My present research interests include contemporary issues in Canadian and comparative labour and employment law and policy, as well as the role of law in the governance of labour practices within global supply chains.

SUPPLY CHAIN FACTORY DISCLOSURE

If multinational corporations were required to disclose the precise identify and location of the factories in their global supply chain, would this lead to improvements in the labour practices in those factories? This is one of the questions that I am exploring. If factory disclosure does improve labour practices, then countries like Canada might consider reglation requring disclosure of factory addresses. In fact, the Canadian government has already studied this question (see the final report HERE). However, I think that study did not ask the right questions and ignored the subtle impacts of disclosure regulation.

Important questions that need further research include: How does transparency of information about labour practices and factories influence internal management processes in the multinational companies? How does transparency empower non-state actors in their engagements with multinational corporations and local factory owners? The answers are not obvious. I am researching these issues. Part of that research includes interviews with companies that have voluntarily disclosed their global factory database, such as Nike and Levi-Strauss, to examine the management systems changes put in place to manage the perceived risk of factory disclosure and what effects the disclosure has had for these companies. The next phase of the research will examine how the information disclosed is being used by private actors around the globe in their efforts to improve labour practices.

You can see a list of companies that disclose their global supply chain at: Global Supplier Factory Databases. My article entitled "Who Made That?: Influencing Foreign Labour Practices Through Reflexive Domestic Disclosure Regulation" explains the theory behind my work in this area. My more recent research is based on interviews with senior labour compliance executives at Nike and Levi-Strauss, as well as many other experts in the field of supply chains and global labour practices. See the results of those interviews in this paper entitled "Can Factory Disclosure Improve Labor Practices in the Apparel Industry? A Case Study of Nike and Levi-Strauss"

A great source for information about these issues, and everything else to do with labour practices in the global economy is the website of the Maquila Solidarity Network, a Toronto-based NGO. I have worked with MSN in the production of their annual Transparency Report Card, an initiative that measures the extent to which apparel companies disclose information relating to labour practices in their global supply chain.