8 - Building Representative Structures at the Workplace Level

Summary

While much attention has been paid to creating deliberative and representational institutions at the transnational level, little focus has been placed on the creation of representative structures at the workplace level. Chapter 8 explores mechanisms of developing transnational industrial democracy at the workplace level. Efforts aimed at promoting worker representation such as the creation of democratically elected occupational safety and health committees under the Accord. We focus in particular on the workplace social dialogue programme by the Joint Ethical Trading Initiatives (JETI). Workplace social dialogue provides a potentially promising mechanism for enabling worker voice in a context of toxic industrial relations. We examine the enabling roles which brand played in developing dialogue at their supplier factories but also unveil the resultant tensions their involvement exposed in their relationship to factories and workers.