Table 9.2: Cascading effect of brand actions on suppliers’ employment practices

Exercise of Managerial Power and Leverage over Workers

1. Malafide Use of Power to Change Employment Status

2. Arbitrary Practices to Impose Flexibility of Workforce

3. Use of Deceptive Practices to Evade Liability Under Labour Law Employment Practices Forms of Wage Theft

• Failure to recognise seniority of workers (such as rehiring older workers on fresh contracts or termination of senior workers without following due process) • Replacing more secure employment with more precarious employment (such as rehiring regular workers as contractual or casual workers)

• Wrongful designation of permanent workers as short term contract workers • Reduction in wages due to demotion

• Reduction in employment-related benefits due to shift in contract type

• Layoffs and termination to reduce size of workforce

• Coercive intensification of work by smaller workforce

• Extension of the work day of smaller workforce • Loss of terminal benefits

• Loss of wages • Unpaid/underpaid overtime

• Manipulation of workrelated documentation (such as mis-reporting of reduction in wages, number of work days, number of overtime hours)

• Termination or wage theft under the guise of disciplinary action (such as in the case of workers for joining protests, taking sick leaves or being unable to rejoin work on the date set by the employer due to Covid-19 restrictions) • Loss of wages • Unpaid or underpaid overtime

• Loss of terminal benefits

4. Unethical Practices to Leverage Vulnerability in Workforce Demographics

5. Blatant Leveraging of Weak Enforcement Mechanism • Replacement or termination of pregnant workers, older workers, union leaders & members, female workers over male workers.

• Rehiring of male workers over female workers; and non-union members over union members.

• Layoff of female workers over male workers.

• Layoff of contractual and casual workers over regular workers. • Forcing casual or contract workers to work longer hours without payment. • Loss of terminal benefits

• Loss of wages • Rising gender pay gap • Rising wage gap between regular, contractual and casual workers

• Coercive extraction of unpaid labour

• Blatant reduction or denial of bonus, social security, provision of creches, etc. • Loss of key provisions of security

The restitution of rights of workers is not possible within unregulated supply chains, where power is concentrated with brands and extreme disregard for basic justice persists as a result of jurisdictional and governance weaknesses in production countries. Rather, it requires mechanisms through which workers and their unions can hold brands accountable for labour rights violations, and that can counter-balance the egregious management principles of brands as the sole drivers of their supply chains. The regulation of global garment supply chains must cover for jurisdictional and governance weaknesses in production countries by mandating brands to move beyond compliance to national laws and reliance on local enforcement mechanisms to upholding international labour standards and normative frameworks within global garment supply chains. Such a mechanism must be contextualised within a paradigmatic shift in the understanding of global supply chains – which cannot be viewed as markets for the sales and purchase of apparels. Brands are able to exercise managerial power and leverage over their suppliers, and consequently workers in their supply chains, but evade liability through the alibi of being ‘buyers’ who are seemingly unaccountable for the employment contracts of workers. The employment relationship embedded within the transnational commercial relationships of brands, their suppliers and workers must be recognised.