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2014 15: 184 originally published online 22 November 2012EthnographyGeert De Neve

critique neoliberal labour regimesFordism, flexible specialization and CSR: How Indian garment workers

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DOI: 10.1177/1466138112463801

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Article

Fordism, flexiblespecialization and CSR:How Indian garmentworkers critiqueneoliberal labour regimes

Geert De NeveUniversity of Sussex, UK

Abstract

Global production and trade networks have significant transformative effects on

production regimes across the Global South, and tend to produce particular work

regimes and workplaces at the sites of production. CSR (Corporate Social

Responsibility) interventions similarly seek to reshape production processes in their

search to improve labour conditions and protect workers’ rights. However, workers’

voices and their preferences for particular work regimes and employment conditions

are rarely considered in such debates. Drawing on data from the Tiruppur garment

cluster in South India, the article presents ethnographic evidence on what workers

themselves make of the work regimes and ethical codes of labour practice produced

under neoliberal governance. It explores how garment workers engage with different

labour regimes and why some workers actively seek to avoid employment in companies

where Fordist regimes prevail and CSR policies are implemented. Such avoidance and

exit strategies amount to a critique of particular neoliberal labour regimes that seek to

control labour and curtail its freedom and dignity at work.

Keywords

global production networks, CSR, Fordism, flexible specialization, flexibility, garment

industry, labour, agency

Making t-shirts, making workers

Global production networks and the corporate ethical governance interventionsthat accompany them have begun to transform the lives of workers at the sites of

Corresponding author:

Geert De Neve, Department of Anthropology, School of Global Studies, Arts C, C240, University of Sussex,

Falmer, Brighton BN1 9SJ, UK.

Email: [email protected]

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production in significant ways. This article draws on two bodies of literature toexplore how global production regimes and corporate interventions impact onworkers and how, in turn, workers perceive and engage with the work regimesavailable to them. Recent research on Global Production Networks (GPN) hasbegun to pay attention to the agency of labourers employed in industries thatproduce for global markets. Within labour geography, there is a rapidly expandingbody of literature that argues for a more committed study of labour and labouragency within the context of global capitalism (Castree, 2007; Lier, 2007; Coe et al.,2008; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011). In much of this literature, however, labouragency has been primarily conceived of in terms of collective, organized labouractivism and formally institutionalized trade unions and workers’ collectives(Cumbers et al., 2008; Riisgaard, 2009; Riisgaard and Hammer, 2011). Lier,amongst others, has acknowledged, however, that such a conceptualization hastended to ‘overlook worker agency that is not articulated as collectively organised,political strategies’ (2007: 829; Coe and Jordhus-Lier, 2011). This article focuseson forms of labour agency that are neither collective nor formally institutionalizedyet that reveal labour’s ability to act and strategize within the labour regimesavailable to them.

Recent scholarship has considered new approaches to the study of labour withinGPNs in order to capture the multiple dimensions of labour agency as well as thediverse social environments that shape it (Rainnie et al., 2011; Selwyn, 2011).Neilson and Pritchard have called for a ‘horizontal approach’ to complement ver-tically orientated analyses of GPNs (2010: 1834). Analysing the insertion of ethicaland fair trade agendas into existing trade networks, Neilson and Pritchard arguethat to capture the ways in which such initiatives are incorporated into regionalproduction systems, a ‘horizontal’ approach is needed, which explores the role oflocal factors, such as gender, age and livelihoods, and of regional connections, suchas those established through commuting and migrating (see also Leslie and Reimer,1999). In this article I draw on a ‘horizontal’ approach not only to reveal the waysin which vertical trade and production networks ‘root’ themselves within regionaleconomies and impact on labour but also to unveil the dynamics and constraints ofworkers’ agency within such networks. A horizontal approach, it is argued, con-siders localized forms of production organization as well as the livelihood strate-gies, social norms and relations of reproduction that shape workers’ engagementwith global production networks (Carswell and De Neve, in press).

Lund-Thomsen et al. similarly argue that the working conditions of footballstitchers across production sites in Asia can only be understood through a frame-work that considers not only the global value chain but also regional processesof upgrading or downgrading and local forms of production organization(Lund-Thomsen et al., 2011: 12–13). To date, however, little effort has beenmade to link different forms of production organization and different work regimesto the working lives and agency of men and women employed in export industries.The article therefore develops an analysis of GPNs that places the social embed-dedness of GPNs centre stage and that recognizes how labourers’ engagements

De Neve 185



with GPN employment is shaped by the wider compulsions of livelihoods, gen-dered norms, job and migration histories, and values of autonomy and dignity atwork (Carswell and De Neve, in press). To illustrate the argument, the articledraws on ethnographic evidence from the Tiruppur garment manufacturing andexport cluster in Tamil Nadu, South India, where large export firms and subcon-tracted forms of production co-exist in a post-liberalization environment. Thisindustrial cluster forms an ideal site to explore how workers perceive, engagewith and react to different forms of production organization and diverse workregimes in the era of neoliberalism.

A second body of literature that informs the argument is the critical scholarshipthat has emerged around corporate ethical governance and the transformativeeffects of corporate interventions on labour conditions and working lives atglobal sites of production. Within the garment sector, CSR interventions by andlarge take the form of corporate codes of conduct and voluntary labour standardsthat suppliers in the Global South are asked to comply with. Through the impos-ition of such ethical codes and standards, Western buyers seek to influence thesocial and environmental conditions of employment in their outsourcing networks(Nadvi and Waltring, 2004; Nadvi, 2008; Barrientos et al., 2003; Barrientos andSmith, 2007). Yet few scholars have questioned what such codes and standards ‘do’to the companies and workers on whom they are imposed. What sorts of workregimes and industrial disciplines do they produce and what sorts of ‘values’,‘workers’ and ‘persons’ do they seek to engender? Corporate ethical interventionsare never value-neutral; they aim to promote particular regimes of production,particular values of work, and particular kinds of workers or subjectivities. In anevocative discussion of the transformation and privatization of a Polish food pro-cessing company, Elizabeth Dunn (2004) described the ways in which a specificcategory of person was introduced in a Polish-based factory by American manage-ment. A neoliberal concept of personhood was brought to bear on the Polishfactory workers and the concept of a self-activating and self-motivating individualwas promoted through new job evaluation and auditing mechanisms. Yet, cru-cially, this neoliberal construct was also contested by Polish workers who contin-ued to draw on another concept of the working person, one which was rooted in asocialist idea of personal connections, nurtured by exchange and gift-giving (Dunn,2004: 94–129). Dunn reveals that while standards acted ‘as engines for generatingknowledge about products, processes, and people’ (2004: 184), the newly importedcategories and routines were also being reworked and contested by Polish workersand could be read as contestations that form a basis for a critique of contemporarycapitalism itself (2004: 8).

