Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism

6. Citizenship at Work

Citizenship at Work To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment . . . would result in the demolition of society. . . . No society could stand the effects of such a system . . . unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected from the ravages of this satanic mill. Karl Polanyi (1944/2001) T his study began with some rather straightforward questions. What are the characteristics of successful consumer-based campaigns ? How have transnational activists managed to persuade corporations to accede to the independent monitoring of workplace codes of conduct, and what has been their impact? By comparing widely cited transnational interventions, I sought to discover some common characteristics that would help explain the success of some of these campaigns. How do activists persuade corporations to cooperate? What kinds of issues attract international audiences? What kinds of campaigns prompt companies to try to prove they are “good corporate citizens” and submit to independent monitors? Despite important differences, similar patterns emerged—from the organization of consumer pressures to the way issues have been framed to the ways in which threats of market closure push global brands to accede to monitoring. But the comparison of these “successful ” examples raises other questions. Thus, after summarizing the common patterns that seem to help explain relative success of campaigns, I go on to discuss common features of the monitoring schemes themselves , looking at the promise and limitations of “stateless regulation.” While transnational campaigns have been successful in making global consumers aware of the human costs of cheap labor, even the most widely praised monitoring schemes are plagued by significant limitations —limitations that may be inherent in the very structure of stateless enforcement mechanisms. In the concluding section, I turn to the implications of these findings. What lessons do they hold for transnational strategies to improve 132 Chapter 6 workers’ lives? If cost-cutting pressures push corporations into a race to the bottom, what kinds of transnational advocacy might counterbalance those pressures so as to strengthen states’ willingness and ability to intercede and protect citizen-workers from the “ravages of this satanic mill”? Transnational campaigns have generally asked corporations to support new monitoring schemes, bypassing inadequate state enforcement; given the limitations inherent in privatized voluntary monitoring schemes, however, I suggest that transnational campaigns might create more lasting protections for citizens at work if they reconceptualize their targets, seeking instead to strengthen democratic states and their capacity to enforce national labor laws. Organizing Consumer Pressure The three transnational labor campaigns discussed in this book display some striking similarities. First, there are obvious parallels in patterns of consumer mobilization. In each case, successful consumer pressure was organized through institutions rather than through individual purchases . Although many transnational campaigns invoke the threat that individual consumers will boycott products, the empirical evidence is instructive: each of these cases successfully attracted corporate attention when activists backed demands for “good corporate citizenship” with institutional pressure, either pressure for new laws blocking products from lucrative markets or pressure in terms of institutional purchases . The Sullivan Principles, of course, relied most heavily on institutional investors—individual shareholders were never even asked to follow ethical guidelines—but both the Rugmark system and the apparel industry monitoring processes are also the result of university and church involvement in global trade debates. Groups and institutions—universities, churches, even municipal buying programs—appear to have been far more effective than an individual ’s “silent choice, made alone, in the aisle of a crowded supermarket ” (Jasper 1997, 264). Social movement theorists suggest that individuals respond to minor grievances experienced collectively more easily than they are able to act on more serious grievances experienced in isolation (Piven and Cloward 1977), and perhaps a similar dynamic is at play in institutional consumption choices. Perhaps it is easier for participants brought together in a large institution to create a collective identity as consumers and to develop a common sense of moral accountability . More immediately, however, companies and politicians certainly respond faster to aggregated demands; large purchasers can have an immediate impact on corporate profits, and institutional decisions to boycott companies attract more publicity. When the moral concerns of activists are magnified by the purchasing power of large institutional Citizenship at Work 133 buyers or investors, and when large institutions publicly reject a company ’s ethical stance, corporations are far more likely to agree to accede to new regulatory...