A New Labour Law for Supply Chain Capitalism

Introduction

Labour law gradually protects fewer of the world’s workers. Changes in work and capital structure, new technologies, and evolving modes of supply and production (together: ‘supply chain capitalism’) lead to an incongruence between the distribution of market power and the premises and tools of labour law, creating barriers to workers’ organization and agency.

Background

This incongruence stems from the fact that labour law developed in industrial economies to respond to the power disparities between capital and labour. It is therefore tied to a dyadic employer-employee paradigm in which labour law seeks to empower workers vis-à-vis employers, the presumed owners of capital. Yet this is no longer the case in the era of supply chain capitalism, where the direct employer is often a supplier in a Global Value Chain (GVC), whose economic calculus is dependent on corporations in higher tiers of the chain.

Purpose of the Project

Given the crises of both labour law and GVC governance, this project offers a path to restructure labour law to fit new patterns of supply chain capitalism.

Project Components

The project includes three main components:

1. Theoretical: The project intervenes in existing literature and theory on GVC governance and on labour law to propose a new analytical framework for reconceptualizing the role of workers and of labour law in GVC governance.

2. Empirical: Current initiatives to improve workers’ rights in GVCs worldwide are based mostly on voluntary schemes, often perceived as ‘private’ or rooted in ‘soft-law’. The project will closely study existing initiatives and holistically analyze the studies' development and examine whether and how labour law can be restructured to support existing successful initiatives and produce new sustainable paths to strengthen worker power in GVCs.

3. Normative: Based on the two preceding parts, the project will create a blueprint for a new, and overdue, labour law for supply chain capitalism.