Conference Agenda

Exploitation, forced labour, indecent ‘work-residence’, low pay and long hours, wage theft, dangerous working conditions, violence and sexual harassment are labour conditions persisting in the contemporary global economy. We lack analysis of the ways in which gendered and racial power relations can be mobilised within supply chains and shape patterns of labour exploitation. This paper explores the working and living conditions of migrant workers in Provence, the heartland of southern French fruit and vegetable industrial production. The analysis is based on ten-months’ fieldwork research, comprising 60 in-depth interviews as well as observations Post-COVID. Drawing on this empirical basis, the paper showcases that production and profit-making in the vegetable and fruit chains in Provence is reliant upon unequal historically-constituted social power relations and gendered and racialized workforce recruitment and management practices. Situations of labour exploitation, including in worst cases forced labour, have become part of an industry business strategy in a context of unequal wealth distribution along the supply chain, aggressive price competition, eroding labour rights and restrictive labour mobility regimes. These findings speak to debates on the role of social power relations in work relations and exploitation along global supply chains, its link to reproductive realms, and to discussion on how economic structures, more broadly, are embedded within and reproduce social inequalities.

In 2023, the German Supply Chain Due Diligence Act came into effect with the aim to prevent, among others, human rights violations in supply chains. Modern forms of slavery are prohibited by the new Act, and this prohibition covers suppliers of German companies operating outside Germany, thus including suppliers in Brazil. Because Germany is one of the main importers of coffee produced in Brazil and since there are still many workers in situations analogous to slavery in the Brazilian coffee industry, the new German rules are expected to have an impact in this sector of Brazilian economy. The present research paper intents to analyze the extent of this impact, including the applicability and its effects on the improvement of human rights protection in the Brazilian coffee sector. As methodology, the present paper will analyze the German recent bibliography on the new Act, Brazilian legal papers on modern slave work and legislation, as well as court decisions on the concept of slave work in both countries. The initial hypothesis raised is that in Brazil a large number of companies working in the coffee sector still use slave work and such practice remains often not punished. Although Brazilian law prohibiting modern slavery are strict, public policies of controlling and punishing are inefficient. Now the new German standards expected to be upheld in supply chains are high and German companies can be severely punished. The paper seeks to assess the extent of pressure the new act has on Brazilian suppliers and its effectiveness of Brazilian rules on slavery prohibition.

This paper illustrates the potential of the concept of global supply chains both for research on economic and labour dynamics and for development cooperation to contribute to regulatory compliance and decent work.

To this end, the wine chain in Chile is analysed, including the changes in market access during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this chain has been a positive example of insertion in global markets, where Chile ranks 4th in the world, with 7.8% of the volume and 4.9% of the total value of global wine exports, the average price of exported Chilean wine is still below the world average. In addition, large gaps in productivity and labour conditions persist between large wineries on the one hand, and smaller enterprises, especially those dedicated to the production and sale of grapes for the production of wine, on the other.

A tripartite pilot project initiated by the Labour Directorate and the ILO, involving vineyards of different sizes and considering labour aspects of the supply chain, demonstrated the potential of global supply chain and due diligence concepts to improve labour compliance and working conditions. For example, some wineries have adopted enterprise guidelines for commercial contracts with providers that explicitly incorporate labour dimensions.

The main innovations compared to previous work on the wine supply chain are to be found in the coordinated execution of research activities and development cooperation, and in the use of administrative tax records, in order to overcome the lack of disaggregation in employment surveys and estimate the volume and characteristics of formal employment.