Intersection of crises,discourses,and gender ideologies in change making: The case of Sri Lankan labour law reforms

Abstract

Conjunctural moments offer opportunities for restructuring and reconstruction in existing systems of organization of people and economies. Already, in the context of the current polycrisis, the global economy is displaying highly volatile characteristics which may fundamentally reshape how business and employment will be reorganized. Foregrounding national labour law reforms in Sri Lanka, this paper explores the transformational role discourses and narratives play in crisis contexts to effect change. I argue that volatile moments reveal two significant drivers of change to labour regimes, which need further attention: (1) specific discourses and narratives emerging in the crises; and (2) existing socio-economic ideologies manipulated by emerging discourses and narratives to effect change. I demonstrate how paying attention to discourses and narratives in times of change offers particular and unique insights as to the pervasiveness and complexity of change, especially in times of crises.

Introduction

Conjunctural moments offer opportunities for restructuring and reconstruction in existing systems of organization of economy and people (Coe and Gibson, 2023; Leyshon, 2023; Potts, 2023). Particularly, as the current polycrisis across the world demonstrates, workplaces are one of the front lines of crises and restructuring, with profound consequences for levels of employment and the conditions of work (Ruwanpura, 2023; War on Want, 2023). During the COVID-19 pandemic alone, over 450 million people working in global supply chains were estimated to have lost jobs, faced reduced income, and or were furloughed (Human Rights Watch, 2020). Others have identified the worsening of working conditions in global production networks through, for example, increased use of forced labour (e.g. Hughes et al., 2023). Crises are thus moments of change, as they often amplify and or illuminate fault lines and fragility in the functioning of the global economy (Dixon et al., 2023). Crises also lay bare obsolete and dated practices and strategies that no longer work; the need for new agendas, strategies, and policies; and pathways for change (Barnes, 2023). In the existing literature on policy change, policy analysts tend to portray policy ideas as changing rapidly, in particular when ‘windows of opportunity’ for new policies open in the face of ‘events’, and as old policies no longer solve the problems or fit the purposes for which they were designed (Kingdon, 1984). Kaitila (2019), for example, demonstrated how, after the Eurocrisis (2009–2010), Finland adopted cost competitiveness policies in unit labour costs to improve national competitiveness between 2012 and 2015. Further, Coe and Kelly (2000) showed how the Singaporean government restructured its labour policies in response to the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.

A special characteristic of controlling a labour force during crises is that crises often engender specific discourses and narratives – built on ideological strands, such as re-building the nation – seeking to mobilize the workforce of a country into certain desirable actions promoted by such discourses (Coe and Kelly, 2002; Ruwanpura and Hughes, 2016). Done in the name of building back the economy, this space then allows much leeway for the state and capital to legitimize their actions during crises (Yahampath, 2023). Resulting in policy changes, such actions often end up being disadvantageous to the labouring class, as they would usually mean scaling down social welfare standards leading to degradation of work (Kumarage, 2024; Kuruwita, 2023; Ruwanpura, 2023, 2024). Discourses are thus powerful, in that, they justify the actions that need to be taken to overcome the crises effects and normalize the resultant experience of workers in the crises context (CCC, 2024; Amnesty International, 2024). Yet, in the current scholarship, there is a limited understanding about the role of discourses in shaping labour regimes. Labour regimes are multi-scalar and spatially contingent systems of contested relations between global production dynamics and territorialized social, economic, and political formations shaping labour outcomes at the workplace (Smith et al., 2018; Tran et al., 2017; Wickramasingha and Coe, 2022). The significant role discourses play in shaping labour regimes lies in the fact that, at certain points in time, they connect actors, processes, and socio-economic conditions in institutionalizing and solidifying workplace practices (Cockayne, 2018; Coe and Kelly, 2000; Kelly, 2001; McDowell et al., 2007; Ruwanpura and Hughes 2016; Anant and Coe, 2021). This is especially so in times of crises, yet, this fact is little recognized in the existing works on labour regimes except Coe and Kelly (2002) and Ruwanpura and Hughes (2016).

In this paper, I demonstrate this by exploring the labour law reforms in Sri Lanka during the crises. Sri Lanka faced its most severe set-backs between 2019 and 2024 due to multiple calamities. The Easter Attacks in 2019 killed over 300 people including tourists, sending the country’s economy into turmoil. Sri Lanka still had not had time to recover from this blow, when the country was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The pandemic significantly affected the country’s export earnings, given the two main foreign income sectors –the garment industry and tourism – were affected through border closures and reduction of apparel orders (Wickramasingha and De Neve, 2022). This was compounded by a grossly mismanaged COVID-19 response strategy – that included large-scale government spent quarantine measures, several rounds of cash handouts, and multiple lock-downs (Ruwanpura, 2022, 2023; Wickramasingha and De Neve, 2022).

The gap left by the decreasing foreign reserves laid bare the structural deficiencies of an unsustainable system of governance, riding on decades of financial mis-management, corrupt politics, and a long running deficit. The Russian-Ukraine war worsened Sri Lanka’s homegrown economic and political crisis escalating it to be the worst since its independence in 1948. Sri Lanka was facing prolonged black-outs every day, extending to 10–13 hour daily power cuts (Aljazeera, 2022). The energy crisis was at its height with the inability to import fuel and gas, resulting in a transport crisis, as well as food and medical supply shortages. The debt crisis resulted in galloping inflation with prices of essential goods including food, electricity, water, gas, fuel, and medicine increasing drastically (Shukla, 2022). This economic crisis led to a major political crisis in the country ousting the then government in mid-2022 (Ethirajan, 2023).

