abstract | This paper addresses the question on how the development of transnational private regulation of labour standards affects domestic civil society building in China. Along with China’s integration into the global economic system the tendency to monitor global supply chains started the development of a new market for CSR certification and practices. While there is a rising amount of research on how CSR standards are applied in Chinese firms, we know relatively little about its implications for the emerging civil society, in particular for labour support organisations. In contrast to other Asian countries civil society in China counts as weak. In particular the situation of labour NGOs counts as precarious in a political environment where independent unions next to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and its local branches are not allowed. Yet many private modes of transnational labour governance (such as the Fair Labour Association or Social Accountability International) require the participation of societal actors in the implementation of workplace standards. The idea is that their inclusion can contribute to increase the participation of workers in defining and enacting workplace standards. This paper takes a qualitative case study approach to analyse how the engagement with CSR transforms labour support organisations in the Guangdong Province. My empirical results suggest that an increase in worker participation is not necessarily the actual consequence. Instead I found that transnational private regulation supports the development of a multiplicity of organisational forms, which differ in their degree of businessorientation and worker-62 orientation. The different types of organisations portray different logics of labour rights enforcement and labour relations: Business-oriented NGOs focus on providing CSR services to transnational companies Chinese, while worker-oriented organisations stress the participation workers in workplace issues. Both types of organisations are embedded in a political institutional context emphasizing economic growth and the contribution of CSR in constructing harmonious labour relations. This context has both enabling and constraining effects on societal organisations. On the one hand it increases the room for maneuver of labour support organisations; on the other hand it also sets further incentives for a business-orientation of these organisations. The paper argues, instead of talking about a democratization of workplace governance through the interference of transnational private authority we can see the emergence of what I would call “contained mutipartism”. That means labour support organisations do increasingly gain importance in labour relations in Chinese supply chains, but their ability to advance workers interests are contained by both transnational business and the political environment. 1 Sabrina Zajak is a Research Fellow, Humboldt University, Berlin Germany DRAFT Paper: Not for Citation |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.mpifg.de/projects/govxborders/downloads/zajak2011.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