Dolan, with reference to ethical trade initiatives, has made a similar point: whilestandards, codes and the audit trails that accompany them intend to improvelabour standards and promote workers’ rights, ‘they also produce a highly regu-lated sphere of production that is governed through a set of ‘‘universal’’ ethics – aneoliberal form of indirect rule’ (Dolan, 2010: 39). Much of the regulation involvedis concerned with the production of particular work environments (clean, well-lit

186 Ethnography 15(2)



and well-aired factories, etc.), particular work regimes (8-hour working day, limitedovertime, etc.) and particular types of workers (on permanent contracts, with socialbenefits, etc.).

Yet, as will be shown in this article, while compliance with such regulations isusually enforced with the stated aim of protecting and empowering workers, theheavy hand of intervention is often locally experienced as surveillance and control,and the regulations often end up restricting the autonomy and freedom of workerswho are located in social and cultural environments that differ quite radically fromthe places where ethical policies are formulated. As Dolan puts it, ‘the universalrights and values incarnated in standards are largely a priori formulations that havebeen developed with little (if any) consultation with producers or southern stake-holders who represent them’ (Dolan, 2010: 39). A recent study of local manufac-turers’ reactions to Western-based CSR initiatives in the Sialkot soccer ballindustry, Pakistan, similarly reveals that local manufacturers widely perceiveCSR interventions as part of a continued Western project of economic and culturalimperialism (Khan and Lund-Thomsen, 2011). CSR interventions are experiencedby manufacturers as a quintessentially Western tool by which buyers extract eco-nomic resources while simultaneously ignoring and devaluing ‘local traditions,ways of doing things and concerns about women’s access to work’ (Khan andLund-Thomsen, 2011: 84). Indeed, corporate codes of conduct are effectivelyimposing universal dictates on what constitutes appropriate and acceptable workregimes, in the process standardizing and rationalizing modes of production (DeNeve, 2009). This particular type of ‘governmentality’ produced by corporate inter-ventions (Dolan, 2007, 2010) raises new questions about the fit (or lack of fit)between the values and practices embodied in ethical standards and the valuesand practices pursued by workers themselves (Blowfield and Dolan, 2008: 10;Nadvi, 2008; Lund-Thomsen and Nadvi, 2009). While manufacturers in theGlobal South are ambivalent about Western CSR initiatives – to say the least –little is known about how labourers relate to the work regimes generated by ethicalinterventions.

In what follows, the article first discusses the ways in which the pressures ofglobal commercial dynamics and corporate ethical interventions combine to createa particular type of garment factory and garment worker in the South Indian textileindustry, while simultaneously generating a diversity of forms of production organ-ization on the ground. It then explores how garment workers in South India engagewith the different work regimes available to them, what they seek from exportmarket jobs, and what they value in their everyday working lives. Given thehuge diversity of garment workers in Tiruppur, the study pays special attentionto the differences between men and women, people at different stages of the lifecycle, and to different categories of workers such as ‘locals’, commuters andmigrants (Heyer, forthcoming). It is argued that a desire for flexible work routines,autonomy on the shop floor, and personal freedom and dignity are key factors thatshape and simultaneously constrain the agency of garment workers. Moreover,workers’ preferences for particular factories and work regimes not only contribute

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to the shaping of the local organization of production but also constitute a critiqueof new forms of time discipline and spatial control that seek to curb their freedomat work.

The argument is based on ethnographic material gathered during a year offieldwork conducted in 2008–9 in the garment manufacturing and export clusterof Tiruppur, located in the western part of Tamil Nadu, South India. Tiruppur isone of the largest knitwear garment clusters in South Asia and has known almostuninterrupted growth since the early 1970s when manufacturers began to export toEurope. Today, the cluster is a leading centre of garment exports for the worldmarket and constitutes one of India’s important foreign exchange earners, with atotal export value of Rs 11,250 crore or $2.4 billion in 2008–9. Estimates suggestthat there are about 10,000 production units in Tiruppur, employing more than400,000 workers, but actual numbers fluctuate and may well be higher than this(De Neve, 2003). Field research in Tiruppur included a workers’ survey, a firms’survey, and interviews with workers, labour contractors and company managementas well as with wider stakeholders such as trade unions and industrial organiza-tions. The material presented here draws primarily on interviews and participant-observation carried out among workers and labour contractors in the factories andresidential areas of Tiruppur.

Fordist-compliant versus flexible-non-compliant firms inTiruppur

Starting as a manufacturing cluster of undergarments for the domestic market inthe 1950s, Tiruppur transformed itself into a successful producer of knitwear gar-ments for the global market during the 1980s and 1990s. Tiruppur is commonlydescribed as a site of flexible specialization, where production is organized within ageographically concentrated industrial cluster consisting of an extensive network ofproduction units connected through subcontracting and job-working linkages(Chari, 2004; Vijayabaskar, 2005). The commercial dynamics of global productionnetworks, however, have exerted contradictory pressures on this expanding clustersince at least the 1990s (Barrientos, 2008; Scott, 2006). Today the cluster can nolonger be simply portrayed as a site of flexible specialization as it now containsmultiple production and labour regimes within it. The global commercial pressureshave been twofold. On the one hand, increasingly powerful global buyers andretailers have been able to exert pressure on suppliers to reduce costs, shortenlead times and increase ‘just in time’ efficiency and productivity. On the otherhand, suppliers are subjected to ever more stringent product quality and socialstandards. Or, as Barrientos put it, ‘suppliers are thus caught in a Catch 22 situ-ation, where they have to deliver on quality (and associated value) which is passedup the value chain, whilst cost and risk is being passed down the chain’ (2008: 982).

In order to meet the demands of swelling export volumes, enhanced quality andethical standards, and intensified competition, a number of Tiruppur manufac-turers and exporters began to vertically integrate, or to combine all processes of




production from knitting cloth to packing garments within one firm. These verti-cally integrated firms rapidly grew in size during the 1990s and early 2000s as theyreceived ever larger orders from major buyers around the globe. To cope withrising volumes they also began to apply Taylorist management principles andFordist modes of production organization in which production is broken downinto smaller tasks along a garment assembly line (Collins, 2003). But flexible spe-cialization did not disappear. To the contrary, the commercial pressures on thecluster also led to a continued thriving of smaller firms connected through net-works of contracting. Many manufacturers did not avail themselves of the capitalor the necessary flow of export orders to upscale. They continued to produce on asmaller scale, through flexible specialization (usually by focusing only on knittingor garment production) and by means of informal and contract-based modes oflabour deployment. These firms not only produce smaller orders for less attractiveglobal buyers but they also continue to act as subcontractors to the larger exportfirms, who are rarely able to produce all orders in-house anyway.

As a result of such contradictory market forces, two main types of export gar-ment manufacturing units (aka CMT or cutting/making/trimming units) can befound in Tiruppur today: the large export companies that employ hundreds ofgarment workers on what resembles the Fordist assembly line, and the smallerflexible workshops that employ a variable number of tailors producing garmentson a casual basis and in a flexible manner. The large factories use what is locallyreferred to as ‘the line system’: production is broken down into a series of differentoperations and the garment passes along a single line of tailors who are responsiblefor one particular type of stitch each. Tailors spend their entire day repeating thesame type of stitch to the same part of the garment. Such factories work to fixedshift times and under the watchful eye of line supervisors.

