Labour Recruitment Systems in Global Production Networks: The Ruralisation of Labour Regimes in South India’s Garment and Textile Industries

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the labour regime in the garment and textile industries in Tiruppur and Coimbatore, India has transformed from an unorganised feminisation to formalised, ruralised labour, which locates new forms of precarity in the region’s larger factories. Labour brokers’ recruitment of long-distance male migrants has fashioned a national labour market for the recruitment of the region’s garment and textile workers. Feminisation of the workforce now includes the specific recruitment of unmarried women through labour brokers, the use of lump-sum employment contracts and company provision of hostel accommodation. Combining theoretical insights from the literatures on local labour regimes and global production networks, the article argues that labour recruitment strategies play an active role in the construction of regional labour markets and organisation of global production networks.

KEY WORDS:

• Labour recruitment regimes
• global production networks
• ruralisation
• spinning mills
• clothing
• India

Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank Janet E. Johnson, Helma de Vries-Jordan, and Deborah Liebowitz for comments on an early version of the article. Adnan Naseemullah provided support along the way, encouraging me to focus on the nationalising aspects of labour recruitment. I am particularly grateful to the anonymous reviewers who provided essential insights into the reframing of the article for publication and to Kevin Hewison for his extraordinary editorial guidance. All remaining errors are mine alone.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. The terms “labour market intermediaries,” “labour agents,” and “labour brokers,” are used to refer to the individuals and organisations, from informal contractors to official labour recruitment agencies, that recruit workers for manufacturing. They are used to emphasise the social organisation that goes into this process.

^2. The following analysis focuses on the embodied gendering and ruralisation of production – the incorporation of more women and long-distance migrant workers into production – and the mechanisms through which this occurs. This is not a study of the iterative processes through which such identities are constituted and reconstructed.

^3. Official statistics related to the industry, including its size, are notoriously difficult to come by. When possible, this article reports official statistics; if not, the most commonly cited figure is used.

^4. The MFA, formalised in 1974, was part of the rising tide of European and US protectionism towards exports from late developing countries.

^5. A citizenship-based system of universal benefits, a product of the state’s competitive populism and history of collective action on the part of lower classes and castes, has expanded since 2006 and supports workers based on residence, outside the field of industrial production (Wyatt 2013). Yet the state’s reliance on casual workers is one of India’s highest (Vijayabaskar 2017, 46).

^6. This discussion of these dimensions of feminisation draws upon the robust literature on the incorporation of growing numbers of women workers into Tiruppur’s garment industry during the 1980s and 1990s (see Cawthorne 1993, 1995; Neetha 2002).

^7. Although the city’s garment manufacturers are technically covered by industry-wide agreements negotiated through collective bargaining agreements with local unions, many companies have not paid wages at the negotiated level (Chari 2004, 257; Krishnamoorthy 2006, 126). Factory-level collective bargaining is rare.

^8. Tiruppur’s exporters also change markedly due to seasonality in orders. The city’s manufacturers specialise in the production of cotton knitted garments, for which US and European demand declines during colder seasons.

^9. The change is emphasised by data from 2000 showing that approximately two-thirds of surveyed female knitwear workers had migrated to Tiruppur with their husbands (Krishnamoorthy 2006, 114).

^10. In the early 1960s, the Government of India had reserved the garment sector for small-scale industry (SSI), part of an effort to generate employment and support moral economic orders rooted in craft production (Naseemullah 2017). Due to the investment limits, when factory owners expanded, they did so by founding new units rather than expanding existing ones, a process Cawthorne (1993, 1) dubbed “amoebic capitalism.” As such, SSI reservation hindered technological upgradation (India Today, December 4, 2000; USITC 2001). The investment limit particularly blocked investment in processing facilities, so there were “very few cases” of vertically-integrated firms during this period (Cawthorne 1993, 8, 10).

^11. Quota entitlements, although constraining export volumes, also acted to buffer local producers against pure price-based international competition: quotas guaranteed countries’ access to US and European markets, albeit at limited levels.

^12. Investments in improved technology were considerable. Indian producers were responsible for 5% of global knitting machine purchases between 1995 and 1998 (USITC 2001, 5–2). The city’s exporters were among the most prodigious subscribers to the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS), which subsidised investments in high-technology machines.

^13. Most of India’s spinning mills are in the small-scale sector, a characteristic even more exaggerated in Tamil Nadu’s mills, resulting in a significantly fragmented sector, divided between large and small firms (Tewari 2001; Interview, business association, May 11, 2001).

^14. Tamil Nadu, known for its strong performance across several indices of human development, has “one of the best social security nets” in India (Vijayabaskar 2017, 45; see also Dreze and Sen 2013). This universalist nature of social welfare has solidified since 2006, as part of an expansion of clientelism through both social programs and partisan patronage (Wyatt 2013).

^15. While 40% of Tamil Nadu’s households access NREGA benefits, the numbers for several districts that are prominent sources of Sumangali and hostel labour are far higher. The NREGA provided jobs to 74% of households in Theni block and 98% of those in Virudhnagar. For Tiruppur block, far more urbanised, the percentage was 8.86%. While labour recruiters exploit district poverty, they combat countervailing governmental measures directed towards the rural sector that ensure difficulties with worker recruitment.

^16. In contrast to Bangalore and Tiruppur, the NCR workforce continues to be overwhelmingly male – 85% – with women employed in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs (FWF 2019, 19). In part, this reflects the migration patterns, where men largely migrate without their families (Roy 2009, 32). Different production organisations also support this pattern: clothing factories in the NCR cater to both export and domestic markets, with production concentrated in the manufacture of design-intensive garments (Mezzadri 2016, 56), typically high-wage and skilled, and therefore not the sort of employment coded as “unskilled” and “feminine.” Complementing these demand drivers, women’s overall labour force participation in Northern India is significantly below levels in southern Indian states, reducing the supply of potential women workers. As such, while migration patterns in northern India parallel national ones, their gendered dynamics differ.

^17. There are a wide number of names attached to each of these practices, particularly to the Sumangali system. Because company hostels restrict young women’s freedom of movement and facilitate forced overtime, some NGOs active in the area see few differences between the two systems (Delaney and Connor 2016).

^18. Abuses are not limited to working conditions but include harassment and sexual abuse (see Verité 2010).

^19. Three-year contracts are the norm. Wages reportedly vary based on local labour market conditions (Delaney and Connor 2016, 11). This exchange rate conversion is for rates at the exchange rate on January 13, 2020.

^20. Although dowry payments have been banned since 1961, they remain a common practice.

Additional information

Funding

This article partially draws upon my dissertation research in India, which was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, as well as a Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Grant.