Regulating Clothing Outwork: A Sceptic’s View

Abstract

By applying the strategies of international anti-sweatshop campaigns to the Australian context, recent regulations governing home-based clothing production hold retailers responsible for policing the wages and employment conditions of clothing outworkers who manufacture clothing on their behalf. This article argues that the new approach oversimplifies the regulatory challenge by assuming (1) that Australian clothing production is organized in a hierarchical ‘buyer-led’ linear structure in which core retail firms have the capacity to control their suppliers’ behaviour; (2) that firms act as unitary moral agents; and, (3) that interventions imported from other times and places are applicable to the contemporary Australian context. After considering some alternative regulatory approaches, the article concludes that the new regulatory strategy effectively privatizes responsibility for labour market conditions - a development that cries out for further debate.