In ensuring the recovery and resilience of the economy, the crises context served as a platform for re-visiting existing social welfare standards of the country, not least because they were allegedly conditioned into the IMF bailout package and debt re-structuring (Ruwanpura, 2023). As a country on its knees, Sri Lanka was struggling to climb out of this pit, and ‘building back the nation’ became a universally promoted and adopted narrative (Ellis-Petersen, 2022). This was accompanied by the ideologies of ‘enduring the hardships’ and ‘making sacrifices’ for the sake of the country, and the good of all (Ellis-Petersen, 2022). Ironically, it was the working class who ended up enduring hardships and making the most sacrifices (Ghosh and Ruwanpura, 2023; Ruwanpura, 2023; Colombo Telegraph, 2023), as to save the economy, it was deemed necessary to reform the labour laws (Economynext, 2023; Kumarage, 2024). In so doing, women’s increased contribution to the labour force was touted as not just ideological but a necessary factor in changing the labour laws and rebuilding the economy (Daily, 2023; Kumarage, 2024).

These discourses and narratives were instrumental in changing the work and employment conditions in the country. In making this case, I first illustrate how the crises context created the perfect conditions for certain discourses and narratives to emerge which the state and capitalists manipulated to introduce new labour law reforms. Second, I demonstrate how the state and capitalists exploited the gendered ideologies – ‘removing barriers for women to enter the labour market’ and ‘women’s empowerment – to validate and justify the new labour law reforms. Third, the paper illuminates how, instead of empowering women, the new labour laws would increase the vulnerability of women workers, particularly in the apparel industry. In essence, the paper foregrounds the intersection of discourses and gendered ideologies co-opted by the state and capital in the crises context to further capitalist agendas.

In making these arguments, I take the Sri Lankan apparel industry as a case example, demonstrating how the proposed labour law reforms will increase apparel workers’ vulnerability and are likely to push them into further precarity. The apparel industry is vital to the Sri Lankan economy, as it contributes to over 40% of the country’s export earnings (Athukorala, 2017; BOI, 2022). As of 2022, Sri Lanka remained a sourcing destination for major brands, including but not limited to GAP, H&M, Marks and Spencer, Next, Nike, PVH, and Victoria’s Secret. The industry is spread across the country and is administered by the Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI). As of 2025, industry employed 15% of the total industrial labour force of Sri Lanka (over 300,000 direct and 300,000 indirect employees), of which, over 80% were women (EDB, 2025). Between 2020 and 2023 the apparel industry was significantly affected by the crises, multiple lockdowns, and reduced order levels. The Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers who have been pushing for labour law reforms for the last five decades unsuccessfully took the crises as an opportunity to resume their campaigns for reforms (Ruwanpura, 2023). Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers were at the forefront of the labour law reforms launched in 2023, arguing that reforms were necessary for the industry to recover from the crises. Thus, the apparel labour force will be most adversely affected by the reforms. This makes the apparel industry apt to explore in this paper.

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The next two sections conceptualize the intersection of crises, discourses, and ideologies. These two sections discuss crises as defining moments of change, discourses that emerge as drivers of change during crises, and ideologies manipulated during times of change. The section that follows describes my research methods. This is followed by my empirical research presented across three sections: (1) ‘Sri Lankan labour laws, crises, and discourses for change’, providing a background context to existing labour laws of Sri Lanka, the renewed attempts in the crises context, and emerging discourses; (2) ‘Flexibilization of work: Removing barriers for women to enter the labour force’, explaining how gendered ideologies are manipulated for reforms, drawing on different elements including public consultation dialogues, published grey literature, and direct quotes from interview participants; and (3) ‘Will flexibilization of work really help women? Deconstructing “gendered” ideologies in labour law reforms’. In addition to highlighting policy implications, I conclude by calling for a greater empirical and theoretical understanding of the role discourses play in effecting change – particularly in labour markets and social welfare standards – during times of crises.

Crises, discourses, and change

My first aim in this paper is to illustrate how certain discourses and narratives emerge in the crises context that facilitate change and policy reforms. For Foucault, discourse is distinctly material in effect, producing what he called practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak (Foucault, 2013). Discourse is, therefore, a way of organizing knowledge that structures the constitution of social, economic, and political relations through collective understanding of the discursive logic and acceptance of the discourse as a social fact. Given discourses are produced by the effects of power within a particular social order, this power prescribes specific rules and categories which define the criteria for legitimizing knowledge and truth within the discursive order. Through its reiteration in society, the rules of discourse fix the meaning of statements or text to be conducive to the political rationality that underlies its production (Foucault, 2013). Discourse can thus be understood as a ‘set of ideas and practices with particular conditions of existence, which are more or less institutionalised’. As Foucault describes, discourse normalizes and homogenizes such institutionalized ideas and practices, including upon the bodies and subjectivities of those it dominates. Thus, discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures creating an epistemic reality and becoming a technique of control and discipline particularly in governing people and societies (Foucault, 1971, 2005).

Foucault argued that to govern human beings is not to suppress or eliminate their capacity to act but to acknowledge it and use it for one’s objectives. As Foucault noted, this utilization is facilitated through discourse-embedded and naturalized frameworks of understandings that shape subjectivities by defining or rather demarcating what is socially imaginable, acceptable, and desirable. In this sense, the descriptions of a particular phenomenon at a time, the words people use, and the interpretations that are drawn may not often be matters of accurately reflecting the world but rather matters of coordinating and constructed social relations (Barnett, 2001; Barrett et al., 1995). Such discursive practices are viewed as drivers of change through which our basic assumptions of the way things should be are created, sustained, transformed, and re-imagined (Barret et al., 1995). From an organizational perspective, Barrett et al. (1995: 353) further elaborated, that discourse is the core of the change process, for, ‘it is through patterns of discourse that we form relational bonds with one another; that we create, transform, and maintain structure; and that we reinforce or challenge our beliefs’.

