Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor

by Ross, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9781565849198
• ISBN10: 1565849191
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-05-01
• Publisher: New Pr

Summary

Critics Have Decried the Anti-Globalization movement as an aimless assortment of causes. Arguably, the most consistent target of activist attention has been the new industrial sweatshop, which has become a byword for corporate-led globalization. In recent years, the world's lowest paying jobs have been the subject of high-profile media coverage. As a result of headline-seeking campaigns, exposes of sweatshop conditions at home and abroad are now a staple of investigative reporting and public attention, and this scrutiny has helped to put fair labor standards on the negotiating table of world trade agreements. In This New Book, Scholar and Anti-Sweatshop activist Andrew Ross shows how and why the movement has been able to shake the confidence of corporate and financial elites accustomed to a free hand in setting the rules of the global economy. In addition to analyzing the achievements of a decade, he presents case studies from around the world: the mercurial growth of China's export trade; the reliance of Italy's fashion and design industries on the underground economy; the health hazards faced by Asian microchip workers and recyclers of electronic waste; and the controversy over Nike's contract with Manchester United, the world's leading soccer brand. Arguing that the fight for fair labor is not solely a geographically distant matter, played out only in the poorest corners of the world, he also shows how it applies to the degradation of white-collar professions as the "casualization" of work in the domestic economy gathers ever more steam. This partisan inquiry into the cruelty and indignity of modern workplaces is informed by evidence that critique and action can bring results. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Andrew Ross is Professor of American Studies at New York University

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(14)
CHAPTER ONE The Making of the Second Anti-Sweatshop Movement	15	(42)
CHAPTER TWO Made in Italy: The Trouble with Craft Capitalism	57	(26)
CHAPTER THREE Friedrich Engels Visits the Old Trafford Megastore	83	(36)
CHAPTER FOUR Are the Chinese Losing China?	119	(38)
CHAPTER FIVE The Flight of the Silicon Wafers	157	(18)
CHAPTER SIX Strike a Pose for Justice: The Barnet's Union Campaign of 1996	175	(16)
CHAPTER SEVEN The Mental Labor Problem	191	(42)
Notes	233	(22)
Acknowledgments	255	(2)
Index	257