Description
Alliances between workers and activist consumers were central to spurring the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives in supply chains, as firms conceded responsibility for intensifying abuse of often racialised workers in an era of globalised production. Researchers and activists have shown that 30 years of CSR has failed to address pervasive inequalities in supply chains, while the promise of alternative worker-driven governance models and human rights due diligence legislation for corporate accountability further contest CSR. In addition, worker-consumer movements have themselves been criticised for failing to incorporate working-class voices and reproducing racialised relations of vulnerability and responsibility between North and South. The supply chain institutes these relations, positioning workers and consumers at opposite ends of the chain, dispersed across geographic space, with corporate narratives of ethical consumption constructing the Northern consumer as the benefactor and saviour of Southern and migrant labourers.
This presentation offers the research agenda of a proposed project that will explore the potential and political economy of contemporary worker-consumer alliances in an era of declining CSR legitimacy. The project will investigate worker-consumer relations in two industries with different geographies of production: the Costa Rica-UK banana supply chain, and the UK’s domestic horticultural supply chain. It examines a long-term alliance in the banana industry and a developing alliance in horticulture, both of which explicitly seek to centre workers’ experiences and seek alternatives to CSR for extracting worker gains. However, the project also seeks to explore how these alliances are underpinned by everyday experiences of labour/consumption and racialised, binarised worker/consumer identities by engaging bringing together workers and consumers outside of organisational structures. The presentation reflects on the potential for contemporary worker-consumer alliances to erode these racialised worker/consumer binaries, denaturalise supply chain exploitation and extract meaningful gains for workers by looking beyond CSR.
