Theorizing Labor Control in the Global Apparel Industry:

This paper looks at the Bangladeshi apparel industry and critically draws on theories of labor control to examine how market and non-market actors control apparel workers and exploit their labor power at the bottom of a global value chain, reinforcing the capitalist system locally and globally. My research draws on a wide range of empirical evidence collected from 20 apparel factories in Dhaka City, Bangladesh and secondary evidence and identifies a new regime of labor control. I call this regime of labor control social despotism—a regime that deploys legal means, illegal coercion, informal power relations, and structural violence to govern and exploit workers. Social despotism is created by two reinforcing forms of oppression: instrumental oppression and structural oppression. Market actors organize instrumental oppression to normalize coercion in the factory, creating the forced consent of workers to their exploitation. Market and non-market actors organize structural oppression, limiting workers’ collective bargaining power within the factory and marginalizing their existence in social life. Both forms of oppression are present throughout four distinct phases of labor control: 1) searching for the cheapest labor forces and manufacturing sites; 2) recruiting workers; 3) organizing work; and 4) socializing, rewarding, and punishing workers.