“…When the collective interests of workers are disrespected, Brazil's Public Labour Attorney has the power to conduct administrative inquiries and sign 'termos de ajuste de conduta' (Terms of Behaviour Adjustment -TAC), which are legally binding contracts between signatories. These incentives, however, are almost always aimed at market niches and hard 9 It is true that the opposite is often the case and actually typical of certain production chains, such as chemicals (Mello e Silva and Rizek, 1997), textiles (Costa, 2006), civil construction, and the manufacture of large home appliances like stoves and refrigerators (Gitahy, 1997). In the automotive industry, because of the serious accidents caused by poor quality control at subcontracted companies, the transfer of technological and quality standards has helped to improve labour relations on the far edges of the productive chain (Carvalho, 2001;Marx, Salerno, and Zilbovicius, 2003); however, this still has not been enough to force these subcontractors to abide by the law.…”