While the work on discourses in shaping labour regimes is sparse, there is evidence that discursive strategies are an important component of shaping labour regimes (Anant and Coe, 2021; Cockayne, 2018; Coe and Kelly, 2002; Kelly, 2001; McDowell et al., 2007; Pratt, 1999). Adapting a workforce to a particular time and place of production is a complex procedure. This is because employees are people with the potential to resist or reject change. Therefore, the adaptation of a workforce to keep a particular place competitive, practices of change must enter into the discursive realm of the popular imagination (Coe and Kelly, 2002). They would then construct a reality that contains an implicit understanding of how processes and practices work and the resultant outcome of such processes (Kelly, 2001). As Coe and Kelly noted, these discursive labour practices are highly political, as they help maintain the connection between understanding processes, making policy, and ensuring the legitimacy of these policies. In other words, practices must attempt to change the way people act and think, ‘but most of all the way they think’ (Coe and Kelly, 2002: 342). For Coe and Kelly, power over labour is not exercised solely through economic and legal compulsion, but it is also asserted discursively through the creation of a popular understanding of labour’s place in the economy and society.

Crisis moments, indeed, are particularly ripe for such discursively constructed narratives to emerge and sustain. This was demonstrated by Coe and Kelly (2002) in a study conducted on the role of labour market discourses in Singapore during the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s. They found that the utilization of the labour force to the advantage of the government was facilitated through discourse. These understandings were then embedded and integrated into labour regimes, such as wage and benefit cuts and reskilling and retraining of workforces.

In this paper, I use these concepts to establish how, in Sri Lanka, discourses that emerged during the polycrisis made it possible for the capitalists and pro-capital government to accelerate their previously unsuccessful attempts at reforming labour laws. Having noted that, in this paper, I do not carry out a discursive analysis, as such an analytical endeavour requires a different scope of theoretical and empirical intervention. As Coe and Kelly (2002: 349) also noted, ‘a very different sort of truth is being sought through discourse analysis; … a truth … that seeks to call into question accepted understandings by picking over, interrogating, and interpreting statements that epitomise such understandings’. Such a task requires in-depth attention to the discourses which requires a carefully built-up theoretical framework and questions on its own, which is not the scope of this paper. Instead, I use discourses in a more ‘loose’ sense in my empirics. The evidence I present in this paper comes through not just the discourses but also rigorous qualitative inquiry carried out among different stakeholders and how they interpreted and made sense of emerging discourses to contest and or justify their practices in the crises context. This is an iterative exercise, where, while being attuned to the theoretical concepts of discursive power, knowledge, and meaning-making (Barrett et al., 1995; Foucault, 1971), I allowed my analysis to be primarily grounded in the emerging empirics, rather than theory testing (Charmaz, 2003; Corbin and Strauss, 2014; Glaser and Strauss, 1967). This way, I was able to maintain a dialectic conversation between discursive logic and emerging insights from the ground. This allowed me to show how these narratives have emerged from the crises and were working in conjunction with the crises conditions to help capitalists reform labour laws in Sri Lanka.

Gender ideologies, women’s entry into labour markets, and discourses

My second aim of this paper is to illuminate how crises conditions can be used to exploit certain ideologies to manipulate change. Of these, I focus on gender ideologies. Gender ideology is a useful lens for this study for two reasons. One, women make up the majority of the workforce in the apparel industry in Sri Lanka which is the case example of this study. As noted above, by 2025 the apparel industry accounted for 15% of the industrial labour force in the country, of which, over 85% were women (EDB, 2025). Two, gender ideologies play an important role in women’s entry into the labour markets and how they are controlled at the workplace.

Gender assumptions and stereotypes have for decades adversely shaped the production and re-production spheres of global labour markets (Ruwanpura, 2008, 2013, 2016, 2017, 2018; Hewamanne, 2008, 2016, 2017, 2021; De Neve, 2009; Elson and Pearson, 1981; Lynch, 2007; Mezzadri, 2016, 2017; Saxena, 2020). Women’s entry into the labour force has historically been challenged by multiple barriers. Particularly, women’s role in the household as the primary caregiver has defined conditions under which a woman can enter into the labour force. The choices or lack of choices women have in engaging in paid work are ingrained in the gendered constructs and discourse practices in Sri Lanka and also elsewhere (Mezzadri, 2010; Ruwanpura, 2022, 2024; Salzinger, 2003). As such, women’s entry into paid work is curtailed by male control and articulated through gendered norms of what is appropriate work (Carswell and De Neve, 2013). In other words, women assess different work environments and different work routines that will work better with their gendered responsibilities.

Women’s move into paid work is also defined by how women workers are controlled in the workplace. For example, the apparel industry in Sri Lanka is notorious for not allowing women to take leave even though they are entitled to a minimum of 14 days of paid annual leave and further 7 days of paid casual leave for private business, ill health, and other reasonable causes (stipulated in Factories Ordinance 1950 Clause 73). Workers who are hierarchically positioned against the management constantly have to negotiate their right to take leave (Ruwanpura, 2017), almost always with repercussions such as forgoing all their allowances and attendance bonuses (Wickramasingha and De Neve, 2022). Request for leave and absences are also met with reprimands and disciplinary actions. There are hardly any facilities in the sector for lactating mothers and women with young children (Ruwanpura, 2016). In addition, women workers face greater vulnerabilities in the workplace, including low pay, lack of career progression, sexual harassment, and various forms of gender-based violence and discrimination (Hewamanne, 2008, 2016). Thus, the sector itself has imposed barriers for women to enter the labour market, with unreasonable demands on their labouring bodies.

