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Abstract
This paper is based on fieldwork for a doctoral thesis on the metalware cluster of Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh. I present two different ways by which labour standards are regulated in the city: first by the state labour administration and second, by the market of global buyers implementing codes of conduct. In the context of debate over state versus market-based and voluntary regulation, I discuss the text of each regulatory regime and how this is interpreted, used, subverted and applied in the city's export firms. I show how enforcement of laws and corporate ‘ethical’ codes is undermined not only by limited capacity to survey units deep inside the city, but also by the incentives of enforcement agents. The regulatory regime of the state is revealed to be morally ambivalent, where justice for workers depends on patronage inside the labour department, and on an opaque and complex legal code which keeps employers vulnerable to inspector harassment. By contrast, the regulatory regime of the market is shown to be morally incoherent, where code compliance officers are sidelined by their commercial colleagues and efforts to establish ‘ethical’ purchasing practices are routinely undermined by the imperative to fast-feed goods onto the shelves of retail giants.
Notes
1. A five-judge bench in the 2001 Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) case overruled the earlier ruling against Air India (1997) which had ruled that the employer must absorb banished contract workers, thus creating a new precedent (see case law in Commercial Law Publishers’ issue of the IDA 1947).
2. Initiatives such as the UK's Ethical Trading Initiative prefer to see their origins as a response to pressure from a variety of ‘NGO and trade union campaigns’ (ETI 2003) but it is clear that press reports were the major driver.
3. ‘Ethical’ shopping arguments clearly don't work for all types of customers. Most customers who respond to bad press are not proactive in their purchasing decisions (like Traidcraft's ‘say no to a bargain’) while other groups (welfare mums, teenagers) remain unperturbed in spite of bad press reports.
4. Elsewhere (Ruthven Citation2008), I have discussed how small units in the old city are ‘socially regulated’ (Harriss-White Citation2003) by preferences and conventions reflecting the city's social and production heritage. But I also argue that the state and market regulators discussed here foster key aspects of this informal and social regulation. ‘State officials issue a strategic waiver to old city employers, while demonstrating their receptiveness to the demands of poor Muslim residents. Global buyers benefit directly from the old city's artisan individualism when they grow and refresh their product range and secure favourable terms of purchase from small and inexperienced firms’ (ibid., p. 1).
5. Where violations are deemed criminal, particularly in the case of the Child Labour Act, cases are handled directly by the civil court. Cases under the Factories’ Act, the Employee State Insurance Act and the Employee Provident Fund Act are administered separately under special courts convened by Factories Directorate, ESI and PF Corporations respectively.
6. In mid-2007, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) defeated the SP in state elections. It is not yet clear what implications the change of state government will have for labour law enforcement in Moradabad.
7. Another inspector interviewed on this question mentioned Bharatiya Mazdoor Sabha and CITU as leading these complaints.
8. Interview with DS Dikshit, 30 March 2007.
9. Interview with DS Dikshit, 5 May 2007. Such incentives might be in the form of an assurance that the workman's paperwork will get done (renewing a contractor's registration or a trade union's membership, for example), or it might simply be a share in the proceeds resulting from a consequent inspection.
10. All respondent names have been changed to protect their identity.
11. From DLC records. The balance five cases were still pending at the time of research (June 2007).
12. It is a common strategy of employers to argue, in their statements, that the DLC quasi-court has no authority to rule on the status of a worker (as employee or not). In doing so, they hope to succeed in pushing the case to the Labour Court, where the delays in hearing and the tighter rules of evidence will more likely secure them a win and ensure that payment to workers is avoided.
13. ETI members who are sourcing from Moradabad include Debenhams, Marks & Spencer, Monsoon, Next plc, sainsbury's, The Body Shop and Boots (ETI 2004).
14. Between 1930 and 1958 the ILO published seven conventions which became known as ‘the core labour standards’, covering freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining (nos. 87 and 98), the elimination of compulsory and forced labour (nos. 29 and 105), the abolition of child labour (no. 138) and the elimination of discrimination in employment and occupation (nos. 100 and 111).
15. The other three possible agents listed are core buyer teams, ‘multi-stakeholder’ teams and local monitoring groups (ETI Citation2003).
16. Interview with Laurent Dougnac, 23 October 2005.
17. Interview with Next plc India's staff, 4 September 2004.
18. M&S also reviews any social audits already undertaken at the exporter site, but does not insist on doing their own if these two risk assessment benchmarks are reasonably met.
19. Interview with M&S representative, 22 October 2005.