Alongside these large export companies, we find thousands of smaller work-shops where a constantly changing number of workers are employed throughlabour contractors to produce smaller batches of garments. Here, garments areproduced by workers who perform different stitches on each garment. In thesesmaller production units workers are casually and flexibly employed in terms ofworking hours, the number of operations they are required to perform, and thechanging styles they produce. Labour contractors are the key source of labourrecruitment in these firms, whose main competitive advantage is their flexible spe-cialization. Fordist and Taylorist regimes, thus, by and large overlap with thelarger manufacturing companies, while the flexible mode of production is typicallyfound in the smaller workshops. Importantly, even the largest export houses do attimes resort to flexible modes of production in order to meet shipping deadlines oraccommodate fluctuating levels of demand. Such flexible modes of productioninclude putting out work to subcontractors as well as relying on labour contractorsto recruit additional workers in-house on an ad hoc and casual basis.

Increasingly, however, organization of production and regimes of labourdeployment are also shaped by the ethical codes of labour practice imposed byglobal buyers (Barrientos and Smith, 2007; Blowfield and Dolan, 2008;

De Neve 189



Lund-Thomsen and Nadvi, 2010; Nadvi, 2008). For the Tiruppur garment indus-try, these requirements take the form of independent company codes of conduct,which are private company initiatives that allow buyers to select supply firms onthe basis of their relative compliance with a series of regulations.1 In addition,several international voluntary labour standards have made their inroads intoTiruppur, including the Social Accountability 8000 standard (SA 8000), theWorldwide Responsible Apparel Production Certification (WRAP) and the ETIBase Code. These are generic standards that seek to harmonize social minimumstandards and independent company codes across industries (Nadvi and Waltring,2004; Tallontire, 2007). Tiruppur export firms can obtain certification for theirgarment factories by putting the required production and social management sys-tems in place and by having their units audited by an independent auditing com-pany (De Neve, 2009). However, only the largest export firms have been able tocomply with the ethical codes and standards imposed by buyers. They are thecompanies who are able to invest in the required physical environments (factorybuildings, canteens, hostels, toilet facilities, etc.) and to bring their labour manage-ment systems in line with those of the standards (including eight-hour shifts, regu-lation of overtime and provision of regular contracts).

Crucially, there seems to be a close ‘fit’ between the demands of corporate eth-ical standards and those of Fordist production regimes. Both seek to produce workenvironments and labour regimes in which a regularly employed labour force pro-duces a mass product according to well specified tasks, fixed time schedules andunder close supervision; both discourage more flexible, casual and irregular pro-duction arrangements. While the Fordist company’s rationale behind this is tooptimize productivity and maximize profit, corporate ethical interventions seekto impose labour standards that lead to regular employment patterns and avoidthe sorts of exploitation that yield bad publicity for Western retailers. Both, how-ever, produce a form of governance (Blowfield and Dolan, 2008; Dolan, 2008) or a‘gaze’ (Foucault, 1973) that seeks to maintain strict control over productionregimes and workers’ movements. From a worker’s perspective, employment in acompliant firm means that they are more likely to be on a permanent payroll,benefit from a social security scheme and pension fund, and be paid a fixedhourly wage and a monthly salary. In theory, employees work an eight-hourshift, typically from 8.30am to 5.30pm, with a one-hour lunch break and two teabreaks announced by the ringing of a bell. In practice, overtime remains a regularfeature of employment even in the largest firms. The physical conditions of work insuch companies tend to vary from good to excellent, with most companies provid-ing spacious, airy, clean and well-lit work environments in compliance with healthand safety regulations.

Furthermore, corporate ethical codes and labour standards not only map ontobut also reproduce and reinforce Fordist production regimes. Indeed, corporatelabour codes and standards are playing an increasingly central role in the fixingand rigidifying of labour processes within large export companies by requiringcompanies to regulate overtime, standardize contracts and avoid casual and




contract labour. Through such measures they seek to produce highly regularizedlabour regimes and counteract the flexible deployment of labour found in smaller,flexible firms. In Tiruppur it is the largest Fordist firms that try hardest tocomply with buyers’ ethical codes and standards. They are also the ones mostsubject to repeated and intrusive inspections and social audits on the shop floor(De Neve, 2009).

The majority of manufacturers, however, find it difficult to comply withthe demands of Westerns buyers and continue to produce garments undernon-compliant regimes. Such labour regimes include employment through labourcontractors, limited job security, piece-rate payments, regular and extensive over-time work, and limited improvements to physical working environments.Flexibility being their comparative advantage within the industry, such firmsthrive on a workforce whose numbers they can increase or decrease as needed.What needs particular emphasis is the extent to which the use of contract labour,recruited and managed through contractors, has become a common form of labourrecruitment within such smaller firms. But, not all is bad here: as contractlabourers, workers have the potential of earning considerably more than theymake in large, compliant firms, and, as we shall see, they benefit from valuableflexibilities and freedoms that make their working lives more manageable andpleasurable.

Why one-size-doesn’t-fit-all: What garment work meansfor labourers

Tiruppur’s CMT landscape thus consists of a parallel system, in which Fordist/compliant and flexible/non-compliant companies exist side by side within a singlecluster. This echoes Barrientos’s finding that the combined pressures for risingproduct quality and ethical standards on the one hand, and cost reduction onthe other hand, has produced the existence of a ‘parallel workforce’ in globalproduction networks. A core regular workforce is used to maintain quality andconsistency of output, complemented by the use of highly flexible casualized work-ers to meet variable just-in-time deadlines at low cost’ (Barrientos, 2008: 982).While in Tiruppur such parallel workforces are to be found in parallel companies,they can sometime be located in the same company too. What is beyond doubt,though, is that the flexible workforce dominates the industry, and that the Fordist/compliant firms continue to employ only a minority of the cluster’s labour force.

In what follows I explore what workers themselves make of the ‘benefits’ con-ferred by Fordist companies and the ethical standards they implement, and whatdrives garment workers to prefer either employment in large, compliant exporthouses as a ‘company employee’ or in smaller, non-compliant flexible firms as acasual ‘contract labourer’. In particular, I seek to explain why certain garmentworkers actively seek to avoid companies where Fordist regimes prevail andwhere CSR policies are implemented. Two factors seem to shape workers’ choices:their livelihood needs, which are in turn affected by age, gender, life cycle and

De Neve 191



migration histories, and their sense of autonomy and dignity at work. In particular,the ethnographic material presented below illustrates how workers value thosework environments that allow them to retain control over their working livesand shows how they seek to evade regimes of time discipline and spatial controlthat reduce their freedom at work. The avoidance of particular work regimeseffectively amounts to the avoidance of the ‘production gaze’ (Foucault, 1973)that seeks to rob them of basic freedoms and dignity at work.