There have thus been the long-running calls in the apparel industry – and also in the labour markets in general – to remove the barriers for women’s entry into the labour markets and address various forms of gender-based discrimination and violence at the workplace (Elson and Pearson, 1981; Hewamanne, 2008; Mezzadri, 2016). Fair and equal rights for women at the workplace have been an ideological vision of women’s rights activists, scholars, and civil society organizations for decades, especially in the apparel industry (Ruwanpura, 2022; Salzinger, 2003; Saxena, 2020). More specifically in Sri Lanka, given the adverse conditions women face in labour markets, for decades, civil society organizations – such as the Women and Media Collective, Dabindu Collective, and the Women’s Center – and researchers including Hewamanne (2008, 2016, 2021) and Ruwanpura (2008, 2013, 2016, 2022) have called for reforms to improve women’s access to employment, equal opportunities, elimination of discrimination, and exploitation. I demonstrate how this ideational construct was manipulated in the crisis context by the state and capital to push for labour law reforms that would supposedly empower and provide opportunities for women.

Emerging works in the crises context argue how crises emphasize the significance of understanding the dynamics of (gendered) social reproduction, as they shift the balance between the productive and reproductive spheres to re-organize global labour markets (Arslan 2022; Cohen and Rodgers 2021; Humphries 2024; Mezzadri et al., 2022; Pham 2020; Ruwanpura, 2024; Tejani and Fukuda-Parr 2021). As shown in my empirics, facilitated by the emerging discourses in the crisis context, this ideology was exploited by the Sri Lankan government and the capital to reform existing, strong labour laws in favour of capitalists’ accumulation strategies. Labour law reforms in this context were presented as providing equal opportunities and removing barriers for women to enter paid work. Coupled with the discourses of ‘building the country back’ (Kuruwita, 2023), women’s participation in the labour force was ideationally constructed as necessary for the reconstruction and future direction of the country (Kumarage, 2024; Schmidt, 2011). Yet, as I unpack later with insights from the field, these new laws, instead of empowering and securing the well-being of women, would, further increase the vulnerabilities of women in the apparel industry, impoverishing women workers. Before that however, I explain my research methods in the next section.

Research methods

This paper emerges from a larger research project on the resilience of the European-South Asian apparel production networks in the post-COVID-19 context. The bulk of the data used in this paper was collected between 2022 and 2024 at the height of the debt crisis in Sri Lanka. Between 2023 and 2024, I made two field visits to Sri Lanka. During the first, 8-week visit in May–June 2023, I conducted 29 interviews among apparel manufacturers, lead firms, government authorities, industry associations, trade unions, and civil society organizations. Additionally, I organized a workshop attended by four national trade unions to discuss the labour law reforms and emerging issues in the industry. I carried out four focus group discussions attended by 50 workers. During my second, 4-week visit in July 2024, I conducted two more focus groups attended by 15 workers each. Of these 25 workers were female, with five workers being male. Focus group discussions were centred on worker awareness of labour laws; proposed labour law reforms; and their views on the proposed laws. Additionally, I conducted three key person interviews with government stakeholders and an international union to understand the process of the labour law reforms, stakeholders’ perspectives of these laws about gendered dynamics, and how the changes will (negatively or positively) affect the female labour force. I also drew on the secondary data and grey literature published by different institutional and media outlets related to ongoing labour law reforms including Sri Lankan newspapers, international newspapers, Facebook, X, and global labour campaign websites such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, Business and Human Rights Resource Center, and Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Further, I used materials emerging from the labour law reforms consultation meetings including presentations by the National Human Resources Development Council, Institute of Policy Studies, Faculty of Law, and Women in Management.

I draw on grounded research to discover the labour law reforms in process (Charmaz, 2003; Corbin and Strauss, 2014). Once I entered the field, my interview and focus group questions took an iterative form, where I adjusted my discussions based on what I was learning in the field. As I observed certain discourses and narratives emerging and being circulated in the industry, my key interview questions adapted to these trending debates. I examined how these narratives were produced, who bought into them, who contested them, and why they contested them. Importantly, I investigated the role these discourses played in apparel workers and their representatives’ perceptions, and how they confronted and contested them. After I left the field, I followed the progress of the proposed labour law reforms through the media and my contacts in the field.

My positionality in the field was complex and multi-faceted. I was born and bred in Sri Lanka, where I worked for 14 years before my PhD. After my PhD, I lived in Sri Lanka from January 2021 to September 2022, during the height of the pandemic, the debt crisis, and the public protests. During this time, I actively conducted research, attended events organized by trade unions and civil society organizations, and took part in peaceful public demonstrations. This meant, I actively took part in the changes that occurred in Sri Lanka at the height of public dissent and economic crisis. Thus, while I was a researcher, I was also a native and an insider (see also Ruwanpura 2022). Therefore, my ‘lived-in’ experience is embedded in the insights shared in this paper and the analysis presented.

Finally, three limitations of this research are worth noting. First, I conducted my research at the proposal stage of the labour law reforms. It is hard to envisage at this point if the proposed Bill will be passed by the Cabinet in its current form, or an amended form. Even if the proposed Bill will not be passed, the findings of this paper have important implications. The paper demonstrates how the crisis context can be manipulated to construct discourses and narratives to create change in social welfare standards more broadly, and labour markets more specifically. Illuminating the potential of such discourses and narratives to increase vulnerabilities of the working class, particularly women, is an important contribution of this paper. In this sense, the validity of this paper does not lie in the passing of Labour Law Reform Bill, but rather, in the way, the Labour Law Reform Bill was manifested through the ideational construction of discourse and narratives in the crisis context. Second, while I was able to collect a diverse set of data, I was not able to talk to as many stakeholders as I would have liked to, particularly the Department of Labour, which was reluctant to comment on the reforms due to the sensitive and contested nature. However, I was able to get a strong idea of the role of the Department of Labour in the labour law reform process through reviewing proceeds of public consultations and published information. Further, the representative sample of workers I spoke to remains small, given the sector represents closer to 15% of the country’s industrial labour force. Still, through the focus groups that included a diverse set of workers of different ages, gender, and demography, I was able to get a good understanding of how the reforms would affect women workers. Third, it is important to acknowledge that given my position as an insider, activist, and woman who had a long career in Sri Lanka, including in the apparel industry, my views are coloured by these social locations. My analysis is shaped by my own perceptions of the ongoing reforms and their implications for working women in Sri Lanka. This however also had its advantages. My familiarity with the apparel industry, regulatory frameworks, and the experience as a working woman helped me craft a valid and relatable story in this paper that closely resonates with the ground reality. In the next three sections, I present my empirics, starting with a brief background to the Sri Lankan labour laws.

