Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Cornell International Law Journal

Volume

57

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

In a global supply chain (GSC) setting, workers’ voice may be understood as the extent to which employees and others toiling in the supply chain are able to participate—individually and/or collectively—in decisions affecting their labor conditions and rights. Policy instruments may strengthen this voice insofar as they provide mechanisms enabling workers to identify and actualize their labor rights within the GSC. This Article initially situates the role of workers’ voice in GSCs by reference to the writings of political economist Albert O. Hirschman. In his classic book, Exit Voice, and Loyalty, and related articles, Hirschman focused on mechanisms for addressing declining performance in firms, organizations, and states. He identified two basic responses to such declines and their attendant dissatisfactions: exit and voice.

Hirschman’s analysis of the relationship between exit and voice is directly relevant to issues that arise in the contemporary GSC setting. At the same time, the distinctive obstacles facing workers within GSC operations reflect a fundamental power imbalance between employers and workers that Hirschman did not fully recognize. This imbalance calls for new mechanisms that can enable and facilitate workers’ power, in order to redeem Hirschman’s commitment to voice as a meaningful option.

Accordingly, this Article proposes a modified framework to integrate and apply workers’ voice in the GSC setting. Relying on the Draft Text for an ILO Convention on Decent Work in Global Supply Chains, formulated by an international group of labor rights scholars, the Article contends that state regulation must play a distinctive role in enhancing prospects for workers’ voice within GSCs. It goes on to address how that voice should be linked to mechanisms for preventing labor rights abuses, in both process and outcome terms, and also to remedial approaches that can make prevention effective in vindicating the role of voice.

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