Overview
- Adopts a Human Rights perspective to labor relations as a theoretical framework
- Looks at Ethiopia's social upgrading track record for a sustainable approach to global apparel
- Advises on a reasonable balance between industrial catch-up and protecting labor standards
Part of the book series: International Political Economy Series (IPES)
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Keywords
- apparel industry
- local industrial workers
- Ethiopia
- Occupational Safety and Health
- Wages
- Associational Rights
- industrial Parks
About this book
This book discusses the maxim of industrialization with a human face or social upgrading, which currently dominates the academic and actual policy discourses, particularly in late-comer economies of the Global South such as Ethiopia. To understand industrialization with social upgrading in the current context of economic globalization, characterized by the Global Value Chain (GVC), this book adopted the Human Rights (HR) perspective to labour relations. The book also employed the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) approach to analyze the labour compliance of apparel exporting firms and their respective global brand buyers operating in Ethiopia’s industrial parks. The findings revealed that Ethiopia's post-2005 state-led industrialization development path, which has firmly embraced strong business-state alliances, has curbed the power of labour. Further, global brands' flawed CSR and poor purchasing practices have contributed to the ongoing labour abuses in the country's industrial parks. If the government does not consciously respond to the "race to the bottom", the cold current of economic globalization that dominates the global apparel value chain, local industrial workers in Ethiopian industrial parks will continue to face dismal working conditions.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Mohammed Seid Ali (PhD) is an Associate Professor of political economy in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia. He was also a former presidential scholar at the African Studies Centre, University of Michigan.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Political Economy of Apparel Exporting Industrial Parks in Ethiopia
Authors: Mohammed Seid Ali
Series Title: International Political Economy Series
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-60489-8Due: 12 November 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-60492-8Due: 12 November 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-60490-4Due: 12 November 2024
Series ISSN: 2662-2483
Series E-ISSN: 2662-2491
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXV, 225
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations