Re-Routing the Race to the Bottom? Transnational Corporations, Labor Practice Codes of Conduct and Workers' Right to Organise - the Case of Nike Inc

This book chapter considers the potential of corporate labour practice codes of conduct and their associated processes for monitoring and enforcement to advance the protection of trade union rights, taking as a case study the three codes which most strongly intersect with the debate on Nike Inc.'s labour practices: Nike's own code, the Fair Labor Association's code and the code of the Worker Rights Consortium. While only a minority of companies have adopted such codes, and even fewer have monitoring systems in place to ensure adherence, corporations like Nike are finding that a growing global civil society movement is in no mood to allow credibility with regard to labour rights and other social issues to be easily bought. Equally, activists are encountering strong resistance to independent and rigourous monitoring of corporate labour practices