‘There you are like a bird in a cage’: Reflections on freedom,flexibility and dignity

I first met Mohan when he worked as a Singer tailor in a small workshop oppositeour house in the centre of Tiruppur. Mohan’s father came to Tiruppur in 1997,after having made losses in a small tailoring shop in Madurai, about 200 km to thesouth of Tiruppur. Having studied up to 5th standard and learned Singer tailoringin the tailor shop of his uncle, Mohan started to work in an export company inTiruppur at the age of 16. Aged 28 now, Mohan is unable to tell me how manyexport companies he has worked for in Tiruppur: ‘100, maybe 200, I don’t keeptrack!’ He works for different labour contractors and follows them to whatevercompany needs a team of Singer tailors. As is typical of tailors in the exportindustry, Mohan regularly moves from company to company and may work afew days in one unit followed by a few months in another one. In December2008, Mohan worked in Modern Fashions, a small garment workshop in thecentre of town, where he had joined the team of the Singer contractor whoneeded an extra tailor to finish an order. Mohan always works for piece-ratesand mentioned this in one of our first conversations: ‘I can earn well in this job,we earn a minimum of Rs 350 to 400 per day as Singer tailors, but we can makeeven Rs 1000 per day. I earned Rs 3000 last week, and I can easily make Rs 12,000per month, and sometimes even Rs 20,000!’

But Mohan does not always just work as a tailor; sometimes he operates as acontractor himself and recruits tailors to work for him. In fact, by January 2009Mohan had left his contractor in Modern Fashions following an argument. Heexplained that disagreements typically arise about piece-rates: ‘We got low ratesfrom the contractor. If I ask Rs 3.50 per piece and he is only willing to give me Rs3, then we will simply walk out and tell him to get someone else. And we go and findwork with another contractor. If time is good, we can stay with the same contractorand in the same company for years on end and do well’. But time was not good forMohan. He left and started as a Singer contractor himself, first in a small nearby unitand then again in Modern Fashions, where he worked as a contractor until August2009. Work in this company went fairly well, with a regular flow of orders and thusalso of new contracts. But by July 2009Mohan became dissatisfied with the low ratesthat he received from the owner and with the repeated delays in payments, which inturn made it hard for him to pay his tailors. On leaving the company in August, heexplained: ‘I left the contract, it wasn’t worth the trouble, and I joined again as a




tailor with another contractor in a new company.’When I visited him in this new unitin October 2009, Mohan was beaming again, telling me that the rates he was receiv-ing were excellent: ‘I now get Rs 8.50 per piece and I can do 150 pieces per day!’I made a quick calculation and realized he could now make Rs 1275 per day. Thefollowing Saturday evening Mohan called to tell me proudly that he had made Rs5600 that week: ‘You see, there as a contractor I got Rs 3000 for six days of work,and here I have earned Rs 5600 as a tailor for only four and a half days of work!’Mohan revels in the competitive spirit of the shop floor and derives much of hisdignity and indeed self-identity from the skill and speed with which he is able toproduce intricate and high-quality garments.

On several occasions, whenMohan and his brother Palaniveel were talking aboutthe many ‘risks’ of their job, I asked them why they did not join a large export housewhere they could enjoy job security, regular wages and other social security benefits.But they dismissed this option out of hand: ‘Here, there is no tension and no head-ache; in large companies there is lots of stress. Also, here there is no timing, we can goand come as we like; we don’t have to follow fixed shifts. There we get no madipu(respect, recognition) from the owners and managers for what we do. And anyway,there the salary is inadequate; there even Singer tailors are paid shift-rates!’ But whatabout PF (Provident Fund) and ESI (Employees’ State Insurance), I asked. ‘PF is ofno use to us, only 20 per cent of the companies actually pay it, and ESI contributionsreduce the salary even further!’ On another occasion I asked Rajkumar (26), apowertable tailor in Modern Fashions who is paid shift-rates, the same questions.He replied: ‘There [in large export houses] you can’t talk and be free, while here – aslong as we make the garment without mistakes – we can chat and be jolly! In largecompanies there are huge numbers of people working and I was scared of the crowdstoo.’ In Modern Fashions, the workers all know each other well; they spend timetogether playing cards in the evening, visiting each other’s houses and going to thecinema on days without work.

When asked why they are working for a contractor in a small unit rather than asa regular company employee, the standard response is always ‘we just can’t workthere!’ Inbaraj, Mohan’s cousin-brother who is only 23 but has several years ofexperience as a Singer tailor in Tiruppur, clarified what he meant by ‘we just can’twork there’:

In those companies, there are too many rules and regulations! We have to be in our

seat by 8.30am, we can only leave at 10.30am for the tea break and then for

lunch . . . If we are not feeling well or there is a family function, we cannot get

leave. We can’t work there. Those companies are like a jail; you can’t escape! You

are like a bird in a cage! Here we are free and we can go and come as we like; you see if

I suddenly have some urgent work, I can tell the contractor and go; we haven’t got

those problems here!

While a typical working day in the small subcontracting units also runsfrom 8.30am till 8.30pm, the tailors do enjoy a considerable amount of freedom.

De Neve 193



Often they do not arrive until closer to 9am, and those paid piece-rates may arriveeven later. One day, I half-offended Senthil, the powertable contractor, by askingwhen he walked into the company at 9.30am: ‘why do you guys always start so latein the morning?’ He retorted with a question: ‘When do office people start work?’ Isaid: ‘At 9 or 9.30am.’ ‘Well, that’s also how I work’, he replied, ‘I get up at 8am,take a bath, have breakfast, take my daughter to school, and then I come to thecompany. I work like office people do!’ Senthil likened himself to an office worker,not in terms of the actual work he does but in terms of the control he has over hisworking hours and his work routines, a control which he highly values as a matterof both freedom and dignity at work. Tailors also emphasize the importance ofbeing able to be ‘their own boss’, which is usually expressed through phrases suchas ‘nobody asks us when we come and go’, ‘we can be free and jolly here’, and ‘herewe have no tension, no supervisor or owner chasing us up’.

When employed by labour contractors workers do indeed enjoy a considerableamount of freedom at work, not least because the relationships between tailors andcontractors are close and cordial. Many of the tailors’ remarks above emphasizethe sociality of the shop floor, which is widely valued among workers. Contractorsand their team members are often related as kin, as migrants or commuters comingfrom the same village, as members of the same caste, as friends, or as a combin-ation of any of the above. Mohan’s team of Singer tailors, for example, includesone of his brothers, his sister, his cousin, and a friend from his home town. If heneeds more tailors, he calls on his sister’s husband, other bothers and other localfriends. Flexibility always works both ways. If a tailor needs a two-hour lunchbreak in the middle of the day to take care of some ‘personal work’, he can easilyget this time off from the contractor. And the women working as checking ladieswho are paid by the shift can easily get half a shift off whenever they need it. Inreturn, team members have to be flexible as well: if an urgent order has to be sentoff, they will stay on till midnight and work a double shift, and it is not uncommonfor them to work a vidi night (or dawn night) if a deadline is just around the corner,which means work till the early morning hours, usually about 5am. If they do notmanage to finish the order by Saturday evening, the tailors come back on Sundayand work a seven-day week. Tailors are aware of the importance of keeping todeadlines and know that if they fail to meet a shipping date the order might berejected and salary payments never made.