Sri Lankan labour laws, crises, and discourses for change

Sri Lanka has been known as a country with high labour standards, institutionalized and enacted in the 1840s. Although the principles of this legislation have not been changed, over time, the laws were amended and subsidiary legislation was formed as a result of Sri Lanka’s long history of defending workers’ rights (Jayawardena, 1972). In particular, since 1931, when Sri Lanka received the universal franchise, workers and trade unions progressively achieved recognition of their rights through various legislation. Such legislation has provided legal protection for workers covering areas such as freedom of association and collective bargaining, industrial disputes, health and safety, working hours, leave, compensation, employment of women and children, payment of gratuity, and termination of employment (Gunawardana and Biyanwila, 2008; Ruwanpura and Wrigley, 2011). As a result, Sri Lanka boasted an active welfare state with historically high socio-economic standards, a well-developed infrastructure, a well-functioning judiciary, a good health and education system, and a political democracy (Abeyratne, 2004; Ruwanpura, 2022). Given these already established strong labour standards for decades, the country was known as the ethical sourcing destination for apparel in the world (Goger, 2013; Ruwanpura and Wrigley, 2011).

In the crises context, however, the government and the private sector proposed a ‘unified labour law’, eliminating the laws that currently exist in piecemeal form. Labour law reforms in Sri Lanka are not a new conversation, as Ruwanpura (2023) notes. Dating back decades, reforms have been attempted continuously and persistently by the capitalists and the government in the past (SL-Union/6, September 2018; Wickramasingha and Coe, 2022; Kumarage, 2024). The multiple crises between 2020 and 2023 however offered capitalists and the pro-capitalist government another opportunity to bring in labour law reforms (Ruwanpura, 2023), so the events that led to the crises were ideationally constructed as opportunities for change (Schmidt, 2011).

At a time of great uncertainty when transformative changes were called for (Blyth, 2002), ‘old institutional frameworks’ associated with Sri Lankan labour laws were seen as failing the country, and thus, the perceived need for new laws was being emphasized. Employers argued that the current labour laws did not meet the needs of the contemporary globalized economy as they were drafted in the early 1900s (Economynext, 2023). Globally, this ‘outdatedness’ has been often a rationale used by the state and capitalists in pushing for labour law reforms (Elger and Burnham, 2001). As quoted by a manufacturers’ association: ‘These labour laws were designed in the early 1900s for the ‘mining sector’. Now the times have changed…work has changed…people have changed…so we need laws that fit the modern society’ (Technocrat/1, 4 May 2023). Apparel manufacturers partly blamed the existing, strict inflexible labour laws for the downfall of the industry and the economy, referring to them as a hindrance for investors. They alleged that the tough employment termination laws (Termination of Employment Act 1971) have discouraged investors from opening and maintaining garment factories in Sri Lanka (Manufacturer/1, 2 June 2023). The new reforms were positioned as a necessary measure in the recovery of the apparel industry, and by default, recovery of the country’s crisis-ridden economy, and a panacea for economic woes (Manufacturer/3, 20 June 2023; Lead firm/2, 1 June 2023; Kuruwita, 2023).

At the state-level policy platforms too, relaxing labour laws to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was touted as a key solution to the country’s debt crisis (Kumarage, 2024). As an advisor to the Ministry of Labour and Foreign Employment quoted ‘If we are to develop quickly, we need to generate $ 15 billion per annum. To do this, we need to attract FDI… adopting efficient labour laws are pivotal to this, as we need to focus on job creation’ (Economynext, 2023). This statement can be directly linked to the apparel industry, given the apparel industry is the largest generator of FDI in the country. Endorsing this, presenting the budget for 2022, the newly elected President Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Parliament that ‘labour laws have to be reformed for an export-oriented economy’ (Kuruwita, 2023). At the global platforms too, these narratives have been long supported by international agencies. The World Bank claimed that the current strict labour laws lead to ‘very high firing costs in Sri Lanka’ and argued that these ‘rigid’ labour laws were a reason Sri Lanka had a large informal sector (Kuruwita, 2023). Barrett et al. (1995) characterized such discourses as enabling the social construction of meanings at times of change and transformations, which Sri Lanka was particularly vulnerable to.

Flexibilization of work: Removing barriers for women to enter the labour force

The proposed unified labour laws Bill significantly departs from the existing ones with its changes to working hours (Wages Board Ordinance 1941 and Shop and Office Employees Act 1954), payment, particularly overtime (Wages Board Ordinance 1941), removal of night work restrictions for women (Factories Ordinance, 1950; Employment of Women, Young Persons, and Children’s Act 1958), relaxing conditions of termination of employment (Termination of Employment Act 1971), and imposing new conditions for organizing and collective bargaining (Trade Unions Ordinance 1931), among others. In this paper, I focus on the proposed flexibilization of work, resulting in changes to working hours/days. As per the provisional Clause 32 (1) of Chapter 3 of the proposed Bill: ‘… arrangements for a compressed work week may be made by the employer and the employee in the employment contract at the time of hiring or in a written employment agreement or agreement entered into between the employer and the employee at a later time’. These compressed work weeks allow continuous employment of workers for periods of 12 hours Clause 32 (1); 16 hours - Clause 33 (2); and 24 hours - Clause 33 (3) with short breaks (15–30 minutes) for rest and meals. Technically, in the compressed work week formulae, a worker can choose to finish 24 hours of her 45-h week commitment in one and a half days. This essentially allows workers to finish their weekly commitment to work (45 hours, currently spread across 5.5 days) in 3 days if they so desire. The proponents of the labour law reforms claimed this flexibilization of work will remove entry barriers for women to take part in paid work, promoting equal treatment of women and empowering them (Union/1, 4 June 2023; CSO/1, 16 June 2023; Kumarage, 2024).

