Ahmed, Md Shoaib and Uddin, Shahzad (2022) Workplace bullying and intensification of labour controls in the clothing supply chain: post-rana plaza disaster. Work, Employment and Society, 36 (3). pp. 539-556. ISSN 0950-0170

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Abstract

This article examines workplace bullying and the intensification of labour controls in the clothing supply chain. It appears that extreme forms of bullying are deployed to intensify labour controls, including locking workers in, frequent wage cuts, setting moveable targets and carrying out intense observations. The context of this study is surplus value-starved clothing factories in Bangladesh. Global supply chains’ production regimes and the absence of state protections and trade unions enable factory managers to systematically deploy bullying tactics to achieve production targets. Drawing on Burawoy’s works, this article advances the debate of how workplace bullying is impacted by wider structural conditions with managerial strategies of coercion in factories. It is argued here that when the state intervenes in the factory only to protect and preserve capitalists’ interests, explicitly and implicitly, coercive strategies of control turn into extreme bullying on the shopfloor.

Shoaib Ahmed and Shahzad Uddin won the LERA 2023 award for this article.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Violence Research
Schools and Departments:	University of Sussex Business School > Accounting and Finance
SWORD Depositor:	Mx Elements Account
Depositing User:	Mx Elements Account
Date Deposited:	17 Jan 2023 09:14
Last Modified:	02 Mar 2023 10:53
URI:	http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/110188

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