Subcontracting and low pay kill: lessons from the health and safety consequences of sweated labour in the garment industry, 1880–1920

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, regular reports of eroding safety standards and deaths among workers, customers and other members of the public in an array of industries ranging from transport (ride-share platforms, long-haul trucking and aviation), construction (including, in Australia, insulation batts installation), mining, oil rigs and refineries, and factories, have emerged. These workplace deaths shared one largely overlooked characteristic; all involved subcontracted work arrangements and sometimes very elaborate supply chains. Where these fatalities have been subject to critical investigation, three causal factors consistently emerge, namely economic/cost pressures compromising safety, disorganisation, and regulatory failure. These failures raise important political and industrial questions, not the least of which is the social cost of dominant neoliberal policy-settings that encourage subcontracting practices. Furthermore, historical object lessons can provide insights because subcontracting of work is by no means new. Drawing on evidence from the garment industry, predominantly in the UK, but with reference to the USA and other countries, this paper highlights substantial historical evidence of the safety risks embedded in this type of business/work arrangement. The inquiries and investigations into sweated labour discussed here not only highlighted risks to health; they also suggest a contemporary need for urgent reform to the regulation of work in order to mitigate the prospective risks of injury and disease, including epidemics.

Production subcontracting and the distribution of industrial activities in Onitsha metropolis Anambra State, Nigeria

“…The study showed that workers in subcontracting organizations are also significantly more productive to workers in non-subcontracted businesses, according to the research. Nevertheless, this may be attributed to organizational climate (Tan et al, 2021) among the subcontracted and nonsubcontracted businesses Although production subcontracting has generated substantial discussion at a general level (Kimura, 2002;Taymaz & Kilicaslan, 2005;Grossman & Heplman, 2005;Lawal, Ajonbadi & Otokiti, 2014;Ogbari, Ajagbe, Isiavwe & Ade-Turton, 2015;Eze & Idiake, 2017;Olusanya, 2017;Kumar, 2017;Gregson & Quinlan, 2020), very little research has been done from an industrial activities point of view as well as the distribution of these activities along industrial lines in Nigeria. Industrial activities subcontracted by industries are those activities/tasks-manufacturing, packaging, distribution/transportation, and marketing and others that lead to the production of a finished good/item.…”

COVID-19, Health and Vulnerable Societies

“…Poor and closely interlinked working and living conditions encouraged disease and its spread and discouraged disease reporting by both workers afraid to lose their livelihood and economically motivated landlords. Between 1870 and 1925 a series of independent investigations by the Lancet, Florence Kelley, and others, a string of government inquiries and published research identified the health damaging effects of insecure and precarious employment (and it was often labelled precisely that) in terms of increased risk of injury, poor physical and mental health (including suicide), hazard exposures, the spread of infectious disease, and the cascading community health effects associated with poverty/irregular income, under-nourishment and the like in Europe, Canada, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand ( Gregson and Quinlan, 2020 ). In short, we are re-discovering what was widely known a century ago about precarious work, including the increased risk of infectious disease spread related to insecure work and crowded working and living conditions, especially amongst immigrants and vulnerable communities with existing comorbidities.…”