Flexibilization of work has been part of the debate of reforms in Sri Lanka even before the pandemic. In a survey conducted by the Employers’ Federation of Ceylon (EFC) on employers’ perception of labour laws in 2010s, 63% of the respondents indicated that Sri Lankan labour laws provide little or no room for flexible work arrangements, part-time work, and compressed weeks. On this, 69% of the respondents recommended that the labour laws be amended to incorporate flexible-working arrangements and part-time or virtual working arrangements (EFC, 2012). Another study conducted previously on private sector employees commented that flexi-time work would grant women relatively higher levels of autonomy to create work–life balance (Wickramasinghe and Jayabandu, 2007). Particularly in the garment industry, manufacturers argued that a compressed work week and flexible hours would be welcomed by local migrant workers, who will have additional days to visit their families. Further endorsed by ILO (Bakmiwewa, 2021), a compressed work week was seen as enabling workers to have extra days off in the week, while the company will benefit from reduced overhead costs. As ILO and employers further argued, flexible work arrangements would provide a mode of income for young adults to pursue higher studies, particularly if their parents were unable to support them (Bakmiwewa, 2021). In this context, one of the recommendations of an ILO policy brief was to ‘completely overhaul the existing labour laws and introduce specific labour laws to recognise flexible work arrangements’ (Bakmiwewa, 2021). Building on this strong national and international support for the compressed work week and flexibilization of work, the government and employers argued that such a move would bring in much needed support for work–life balance, particularly opening doors for women to enter the workforce.

Supporting this mandate, the Women in Management organization made a presentation at the public consultation on labour law reforms in 2023, arguing that ‘due to the unavailability or the lack of laws that match today’s society, females are greatly inconvenienced, and it is hindering them from achieving their full potential and contributing to the country’s economy and strengthening their own and their households’ economies’ (source: presentation shared with the author by the Joint Apparel Association Forum – JAAF). According to the Department of Census in Sri Lanka, in 2022, women made up only 35.4% of the economically active population (ibid). During the same public consultations, the National Human Resources Development Council (NHRDC) argued that the absence of flexible work arrangements and restrictions around night work for women prevented them from progressing in their careers otherwise dominated by men, particularly in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector (source: presentation shared with the author by JAAF). They too recommended removing these restrictions to help the growth of the private sector. Both Women in Management and NHRDC made convincing arguments to this effect, as a way of removing barriers for women to enter the workforce.

Theoretically, flexibilization of work has three notable advantages. First, this would allow greater flexibility for workers to craft a schedule of work that suits them. For example, some may opt for 12 hour shift, finishing their work week in 4 days; while others may opt for 24 hour shift, finishing their workweek in 2 days. This would leave them 3 to 5 days off from work per week, instead of the 2-day weekend. The government and pro-reform capitalists argued that this would allow women the opportunity to balance work–life commitments, as well as allowing them more rest days. Second, flexibilization will allow workers an opportunity to engage in extra work (i.e. two jobs) yielding additional income. An example would be working in the formal sector for 3 days for extended hours and working in the informal sector for the rest of the work week. An official of the Ministry of Women and Child Affairs argued that this was the future of work, and as a woman, she welcomed such flexibility (Government Officer/2, 10 July 2024). Third, the new labour provisions have relaxed restrictions on night work for female workers, which is currently limited to 10 days under the Employment of Women and Children Act 47, 1956. During the public consultations and debates surrounding the labour law reforms, the government argued that this restriction discriminates against women workers wherein there are no such restrictions for male workers. By removing this restriction, new laws are seen as providing equal opportunities for women, eliminating discriminative employment practices.

Having acknowledged these advantages of flexible work, it is however important to note that the arguments in favour of flexibilization of work are based on the women workers covered under the Shop and Office Employees Act 1954. These are the government and private sector workers in general, who are in the clerical and above grades including the ICT sector workers. The proponents of the flexibilization of work however omit the industrial workers who are not governed by the same stipulations of Shop and Office Employees Act 1954. Industrial workers, and by default apparel workers, are governed by the Factories Ordinance 1950. When it comes to night work, Factories Ordinance stipulates that women should not be engaged in night work for more than 10 days (Clause 67A.2.g). This clause is particularly important to safeguard female industrial workers who sometimes are forced to do night work under the pressure by the management. Further, while the Shop and Office Employees Act 1954 stipulated 21 days of annual leave and 14 days of sick/personal business leave this only applies for clerical and above clerical grade staff. Leave for apparel workers is provided by the Factories Ordinance 1950, which stipulates a minimum of 14 days of annual leave and 7 days of sick/personal business leave. Apparel workers who are already treated differently and enjoy less benefits and leave than clerical and above clerical grade workers will be made further vulnerable by flexibilization of work. Thus, while flexibilization of work may benefit a certain segment of women workers, this may also increase the precarity of female apparel workers, if a ‘blanket’ approach is employed as proposed by the reforms. I unpack this in the next section.

