Offshore Production, Labour Standards and Collective Organisation in the Globalizing U.S. Apparel Industry

This article provides a specific case of how changes across the international division of labour have impacted upon — and been contested by — the workers involved in commodity production. Cantin employs a long-term perspective, detailing the establishment of garment production in the US as a sweated industry in the early 1900s and the movements that were frequently successful at raising conditions across the industry in the subsequent decades. He then focuses on the ways in which various worker movements have challenged the effects of the deepening transnationalisation of garment production since the 1960s on their employment and working conditions. While the US garment industry has undergone a significant dissolution of jobs and a lowering of pay and conditions, Cantin examines how the experience of previous defeats inflicted on worker movements has led to a greater acknowledgement of workers of the necessity to mobilise on an international basis to complement and strengthen local forms of organisation. He suggests that these lessons are starting to lead to cautious yet important attempts to change the strategies pursued by organised labour in the North American garment industry