Labour in Global Production Networks: A Comparative Study of Workers Conditions in Football Manufacturing in China, India and Pakistan

A critical challenge facing developing country producers is to meet international labour standards and codes of conduct in order to engage in global production networks. Evidence of gains for workers from compliance with such standards and codes remains limited and patchy.
This paper focuses on the global football industry, a sector dominated by leading global brands who manage dispersed global production networks. It assesses the work conditions for football stitchers engaged in different forms of work organisation, factories, stitching centres, and home-based settings, in Pakistan, India, and China. It draws on detailed qualitative primary field research with football stitching workers and producers in these three countries.
The paper explains how, and why, work conditions of football stitchers differ across these locations through an analytical framework that interweaves both global and local production contexts that influence work condition. In doing so, it argues that current debates on the role of labour in global production networks have to go beyond a narrow focus on labour standards and CSR compliance and engage with economic, technological and social upgrading as factors that could generate sustained improvements in real wages and workers conditions.