Male tailors value the freedoms they enjoy at work and they see the workshop asa site that blurs kinship, friendships and work relationships and where the routinesof work can be brought in line with the rhythms of domestic life. Workers enjoy thefreedom to have their earphones plugged in to listen to music while at work, to talkon the phone to family and friends when needed, and walk out for a break when-ever they feel like having a cigarette or just stretching their legs. Work in largeexport houses and compliant firms, by contrast, is dictated by fixed shifts, a lack ofspatial mobility and constant supervision on the line. Moreover, Fordist workregimes reduce the time and space available to enact sociality on the shop floor,which is hugely valued by workers who seek to make the long working day more




enjoyable and diverse. For these young and dynamic tailors, many of whom aremigrants, the tightness of the labour market and their highly marketable skillsenable them to take the risk of working for smaller, non-compliant firms. Whiletheir contracts in any small firm are always limited in duration and job security isalmost non-existent, their ability to earn more through long hours and piece-ratepayments and their access to networks of tailors and contractors enable them tooffset at least some of the risks of work in flexible companies. As we will see below,older men make different trade-offs and may prefer to escape the small but highlycontract-bound, competitive and pressurized work routines of the small firm.

‘Even if a tsunami comes . . . ’: What women value at work

The freedoms that male workers so value are equally – and possibly even more –significant for women workers, who dwell at length on the differences in temporalroutines and supervisory regimes between large export houses and smallerworkshops.

One afternoon, I was talking to a group of eight women, who were checking andtrimming export garments. All of them were standing around two large tables atthe centre of a small room, attached to the rear of the workshop owner’s house.The room had no windows but a roof that let in some daylight through four glassroof tiles. Above the checking tables hung a fan and three tube lights that wereswitched on in the evenings when it got dark. This was a fairly typical ‘checkingcentre’, set up by a man who busies himself with taking garments back and forth toexport companies. Trimming and checking of finished garments is routinely out-sourced by larger export houses to small specialist checking centres, especiallywhen deadlines loom near. The room looked rather dark and crammed to me,with hardly any space to stand between the checking tables and the walls. I there-fore asked the women whether they would prefer to work in a larger company withbetter working facilities and with a range of benefits such as ESI, PF, etc. Some ofthem said that they had worked in such companies before, but they were all inagreement that such companies do not suit them: the strict shift timings and therestrictions on movements in such companies do not allow them to juggle paidwork with their domestic and family responsibilities. One of these responsibilitiesincludes the collection of water from nearby public taps. Municipality water isreleased once or twice a week, but never at predictable times. When the waterarrives, it runs only for a few hours and women have to be able to go home andfill their buckets. ‘Here’, the women explained, ‘we can go home to fill our bucketswhenever the water is released and then come back to work, but in those companiesthat would never be allowed. Whether water comes or even a tsunami comes, wehave to stick to our checking tables!’ Can you always get leave here, I asked? ‘Yes,he’s our chetan (older brother, in Malayalam), isn’t he, so he is really good for us!We can go and come as we like!’

All eight women live just minutes away from the checking centre and are allowedby the owner to run home whenever the word spreads that water has been released.

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Similarly, in the mornings they arrive after having sent their children to school anddone the day’s cooking. At the 6pm tea break, they all go home again to let theirchildren in from school and to feed them a snack. By 6.30pm they are back at work– with or without children – and continue till 8.30 pm, when they return home toprepare the evening meal. Unlike men, few women garment workers have access tomeans of transport (cycles and bikes) and few can afford to spend the extra timeneeded to commute to companies further away. Women prefer work that is close tohome so that they can run back and forth throughout the day to take care ofwhatever work needs attention at home, and they value the fact that they canbring their children to the workshop whenever needed.2

Rather than mentioning the well-lit and airy workspaces, these women dwelledat length on the strict supervision and rigid work discipline that mark the workroutines in big export companies. Gayathri, who used to work in a large exporthouse, explained it this way: ‘There, we can’t even talk to the person next to us. Thesupervisor will immediately shout at us and say that our work will be affected. Weare not even allowed to look left or right. We have to work like this only!’ – and sheillustrated how she was physically expected to work, by bowing her head deep overthe table and looking straight down onto the garment in front of her. All thewomen burst out in laughter but confirmed that this is indeed how they areexpected to stand at their tables and work in such companies. They explainedhow in this checking centre they can chat and discuss the loves and losses intheir lives, and share experiences amongst each other. They then turned to a dis-cussion about love and love marriages (see also Salzinger, 2003). Women value theshop floor as a site for social interaction and for the production of sociality itself,which is facilitated by regimes that allow them spatial mobility and communicationat work. For women, flexibility is essential not only to make their everyday workroutines more pleasurable and satisfying but to enable their participation in paidemployment in the first place. What they require are spatial and time flexibilitiesthat allow them to combine their domestic work with paid employment. All of thisgoes some way to explain why small local units, like the checking centre above, arepreferred by women – especially married women with children – and why theyactively avoid large export houses where Fordist production lines, compoundedby ethical codes of conduct, impose inflexible work regimes and a supervisory‘gaze’ that many women are reluctant to subject themselves to.

Who then is working in Fordist, compliant firms? After all, those companies dorecruit a workforce too. To understand who chooses to work as a regular companyemployee, and why, we need to look at workers’ life course as well as their migra-tion status. Let me say something about both. As women progress from beingyoung unmarried women, to wives, to mothers of young children and finallymothers of working adults, their own options and priorities shift considerablyover time. As young women, they may opt to work in large export concerns,as checkers, helpers and even tailors, and live in a hostel or accommodationprovided by the company. At this stage they can often be released from domesticwork in their parents’ house, but their money-earning capacity may be highly




valued – especially in the run-up to their marriage. Take the case of Jansi, a24-year-old unmarried woman from Dindigul, a neighbouring district toTiruppur. I talked to Jansi in Millennium Apparels, a large compliant exporthouse. Having failed her tenth class exams, Jansi took a tailoring course inDindigul, where her parents are cultivating a few acres of land. She is the onlydaughter of her parents and claims to know nothing about agriculture. Her story ofhow she came to Tiruppur is revealing. One day while she was just sitting at home,a van from Global Textiles, a large accredited Tiruppur export company, camealong, distributing leaflets that read ‘young workers wanted’. They showed videoclips about the Tiruppur company, and invited young women and their parents tocome to Tiruppur and see the factory for themselves. They promised good food, asecure working environment, safe accommodation and money. Jansi managed toconvince her parents to let her go to Tiruppur and got a job in Global Textiles,where she became a powertable tailor within two months of arriving. She gotregular work and earned about Rs 3500 per month, from which a fixed sum wasdeducted for food and hostel fees. For young unmarried migrant women, theFordist and compliant company has definite attractions: it provides a regularincome, on-site accommodation and a ‘safe’ work environment.

