Why is labour governance failing racialised workers?

What is labour governance and why is it failing? How effective is civil society activism at improving labour conditions in global value chains? What does the Indian tea industry tell us about the consequences of colonialism and globalisation for racialised workers? What role did the collapse of the USSR play in creating our contemporary situation?

Dr Natalie Langford is Lecturer in Sustainability at University of Sheffield. She joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss her paper 'The limits of labor governance in global value chains: exclusions, ‘edge’ populations and civil society activism in unstable labor regimes' recently published in Review of International Political Economy. They consider how workers in the Indian tea industry experience extreme precarity and starvation deaths; the role of local trade unions, NGOs, governments and corporations in improving labour conditions in global supply chains; and challenges arising from the racialisation of workers through colonialism and globalisation.

Recommended Reading:
Bair and Werner's Commodity Chains and the Uneven Development of Global Capitalism (2011)
Bhattacharyya's Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2017)