- Title
- Forced labour in the textile and garment sector in Tamil Nadu, South India: strategies for redress
- Creator
- Delaney, Annie; Connor, Tim
- Relation
- Non-Judicial Redress Mechanisms Report Series 13
- Relation
- http://corporateaccountabilityresearch.net/njm-report-xiii-sumangali
- Publisher
- Corporate Accountabilty Research
- Resource Type
- report
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- This case study examines the grievances of young women, predominantly Dalit, who are recruited from remote villages to work in textile mills and garment factories in the districts of Tamil Nadu in South India. Companies sourcing in this industry from Tamil Nadu include major global brands and ETI members such as Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury, Asda/Walmart, Tesco, Mothercare, Zara, Primark, C&A and H&M. Issues: Women work under bonded and forced labour conditions, have low pay and poor conditions, and suffer other various human rights violations. Existing power imbalances have the effect of making the women more vulnerable due to their poverty, gender and caste. It can also make them more isolated due to employers preventing them from accessing unions and other individuals who could assist the workers to make claims directly to their employer, or through the judicial process. Non-judicial redress mechanisms: A number of initiatives have been taken by local and international NGOs to tackle this issue, including using media and campaign strategies to raise awareness of the issue, initiating claims through legal and non-judicial national institutions, and raising concerns in the UK ETI. These actions have been effective in influencing public opinion, improving understanding of the problems in the mills within the affected rural communities, and shifting judicial and government responses to be more responsive to the workplace and labour rights challenges faced by the female workers. The various claim-making strategies, while effective in having raised awareness of the Sumangali scheme and forced labour arrangements in the textile and garment sector, have had limited impact on improving conditions for these workers. Regarding the complaint to the ETI, the ETI’s response to these human rights grievances took several years to design. Further, the key elements of the ETI’s intervention were primarily negotiated and agreed among ETI staff and member organisations in London, rather than agreed through close negotiation with civil society groups in India. The design of that intervention reflects the power imbalance between the ETI’s corporate and civil society members, which (while complex) tends to favour member companies. That is, the ETI’s intervention has been based more on the steps that ETI corporate members sourcing from the area are collectively willing to support, rather than on the preferred strategies of ETI civil society members in the UK and allied civil society groups in South India. As a result, the ETI’s intervention has been relatively indirect, focusing on raising awareness of labour rights issues in the villages from which the workers were recruited, among recruiting agents, and among the textile and mill workers themselves. Arguably, the ETI would have greater impact on reducing the ongoing rights violations if its member companies used their collective buying power to persuade the mill and factory owners to allow trade unions and other local advocacy organisations to have regular contact with the workers. This would allow those organisations to support those workers to pursue complaints of human rights violations. However, such a strategy is likely to be more effective if ETI member companies were willing to reward mills and factories that cooperated. For example, this could include offering higher purchase prices. The unwillingness of global companies (from the UK and other countries) to offer their suppliers genuine incentives to cooperate in human rights initiatives (as opposed to threats to cut orders), significantly limits the effectiveness of voluntary non-judicial redress mechanisms, including the ETI.
- Subject
- textile mills; garment factories; forced labour; Tamil Nadu, South India; Sumangali; camp labour
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1325038
- Identifier
- uon:25174
- Rights
- © 2016 Annie Delaney and Tim Connor. Forced Labour in the Textile and Garment Sector in Tamil Nadu, South India: Strategies for Redress is published under an unported Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA) licence, details of which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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