Will flexibilization of work really help women? Deconstructing gendered ideologies in labour law reforms

While, in the proposed laws, flexibilization of work is claimed to be encouraging women’s representation in the workforce, several loopholes will increase the vulnerabilities of women. This is especially so for the Sri Lankan apparel industry, where such flexibilization can be exploited by employers to extract the maximum labour power from workers while paying as little as possible – especially as living wages is not the norm (Ruwanpura 2022). Particularly, the assumptions of the government and the capitalists have conveniently neglected the underlying, long-running structural issues and barriers that prevent a greater participation of women in the labour force. With these new laws, women, especially women in the working class, such as the apparel industry, can be disadvantaged in five notable ways.

First, there is a high risk of increasing women’s workload at home and work, leading to drastic consequences for women’s emotional and physical well-being, as workers in interviews and focus groups consistently said (Focus Group/5, 7 July 2024; Worker/2, 7 July 2024). Second, there is a risk that employers can force women to work even longer hours than prescribed in the above clauses, as the new laws provide a loophole for them to do so. For instance, Clause 32 (2) details that ‘in the event that an employee works a compressed work week, after working the maximum number of hours per week, it can be specified in the employment contract that the employee can take a compensatory break, or the employer must allow the employee to work overtime at the discretion of the employee’ (italics mine). This is a very problematic clause because the apparel industry is known for forced labour. The danger here is that when the seasonal demands are high, some apparel manufacturers can make workers work for 3 to 5 days continuously without substantial breaks in between. These provisions will thus erode the legal protection for sick leave, annual leave, stipulated rest, and leisure periods of workers. This is already evidenced in the industry while legally women should not be allowed more than 10 days of night work, in practice, in garment factories, women are engaged in night work for more than 10 days with few safety and security measures in place. Here, workers face unsafe conditions, sexual harassment, and inability to access safe transportation from work to home (Focus Group/5, 7 July 2024; Worker/5, 7 July 2024) as also found by Business and Human Rights Asia (UNDP, 2021). Increased hours of work, which would invariably lead to night work without adequate safeguards for women, will thus further perpetuate unsafe conditions of work in the apparel industry, subjecting women to abuse and harassment as was also pointed out by trade unions and civil society organizations (Union/2, 4 May 2023).

Third, given flexibilization of work will eliminate overtime, this will significantly affect the ability of women to earn a liveable income. In the current 5.5 days system, apparel workers can clock in up to 2 hours of overtime every day by completing 10 or 11 hours of work in the week and an additional 4 hours on Saturday. With a compressed work week, where, for example, women will work 12 hours per day for 4 days, there is little to no room for workers to do overtime. This means, that in flexible work, women will earn much less than they did before (Kumarage, 2024). For example, one of the workers earned LKR 50,000 ($165) with overtime payments, but in a compressed week, she would only be able to earn her basic salary of LKR 33,000 ($108) (Worker/5, 7 July 2024). Due to this eventuality, all workers I spoke to vehemently opposed the idea of flexibilization of work (Focus Group/1, 7 July 2024; and eight workers).

Fourth, while the opportunity to engage in a second job through flexibilization of work may be welcomed by men and single, young women with no care responsibilities, this may not work for women with children and care responsibilities (Focus Group/5, 7 July 2024). As a worker quoted, ‘This will not work for everyone, especially for women this will not work, they won’t have any free time. They will earn money, but they will lose their quality of life. Their children will also get affected’ (Worker/2, 7 July 2024). This is particularly so for women with young children entering the labour force in the absence of social and systemic recognition of dual-income earning families in the Sri Lankan culture (Gunewardena, 2015). Moreover, women spoke of being too tired and exhausted to do additional work after working for 12 hours for 4 days (Focus Group/5, July 2024).

Fifth, pregnant and lactating mothers who are unable to work extended hours will be particularly vulnerable within these new flexible working patterns. In both these last two points, it is unlikely manufacturers will adjust their production regimes to accommodate a segment of workers who are not able to work long hours, especially when there is a ready labour force of men and young women available. In this context, some women will be vulnerable to discriminatory hiring and firing processes, especially in a context where termination laws are relaxed (Ruwanpura, 2024).

The proposed provisions are thus detrimental to women workers, who under pressure will be trapped in a ‘complex cycle of coercive and extractive labour within the casualisation of their work’ as stated in a petition signed by 116 university faculty members in Sri Lanka (published in Colombo Telegraph, 2023). The proposed provisions will perpetuate the existing structural conditions that hinder women’s participation in the labour force, as previously noted by Gunatilaka (2013) including safety concerns, security, transportation, child and elder care responsibilities, and gender-based violence. Thus, instead of removing barriers for women to enter the labour force, these new laws can increase the barriers, preventing certain segments of the women from taking part in paid work, thereby further decreasing women’s participation in the labour force. As a worker aptly quoted ‘I see us losing even the little we have now with these new laws’ (Worker/5, 7 July 2024).

In sum, barely addressing any of the gendered issues in the industry, the proposed Labour Law Reform Bill, dubbed as the ‘slave labour bill’ by trade unions and civil society organizations (Raman, 2023), undermines the level of exploitation that the female labour force – especially in the apparel industry – is already facing (Kumarage, 2024). Instead of empowering them and eliminating barriers to enter labour markets, these new laws will potentially increase the vulnerabilities of female apparel workers, as the Clean Clothes Campaign also noted (CCC, 2024). Rejecting the proposed labour laws, a women’s rights activist accused the government and employers of ‘using women as a commercial advertisement to sell this bill’ (CSO/3, 10 August 2023). When trade unions and civil society organizations rejected the narratives and staged protests against the proposed reforms, they were accused by the government and capitalists of obstructing a progressive set of laws that would create gender equality and opportunities for women. Referring to this, a lawyer and activist said:

This is a dangerous law. When we reject this, we face a huge challenge… they are asking us if we [unions] are opposing the laws on sexual harassment, if we are opposing women’s participation in the labour force, and if we are opposing women empowerment. So when we reject this, we have to reject the narratives too.. we have to challenge not only the concepts, but also the way the concepts are presented (CSO/2, 10 August 2023).

