Shadow Accounts on Corporate Social Impacts and Exploitation of Workers on the Ground: Evidence from Bangladeshi Factories for Global Fashion Retailers during Covid-19

Abstract

This study examines how global fashion retailers’ particular actions, including the cancellation of orders, impacted the livelihood of women workers in Bangladesh amidst Covid 19 disruptions. Our research is motivated by the apparent research gap in understanding (missing) the link between retailers’ CSR standards, CSR disclosures and shadow accounts on retailers’ social performance and impacts on the ground. To underpin the research, this study draws on the labour process theory and a feminist perspective and relies on interviews with workers, mostly women in Bangladesh garment factories that produce garments for global fashion retailers, mostly based in North America and Europe. We also rely on interviews with NGOs, trade unions, and development agencies who are working to uphold workers’ rights in the garment sector. This study shows workers' and NGOs’ accounts of how retailers’ irresponsible actions during the Covid time exacerbated economic insecurities and job losses, exploitation and abuses, and negligence of basic human rights, employment rights and rights to organise, especially among women workers. Such shadow accounts by less powerful stakeholders, including workers, on retailers’ social impacts expose the exploitation of women and inequality in the global supply chains. This study also shows that apart from their publicly stated CSR standards and moral guidance, retailers neither documented nor disclosed their own social performance in relation to human rights and working conditions on their factory floors. We argue that in doing so, retailers either conceal the truth about working conditions or silence workers’ voices.

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https://discovery.dundee.ac.uk/en/publications/3d257bc7-ca22-415c-95b0-2623948d21d5