The Bangladesh ready-made garment industry has recently been affected by a number of terrible accidents, with the collapse of the Rana Plaza on 24 April 2013 as the deadliest garment-factory... Show moreThe Bangladesh ready-made garment industry has recently been affected by a number of terrible accidents, with the collapse of the Rana Plaza on 24 April 2013 as the deadliest garment-factory accident ever known. Under the pressure of renewed attention to the role and responsibilities of multinational corporations (MNCs) take responsibility for what happens in those factories, two initiatives have been adopted. These initiatives involve leading brands of European origin and North-American origin. With these initiatives the MNCs claim tostrengthen their corporate social responsibility (CSR) regarding those factories. From a regulatory perspective, they represent cases of transnational private regulation (TPR). Although CSR and TPR have become increasingly popular, these initiatives have been perceived with mixed enthusiasm, since they are adopted in a legal vacuum. Consequently, they raise questions about their legal status, their legitimacy and their implementation and compliance mechanisms. These same questions will be discussed in this article concerning the Bangladesh initiatives, in order to discern if they have the potential to contribute to improvingsafety and working conditions in the Bangladeshi garment industry, or if they are rather forms of window dressing. Show less
Ever since its constitution the ILO has developed and maintained a system of labour standards in order to create decent work all over the world. With the globalisation of the economy multinationals... Show moreEver since its constitution the ILO has developed and maintained a system of labour standards in order to create decent work all over the world. With the globalisation of the economy multinationals have gained an important position in furthering these labour standards throughout their value chains. From a regulatory point of view this development has resulted in a panoply of law and law-like initiatives within the global space in order to implement the labour standards. Much is already known about these initiatives from an individual and isolated perspective. Yet, little is known about their interactions in the global space. Whereas the concept of global space acknowledges the coexistence of different regulatory forms serving different roles, the concept of hybrid structures acknowledges the fact that these regulations interact in several configurations. The aim of this contribution is to map the main regulatory initiatives, to analyse their different roles in the global space of labour standards and to analyse in which configurations they interact. The findings of this analysis provide a more advanced and comprehensive understanding of the regulation of labour standards on the global level. Show less
