1. Parallel Paths to Enforcement: Private Compliance, Public Regulation, and Labor Standards in the Brazilian Sugar Sector
- Author:
- Richard M. Locke and Salo V. Coslovsky
- Publication Date:
- 08-2013
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- In recent years, global corporations and national governments have been enacting a growing number of codes of conduct and public regulations to combat dangerous and degrading work conditions in global supply chains. At the receiving end of this activity, local producers must contend with multiple regulatory regimes, but it is unclear how these regimes interact and what results, if any, they produce. This paper examines this dynamic in the sugar sector in Brazil. It finds that although private and public agents rarely communicate, let alone coordinate with one another they nevertheless reinforce each other's actions. Public regulators use their legal powers to outlaw extreme forms of outsourcing. Private auditors use the trust they command as company insiders to instigate a process of workplace transformation that facilitates compliance. Together, their parallel actions block the low road and guide targeted firms to a higher road in which improved labor standards are not only possible but even desirable.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Human Rights, International Law, International Trade and Finance, and Labor Issues
- Political Geography:
- Latin America