Labour standards and regulation in global value chains: The case of the New Zealand Fishing Industry

Abstract

Building on the concept of polarity in global value chains (GVCs), we explore how the nature of the governance of a GVC can evolve and how contingencies can reshape governance arrangements. A case study of the New Zealand fishing industry highlights how parties inside and outside the GVC came to contest labour standards, laying the base for credible regulation. In 2011 through a series of convergent events, migrant crew on board South Korean fishing vessels, hitherto exploited, abused and isolated, emerged as a significant actor to bring about a clear transition in the governance of a multipolar GVC. In this paper we analyse the series of events which led to regulatory change and consider whether the dynamics from the case offer lessons for improving labour standards and regulation in GVCs more generally.

Enhancing the effectiveness of minimum employment standards in New Zealand

“…Nevertheless, in May 2012, the Government legislated to require reflagging from May 2016 (Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and other Matters) Amendment Act 2014). 4 The reasons for that decision are somewhat opaque but one major reason was that that the increasing publicity given to exploitation was increasingly posing a threat to international markets (Stringer et al, 2016(Stringer et al, : 1920.…”

“…However, on reflection, the politics of the response was understandable. Stringer et al (2016Stringer et al ( : 1920n the face of things, there were no major internal or business drivers for regulatory intervention by the New Zealand Government into labour standards in the charter vessel sector'. The decision to require only New Zealandflagged vessels in the EEZ was perhaps partly the politics of exasperation, as other measures to provide minimum standards had not only failed but had also been deliberately evaded by the industry.…”

Network learning: Episodes of interorganizational learning towards a collective performance goal

“…Often these firms, who are essentially part of a global value chain (Bair and Palpacuer, 2015;Stringer, Hughes, Whittaker and Haworth, 2016), consider their own resources in critical areas such as innovation, to be not entirely effective if they were to compete alone (Murto-Koivisto and Vesalainen, 1994;Tikkanen, 1998;YliRenko, Autio and Tontti, 2002). The various network forms used to compete in this setting are conceptualized by the knowledge-based theory of networks as venues for knowledge exchange (Maskell, 2001;Tallman et al, 2004;Weck and Blomqvist, 2005;Dyer and Hatch, 2006;van Wijk, Jansen and Lyles, 2008;Phelps, 2010), where resources, capabilities and knowledge are disseminated and circulated among members (Easterby-Smith, Lyles and Tsang, 2008).…”

Privatizing the commons: New approaches need broader evaluative criteria for sustainability

“…For example, MSC focuses substantially on ecological sustainability but does not consider the social conditions on the fishing vessels or in the processing industry as extensively, e.g. (Stringer et al 2016). It could be argued that most consumers are reliant on the certifying organization to provide the rigorous knowledge to support the claims of certification.…”