ILPC 2027

This paper investigates the context of productivity developments in European apparel manufacturing, distinguishing between different strands of the industry as well as different trajectories its factory regimes have taken. Evidence points to a renewed growth in the European apparel industry. This growth, however, is concentrated in a few clusters that operate in the informal economy, rely on a captive workforce, and continuously hollow out existing minimum employment standards. A central advantage of reshoring apparel production lies in the opportunities quick turnaround-production offers in serving close-by consumer markets. A key question for this paper is to explore these changes in the international division of labour and to compare the contexts that support a low road towards reshoring vs. alternative conditions that support attempts at industrial upgrading.

Contributions from sociologists, political economy, industrial relations, and value chains analysis have played an important role in countering accounts of offshoring that were based on assumptions of comparative advantage and its beneficial welfare effects. However, in the same way as the supposedly beneficial effects of offshoring deserved to be scrutinised critically, so are the drivers and outcomes of reshoring. Rather than treating changes in the division of labour as the result of optimisation processes, this paper draws on global value chain and labour process analyses to bring in power relations (in organising the vertical and horizontal division of labour as well as the extraction of labour from labour power in the workplace).

The aim of this paper is to investigate the factory regimes at the basis of buyer-driven apparel value chains across countries such as the UK, Germany, France and Italy and to compare the role of value chain and societal effects in recent developments in the industry. While productivity is clearly central, particular emphasis is placed on its wider political economic context as well as specific forms of management and work organisation. A comparative perspective allows consideration of the power of buyers to shape the rules along the value chain in a global industry vs. the influence of national contexts in organising the relationships between buyers and producers; to what extent societal institutions influence the relationship between oligopsonistic buyers and overly competitive producer markets; and a comparative perspective also allows reflecting on the workplace effects of transnationally organised production networks in contrast to national/local developments in employment protection regulation and its enforcement.

A central theoretical and policy question is to what extent the factory regimes in those clusters that experienced reshoring are the only game in town.  Instances of industrial upgrading will be of particular interest insofar as they represent examples of government , industry or firm strategies that transcend the straightjacket of comparative advantage and place the workplace-, industry-, and chain-level organisation of productivity at a higher level.