From Corporate Social Responsibility Towards Working Solution: A Comment By The Former Executive Director of ‘Action, Collaboration, Transformation’ (ACT)

Hazardous working conditions, poverty wages and environmental degradation are the dark side of free markets that allow business to externalise social and environmental costs of production at the expense of workers, society and the planet. Workers pay with their health and lives for the underinvestment in safe and healthy workplaces, while communities suffer from polluted air, soil and water. Least developed countries see no choice but to compete for foreign direct investment or domestic subcontracting for export with low taxes, weak labour rights and poor environmental standards. Regulatory, tariff and tax arbitrage is an integrated part of global brands and retailers’ global business strategies. This chapter looks at the systemic deficiencies of individual corporate social responsibility and voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives, and the limited success of global framework agreements between trade unions and transnational companies. The ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation) initiative between fashion brands, the global union federation IndustriALL to achieve living wages and the specific conditions of the Bangladesh Accord as the only binding global agreement are discussed as more advanced attempts to address the systemic deficiencies in the global garment industry. The concluding part focuses on the potential of combining state regulation and negotiated solutions as a way forward.