However, while Jansi initially enjoyed working there, over time the flow of workbecame increasingly irregular and so did her pay. Periods marked by low ordersand a lack of work on the shop floor were followed by bouts of very intense activityduring which she was forced not only to work successive night shifts but alsoconsecutive weekends. Fluctuating orders undermine the efforts of even the largestexport houses in Tiruppur to comply with standards that require eight-hour shiftsand the limiting of overtime work. In the end, Jansi had had enough and, alongwith five friends, she left Global Textiles and joined Millennium Apparels, anotherlarge compliant firm. She says she now likes this company and is happy with thefood and the accommodation. Her parents are currently looking for a husband forJansi, and she said she is likely to get married within a year or two. Until then,however, she is adamant that she will be working in Tiruppur where she enjoysbeing independent, earning for herself, and having control over her own money.

Millennium Apparels employs many young, unmarried migrant women likeJansi who tend to stay for a few months or a few years before getting marriedand returning home. For them, the demands of Fordist mass production, whichrequire uninterrupted work disciplines and a regularly employed labour force, donot interfere with the day-to-day pressures of family life. Living in companyaccommodation, these young women have few family demands made on them inTiruppur and can adhere to the fixed and uninterrupted shift routines. The drudg-ery of some of the work is compensated for by the novelty of working in the city,which includes the company of other young women, the opportunity to go to thecinema or do some shopping on Sundays, and the freedom to spend at least someof their money as they please.

While these women’s migrant status and life-cycle stage enable them to fit inwith the demands of Fordist work routines, the case of Jansi and her five friends

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nevertheless exposes two challenges to compliant export houses’ attempts atattracting a regular labour force. One is that the Fordist regimes, which suchcompanies seek to produce and which have a close ‘fit’ with CSR requirements,are in fact almost impossible to sustain on the shop floor. They directly clash withthe demands for flexible production generated by global commercial dynamics andwith the constantly fluctuating orders generated by rapidly changing fashions andvolatile consumer markets. Even these large companies require a great deal offlexibility in their production capacity, which undermines management’s attemptsto recruit and retain a stable labour force and to implement fixed and regular workschedules. The second point that Jansi’s shift from one company to another revealsis that there are clear limits to the extent to which even a regularly employed labourforce – consisting of domestically unencumbered young migrant women workers –tolerates excessive demands placed on them. Companies that systematically assigneither too much or too little work suffer from high levels of labour turnover andstruggle to retain labour in the long run. Even in these companies garment workersdo not hesitate to protest against work routines that they dislike and to move on toother companies in search of more desirable workloads, wage levels and shop-floorroutines. In a tight labour market and equipped with high levels of skill, garmentworkers have a considerable amount of agency not only to choose a particular typeof company (Fordist versus flexible) but also to evade those companies whoselabour regimes impose unsustainable demands on their working lives and liveli-hood needs.

Age, life course, gender and migrant status

Let us return to the life course of men and women working in this industry, andconsider how life course and migrant status shape workers’ changing employmentpreferences over time. As Rogaly has pointed out with reference to rural migration,decisions to migrate or stay put greatly vary across the life course (2003: 7). Forwomen and men working in Tiruppur, decisions to take up garment work and inwhat type of company similarly reflect workers’ changing needs and preferencesover the life course. Young women typically leave large garment companies, andoften even the labour market altogether, at marriage or after the birth of a firstchild, when husbands and in-laws may no longer allow them to work for money.Marriage is often the point at which young migrant women leave the industryaltogether and return to their home village. Married women belonging to nuclearmigrant households settled in Tiruppur are particularly vulnerable to labourmarket exit at the point of childbirth as they lack wider kin networks to helpout with domestic work and childcare. Once children are at school, however,women re-enter garment work, but generally on quite different terms: usually insmaller units, in more flexible jobs, closer to home and often – because they requiremore flexibility – in lower skilled and less well paid jobs. Many women who weretailors before marriage end up working as helpers or as checkers, often alongsidetheir husband or brother, after marriage.




While women with young children find it particularly hard to take on a garmentjob and work long days, even women without children face limits as to what sort ofgarment work they can do, and for many of them the Fordist company may noteven be an option. Women’s choices are heavily curtailed by male control andarticulated through gendered norms of what is appropriate work. Selvi, Mohan’ssister, for example, remained childless after the stillbirth of her twin babies. I mether first in March 2009, when she was working as a Singer tailor in Mohan’s team.There she enjoyed a relaxed routine. She never turns up for work before 10am, andonly walks to the company after having finished all her domestic work. Similarly, inthe evenings, she leaves home whenever the domestic calls. I asked Selvi whether itwas her own choice to work and she said it was: ‘At home, they said I shouldn’twork, there is no need for it, but I like to work, I get bored sitting at home, so Idecided to come anyway, it’s my choice. And it’s with family, so they let me.’ Yet,when I meet Selvi again a few months later, this time in Mohan’s house, she is nolonger working. As I ask her why she has stopped, she replies rather sadly: ‘SinceMohan stopped taking contracts, I can’t work anymore, they are not letting me goelsewhere’.

What Selvi initially presented as her own choice was in fact as much shaped bythe wishes of male relatives and by gendered norms about respectability: as long asSelvi could stitch alongside Mohan, she was allowed to work, but once Mohanstopped working as a contractor, she was not allowed to join another team. At onelevel, the contract-based system does open up an important opportunity for Selvi towork in the industry, albeit close to home and among family members, as shewould never be allowed to work in a large export house further away fromhome. At another level, however, her choice is clearly curtailed by male authority,reflected in Mohan’s firm statement: ‘there is no need for my sister to work’. ‘Noneed for her to work’ meant ‘no need for her to earn money’, yet Mohan did allowher to join him as part of his own team, where she was said to be ‘just helping out’.While many husbands may not allow their wives to work in large companies,women’s work alongside male kin in small firms is more widely accepted as itcan easily be constructed as merely ‘helping out the family’ rather than ‘workingfor money’. Smaller workplaces and kin-based recruitment systems offer womenimportant opportunities to work. This time, however, their routines are not con-trolled by the production ‘gaze’ of the Fordist company and its surveillance sys-tems, but by the family ‘gaze’ of male kin, be they husbands, brothers, sons, cousinsor nephews.

Home-based work is important too. Women with small children often opt forhome-based work, such as garment trimming or seconds sorting work, as thisallows them to combine paid work with childcare. Similarly, when they are olderand less able to stand long hours at checking tables or sit 12 hours at tailoringmachines, women tend to return to either home-based trimming or sorting work insmall godowns. Once their children are grown-up, women regain some freedom tomove around and to take up paid work outside the home. It is difficult to assesswhether women opt for certain types of work out of choice or out of necessity, but

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what is apparent is that they assess different work environments and different workroutines in terms of their own gendered responsibilities, livelihood needs, personalabilities, and desires for autonomy and dignity. Women opt for those workarrangements that fit with their needs and responsibilities at different stages ofthe life course, while simultaneously being constrained by gendered norms andmale authority (Rogaly, 2003).

