Central London BUIRA Seminar:

Global value chains and their employment implications

Dr Jean Jenkins (University of Cardiff) The international supply chain in garment assembly

Dr Nikolaus Hammer (University of Leicester) on Economic and Social Up-/Downgrading in UK Apparel Value Chains

 

Friday 22 February 2019, 10.30am – 12.30pm, followed by buffet lunch

University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

(opposite Madame Tussauds and nearly opposite Baker Street tube)
Room tbc

 

For further details and to reserve a place, contact Linda Clarke ([log in to unmask])

 

This regular monthly seminar is focused on employment and global value chain governance, with the examples of the garment and fashion industries, and we are fortunate to have two expert speakers.

 

Jean Jenkins is a Reader in Employment Relations at Cardiff University and will speak about the international supply chain in garment assembly, focusing on the methods of control employed at the workplace in a fiercely competitive environment where local labour relations are a crucial factor in controlling costs. She will focus on the business model in international context, reflecting on the use of ethnicity, gender and poverty as part of local managerial regimes of control. She will refer in particular to the example of the manipulation of time and debt inside factories past and present. Jean’s research in the garment sector began in the UK in the 1990s and has followed the value chain to its new locations. A publication of particular relevance for this session, written with Paul Blyton, is Jenkins J. and Blyton, P. (2017) ‘In Debt to the Time-Bank: The Manipulation of Working Time in Indian Garment Factories and ‘Working Dead Horse’, Work Employment and Society 31:1, (90–105).

 

Nik Hammer, Associate Professor in Work and Employment, University of Leicester will analyse recent developments within UK apparel manufacturing, notably its considerable growth since 2008. He will focus on the links between specific business models and value chains such as fast fashion, on one hand, restructuring at the level of manufacturers and workplaces, on the other. At the same time, the changing relations between production and reproduction will be considered. He will explore to what extent exploitative work and employment practices are embedded in specific localities or, rather, the outcome of specific forms of value chain governance. Nik works on the restructuring of global value chains and their inter-linkages with work and employment and has recently researched fast fashion manufacturing in the UK. He has led a report for the Ethical Trading Initiative Hammer et al, 2015, A New Industry on a Skewed Playing Field: Supply Chain Relations and Working Conditions in UK Garment Manufacturing (https://bit.ly/1HRkfER); see also Hammer and Plugor, 2016, Near-sourcing UK apparel: value chain restructuring, productivity and the informal economy, Industrial Relations Journal, 47 (5-6)

 

This seminar is an opportunity to air and discuss these issues in an open forum and consider their implications for industrial relations. Anyone interested is welcome to attend this event. These meetings can be full though so, if you would like to attend and to help forecast catering provision, please Contact: Professor Linda Clarke,  [log in to unmask] or 020350 66528