Safeguarding labour in distant factories: Health and safety governance in an electronics global production network

摘要

One of the many concerns over workers in the electronics industry is their health and safety conditions in factories. Lead firms in the electronics industry use a variety of self-regulatory private standards and codes of conduct to govern health and safety in factories of their suppliers. Global suppliers in turn implement these private measures within their firms which include manufacturing sites located in distant locations. How these health and safety governance systems are implemented across borders in the electronics industry GPN is the focus of this paper. The discussion and analysts connects the GPN framework with the governmentality literature to understand how private governance systems are implemented from a micro lens of day to day actions of health and safety managers. It aims to show how the self regulatory nature of standards and codes of conduct produce self-disciplinary effects on safety and health managers which enables the spread of corporate led governance programmes throughout a global industry. The analysis is based on a case study of printed circuit board manufacturing sites of suppliers to Hewlett Packard located in Penang, Malaysia.