Moreover, as already indicated, a woman’s job preference and trajectory arealso affected by her migration status. Women belonging to migrant families settledin Tiruppur can avail themselves of less kin support in town and tend to have feweropportunities to enter paid garment work in firms. For them home-based workoffers a much welcomed opportunity to earn, especially with small children athome. However, Tiruppur also attracts large numbers of married couples wholeave their children with relatives back in the village. Such couples work tempor-arily in Tiruppur, for a few months or years, in order to earn relatively good sumsof money before returning home. In such cases, husband and wife tend to worktogether, often side-by-side in small, flexible firms, where they can do long days andearn piece-rates. Finally, women belonging to commuter families struggle to workin Tiruppur. While ever larger numbers of young unmarried women are commutingto Tiruppur from the surrounding villages, few of them are able to carry on oncethey have children. Adding commuting time to long working days makes work inthe urban garment sector almost impossible for them, and it is not until theirchildren are grown up that some women start commuting again.

Men, piece-rates, masculinity and mobility

Men’s engagement with garment work is equally shaped by life course and migra-tion status, but in addition their preferences for particular work regimes and sys-tems of payment intersect with masculine aspirations and performances that takeon shifting expressions over time. Young men especially engage in the productionand performance of competitive masculinity on the shop floor, for which the smal-ler, non-compliant company provides a particularly suitable stage. It is a placewhere contract work, overtime and piece-rate payment encourage men to competeover quality, skill, speed and earnings. This competitive masculinity is particularlyembodied by young unmarried men keen to earn well and to establish a strongmasculine identity marked by skill, physical ability and stamina. In a context wherework is highly repetitive, often dull and always physically taxing, men resist passivesubjection to harsh and often dehumanizing work regimes by appropriating andmobilizing the shop floor for the production of masculine identities that affirm theirability as men and reinstate some dignity at work.

Work on the shop floor of smaller firms is competitive. Even though tailors haveto cooperate closely to complete a garment, they constantly compare the amount ofwork they complete in a day and thus the earnings they take home. Singer tailors,cutting masters and ironing masters, who all work for piece-rates, go on endlesslyabout the number of pieces they have cut, ironed or stitched in a day, and about the




rates they earn per piece. Tailors pride themselves on their tailoring skills, the speedof their production, and their ability to work throughout the night, even two orthree nights in a row if needed. Garment workers employed under labour contrac-tors are deeply involved in what Burawoy (1988) described as ‘making out’, theprocess through which piece-rate workers seek to make the most of the time andrates available. It is therefore not uncommon to find Mohan and other Singertailors at work till late at night, long after all others have gone home, in an attemptto finish a few more dozen pieces.

Similar attempts at ‘making out’ can be found among the powertable tailors,and even among helpers and checkers, who are usually paid shift-rates. Theyproudly tell how many shifts they have done and thus how much they will makeby the end of the week. Rajkumar, a powertable tailor in Modern Fashions,exclaimed: ‘If we do six shifts we are okay, if we do eight shifts we have a party,but sometimes we do even 10 or 11 shifts in a week!’ Men on shift-rates, andespecially migrant men keen to earn as much as possible, seek to do as manyshifts per week as they can, and grumble when the contractor asks one tailor tostay on for an extra half shift but not the others. Shift-rate paid powertable tailorshave pragmatic reasons to work in flexible firms: they can earn more per shift, andthey get the opportunity to do more shifts per week, as these units rarely implementmaximum working hour regulations. In places such as Modern Fashions workerscan earn considerably more per week than in large export houses, even though theywill never be on a regular payroll. Recently even powertable tailors began todemand piece-based payment, something almost unheard of a few years back.Experienced powertable tailors are confident that they can earn more when paidby the piece, and that is why they increasingly press their contractors for piece-ratesrather than shift-rates.

Kathirveel, who was newly recruited on piece-rates in Modern Fashions, is onesuch powertable tailor. He took great pride in the fact that he gets piece-ratesand told me on the first occasion we met that he can make Rs 500 to Rs 600 perday. On the days that I was assisting Kathirveel as a helper at his machine, Istruggled to keep up with his pace of work and realized that he stitches consid-erably faster than the tailors on shift-rates whom I had assisted before.Throughout the day, Kathirveel reflected aloud on how much he had earnedso far, and kept saying ‘I’ve made Rs 200 this morning, I’ve made Rs 150since lunch’ and so on. Being a good and fast tailor is a source of pride thatinspires admiration among fellow workers, who may seek to emulate the speedand quality of their more experienced co-workers. Under a Fordist system, bycontrast, where both work schedules and shift-rates are fixed, there is much lessroom for manoeuvre and little chance for men to show off their ability, outdo thesystem or compete with others. Indeed, Fordist companies are seen as placeswhere there is neither the time nor the space for the competitive performanceof ability, strength and stamina. Rather, men consider employment in largecompanies as tedious and its routines as driven by the clock and enforced bysupervisors rather than by their own aspirations to work, earn and carve out a

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male identity. As a result, they routinely refuse employment in companies thatimpose top-down surveillance, work routines dictated by the clock, and environ-ments that prevent them from engaging in competitive masculinity.

Men, and not in the least migrant men, also work hard to earn money and fulfilthe much valued social role of breadwinner, be it as an adult son or husband. Giventhat the wages paid by Fordist compliant companies and the limitations set onovertime hardly allow men to earn enough to survive in town, it need not surpriseus that they seek out smaller, non-compliant firms to earn more than a subsistenceincome and save. Young migrant men in particular are attracted to Tiruppur’sgarment sector by the opportunity to earn considerable amounts of money in arelatively short period of time before returning home. As a result, they shun com-panies where such opportunities are limited. While the intensive work rhythms andlong working days that mark employment in small firms obviously amount to aform of self-exploitation which few can sustain in the long run, young men’s pref-erence for such work routines can only be understood from a perspective thatconsiders their migrant status, livelihood needs, and aspirations for upwardmobility.

Indeed, many male garment workers aspire to set up a company of their ownone day and to move from tholilali (worker) to mudalali (owner). Even thoughtoday most men realize that setting up a company of their own is little more than adream, many workers express their eagerness to become a contractor, which iswidely seen as more attainable because it requires no capital investment and isconsidered an attractive step up from being a skilled tailor or cutting master. Itoffers one the chance to earn more money through commissions, to recruit andmanage a team of workers, and to be one’s own boss. In fact, as middlemen andmediators between workers and company owners, contractors occupy a key nodein the production process and yield a huge amount of authority on the shop floor(De Neve, 2010). Although they are neither worker nor owner themselves, on theshop floor they act as co-worker, employer, supervisor and manager at the sametime. It is through employment in small workshops, where contract labour hasbecome the dominant form of recruitment, that young men develop close socialrelationships with co-workers, contractors and company owners, build up socialcapital, and learn a variety of production-related skills, which taken together mayone day facilitate their transition from worker to contractor. While the path ofupward mobility is always risky and uncertain, as the earlier example of Mohanillustrates, the aspiration to move up remains a vital aspect of workers’ preferencefor the flexibility, social networking and training opportunities offered by small,non-compliant workshops. In large, compliant export houses, where labour con-tractors are avoided when possible, opportunities to learn new skills and move upthe production chain rarely exist as supervisors and managers are usually externallyrecruited and expected to have completed higher education. These differences incareer prospects explain to a large extent why young, dynamic and ambitious menavoid getting stuck in dead-end jobs and instead explore opportunities for upwardmobility outside the Fordist firm.




Not all men, however, share the desire for mobility and competitive masculinity.As important as a man’s migration history are his age and stage in the life course.Once in their 40s and 50s, men often opt for a less competitive and taxing workroutine, especially when they have children who are either earning themselves, ormarried and living away from home. At that stage both their physical ability maybe deteriorating and their household financial needs may have shrunk. These menoften express a preference for security above risk and uncertainty, and may seekemployment in firms where overtime is limited, work rhythms are less intense, fixedshift-rates are paid and jobs are at least somewhat more secure. Such firms includeboth the compliant, Fordist export firms and firms producing for the domesticmarket. Older men tend to be less interested in the competitive masculinitydescribed above and derive valued male identities from being a regular breadwin-ner, a reliable husband or a caring grandfather.

Towards a workers’ critique of Fordism and CSR

Tiruppur is in many ways a typical product of contemporary neoliberal marketdynamics. Its export industry greatly benefited from trade liberalization since thelate 1980s and grew massively in size over the last two decades – not least since thephasing out of quotas under the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) between 1995and 2005. Two different labour regimes emerged in the wake of market liberaliza-tion. On the one hand, booming market demand led firms to put into place Fordistassembly lines and Taylorist management principles in an attempt to enable massproduction, enhance productivity and gain economies of scale. This move towardsstandardization and rationalization of production was also driven by corporateethical governance interventions that require suppliers to comply with ever morestrict codes of conduct and labour standards. This article has shown that there is aclose ‘fit’ between Fordist modes of production organization and those promotedby corporate ethical interventions. On the other hand, global commercial pressuresrequire supply firms to be responsive to constantly changing fashions and tight leadtimes, and thus to operate in a highly flexible manner. In Tiruppur, these opposingpressures have sustained forms of flexible specialization – alongside Fordist pro-duction regimes – that link smaller producers into a dense network of interdepend-ent firms. It has also led to the enhanced use of labour contractors as a flexiblesource of recruitment across the industry.

While both the Fordist firm and the flexible firm generate their specific workregimes and supervisory regulations, this article has revealed the ways in whichgarment workers engage with the different neoliberal labour regimes available tothem. It has taken a horizontal approach that relates production regimes to thewider social and economic contexts in which workers are embedded. Such anapproach shows that workers make deliberate and strategic choices about whereto work and who to work for, albeit within an overall context of precariousnessand informality (Cross, 2010). It also provides an insight into why workers makespecific choices: labourers’ preferences for particular labour regimes are shaped by

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their search for an adequate livelihood within a precarious and largely informaleconomy, by struggles over dignity and autonomy, and by their experience of theworkplace as a space for socializing and performing gendered identities. Workers’preferences are also highly gendered and change along the life cycle and accordingto migration experiences, with women being especially constrained by domesticresponsibilities, spatial restrictions, and male authority.

One particularly revealing choice made by many garment workers is to avoidlarge compliant, Fordist firms and instead to opt for employment in non-compli-ant, flexible workshops. Workers’ preference for such firms reveals how they wishto avoid Fordist regimes and corporate regulatory interventions that rob them ofcontrol over their own labour, freedom and dignity at work. Workers’ choicesabout where, when and how to work reflect attempts to regain control over theirworking lives at a time that they are being subjected to new forms of time disciplineand spatial surveillance. By opting for flexible, informal firms and by verballyexpressing their criticism of rationalized labour regimes and standardized ethicalinterventions, Tiruppur garment workers explicitly critique and actively seek toevade environments and regulations that curtail their freedom, autonomy and dig-nity, and that thwart their search for adequate livelihoods. This clearly amounts toa substantive critique of Fordist production regimes and of the corporate ethicalinterventions that seek to consolidate them. It also reveals how Fordist regimes andethical interventions prioritize standardized and auditable production processesover the multifaceted needs of labour employed under persistently precarious con-ditions. Those who do opt to work in Fordist companies often do so through a lackof choice and often move out after short spells of time, leading to high levels oflabour turnover and a perennial struggle to recruit in large export houses. Theworkforce of compliant Fordist firms, therefore, typically includes young andsingle migrant women whose families prefer them to stay in the company accom-modation, or men (often older men) who are no longer the main or sole earners intheir households and may prefer a lower, but more secure, monthly salary.

It is patently clear that global production networks and CSR interventions havesignificant transformative effects on the livelihoods and working lives of men andwomen in the Global South, not in the least by engendering a diversity of modes ofproduction and labour regimes. Khan and Lund-Thomsen have argued that CSRpolicies are part of ‘a wider historic project ofWestern imperialism in the developingworld’ (2011: 73) that delegitimizes local perceptions of what constitutes sociallyresponsible behaviour and appropriate standards of work. CSR can rightly be seenas the governing arm of neoliberal capitalism. In Tiruppur, CSR interventionsundoubtedly seek to promote and consolidate a factory-based mode of productionin which labour is deployed on highly standardized and regulated terms that servecapitalist needs. Ironically, however, the labour regimes that are produced in thisway are distinctly divorced from the actual needs and aspirations of the workers onwhich they are imposed. The ethnography presented in this article shows that theselargely Western projects of imposition do not go unchallenged when viewed from aworker’s perspective. Workers’ avoidance of and exit from particular work regimes




act as a critique of neoliberal capitalism’s search to subjugate and control labour atwill. The agency of workers lies in their ability to curb capitalism’s attempt to imposeits own logic onto that of those whom it seeks to engulf.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a DFID-ESRC Research Award (RES-167-25-0296). The field-work would not have been possible without the help of field assistants – most especiallyGayathri, Arul, Muthu and Priya. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the

‘Working for Export Markets: Labour and Livelihoods in Global Production Networks’conference, University of Sussex, July 2010, the Anthropology Research Seminar at Sussexand the Ethnographies of Work and Labour Seminar at the LSE. The article has benefitted

from comments by participants at those seminars, including Grace Carswell, Judith Heyer,Khalid Nadvi and Ben Rogaly, as well as from the comments of the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. Tallontire uses the term ‘private standard initiatives’ to refer to ‘all standards set outsidethe realms of public sector’, and distinguishes between private company standards (setand monitored by a single firm) and private collective standards (that have their roots in

collective, often stakeholder or industry-based initiatives) (Tallontire, 2007: 777).2. This confirms the wider applicability of Sassen’s point with regard to North American

labour markets that journey-to-work patterns are highly gendered, with women tending

to work closer to home (1998: 96–7).

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Author Biography

Geert De Neve is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University ofSussex. He has a specific interest in South Asia, industrial life, labour, corporatebehaviour and social transformation. He has carried out more than 15 years ofresearch on South Indian textile industries and their workers. He is the author ofThe Everyday Politics of Labour: Working Lives in India’s Informal Economy (2005)and co-editor of Hidden Hands in the Market: Ethnographies of Fair Trade, EthicalConsumption and Corporate Social Responsibility (2008) and Industrial Work andLife: An Anthropological Reader (2009).

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