These accounts are indicative of how the state and capitalists are using the gendered ideologies and the long-running calls for elimination of gender discrimination in the labour policies as tools to promote the new labour laws. Such cultural and discursive power – the construction of understandings, social vocabularies, and imaginations – is a critical part of re-shaping the labour regimes as Coe and Kelly (2002) also found in the context of Singapore labour regimes during the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s (see also Ruwanpura and Hughes 2016 for Pakistan). Without addressing the underlying structural issues of gender discrimination in the country and in the industries, these proposed laws will not make a positive change in the lives and work of women. Rather, they will push the working women into further precarity.

Conclusion

Analysing the construction and mobilization of labour market discourses is not simply an abstract academic exercise but a crucial step in understanding the dynamics of politically and culturally embedded labour markets (Coe and Kelly, 2000). This need is ever more important in conjunctional moments, as crises offer opportunities for change and reconstruction, especially for policy change. This paper demonstrates the transformational role discourses emerging in the crisis contexts play in such policy changes; and the intersection of crises, discourses, and ideologies in effecting such change. In particular, analysing discourses in times of change and transformations offers particular insights as to the pervasiveness and complexity of change, especially at times of crises. The paper makes this case by placing the labour law reforms in Sri Lanka within the events that unfolded between 2019 and 2024, Easter Attacks, the COVID-19 pandemic, the debt crisis, and the Russian-Ukraine war. The combination of these events enabled specific discourses to emerge in the Sri Lankan context.

Coupled with gendered ideologies, discourses circulating in the country created the perfect space for the state and capitalists to reform labour laws. The reforms were presented as removing barriers for women to enter labour markets by flexibilization of work. Yet, as Ruwanpura (2023) also pointed out, without addressing structural constraints that will prevent women from taking advantage of the flexibilization of work, the proposed laws will further perpetuate gender discrimination at the workplace and entry barriers to paid work. As I show in this paper, the proposal for labour law reforms in its current condition, thus risks further endangering women workers, particularly in the apparel industry. With proposed labour law reforms, female apparel workers will be at the risk of being subjected to further exploitation with longer working hours and less pay, with a drastic decline in their quality of life and work.

From a policy perspective, the findings of this paper have three implications. First, crisis moments indeed are often considered good opportunities to review existing policies and regulations. Revisiting current laws and regulations that no longer serve economic goals and business interests is thus an important strategy during crises. However, it is important to recognize that changing long-standing laws and regulations requires careful attention to the implications of such changes not just on economic agendas but also on people and socio-economic registers. This is especially so when such laws concern labour markets and employment. Introducing new employment laws and labour standards should be conducted with tripartite discussions and agreements, with workers’ voices at the forefront (see also Ruwanpura 2022). The Sri Lankan case demonstrated that in the absence of such representations, the interests of the working-class get sidelined, with workers at the bottom of the ladder being vulnerable to increased exploitation.

Second, it is indeed important to remove barriers for women to take part in paid work, and create equal opportunities and conditions of work for them. This is crucial given the highly gendered nature of labour markets across the world, which can only be changed through policy. On this, flexibilization of work can offer great opportunities for women to craft a personalized schedule of work that would enable them to create work–life balance and still be productively engage in paid work. The benefits of such flexibility will extend beyond women to their families. Any such policy changes however should go hand in hand with measures to address structural conditions that prevent women’s active participation in the labour force, such as care facilities at workplaces, family wages, gendered norms, women’s dual roles in society, and cultural restrictions. Such measures can include but are not limited to recognition and distribution of domestic care work, providing affordable or free child-care facilities at work, removing gender pay gaps, offering living wages, and providing safe workplaces. Without addressing such deep-rooted structural issues, mere changes of laws would have little to no positive impact on women. As the Sri Lankan case demonstrated, they would be counter-productive and further hinder women’s active participation in the labour force as well as increasing the vulnerabilities of women.

Third, researchers, activists, and commentators should pay careful attention to emerging discourses and their influence in effecting change, particularly on policy. Discourses are powerful tools in constructing realities that contain implicit understandings of how ‘things should be’. Through its reiteration across society, discourses can fix and ascribe meanings for statements and text to be conducive to political and economic agendas. The danger here is that while serving one party, discourses can be detrimental and even used intentionally to disadvantage others. As evident in the Sri Lankan sector, when the benefits of flexibilization of work for women were touted across national platforms, it was often concerning the workers in the ICT sector and how women in the ICT sector were discriminated against because of the restrictive laws that prevent them working long hours in the night shifts. This one-dimensional analysis neglects the diversity of workplaces in other sectors such as apparel manufacturing, where long working hours and night shifts are synonymous with the exploitation of workers. One way to overcome this oversight is to make targeted policy changes for selected sectors, with amendments of clauses or including new clauses only for relevant sectors.

Given the extent of the global polycrisis, it is inevitable that transformational changes are occurring simultaneously across the labour markets in global production networks. While this paper is centred on the Sri Lankan context and the apparel industry, the findings of this paper have implications beyond Sri Lanka and the apparel industry. The theoretical interventions of this paper may be of use in unpacking policy changes in labour markets during crises, particularly in the manufacturing sectors. Moreover, the findings of this paper will help interested readers understand how, during crises, ideologies and norms can be manipulated by emerging discourses to effect policy change, creating uneven economic and social outcomes. Having noted that, there is still the need for a greater empirical and theoretical understanding of the role discourses play in effecting change – particularly in labour markets and social welfare standards – during times of crises.