444–work, Organizations, and Markets

Far from supporting the widely held view that activist campaigns are changing corporate behavior, Seidman’s case studies point to the ineffectiveness of independent monitoring. Monitors do not usually have the time or resources to visit every site. Because monitors are dependent on corporate funding and need permission to access workplaces, their independence from the corporations they regulate is questionable. In the South African case, auditing relied entirely on data provided by the companies. The accountability of independent monitors is often suspect because workers themselves have few rights and cannot question monitoring standards or offer their own data regarding compliance. To complicate matters further, monitoring associations and certification standards tend to proliferate over time, leading to a fragmented system that consumers find difficult to understand. Seidman’s book convinces the reader that improvements need to be made to independent monitoring. Resource constraint, accessibility, and accountability problems cause Seidman to advocate a return to state-oriented strategies. Seidman argues that the most effective campaigns originate from state coercion. Transnational activism has given up on the state and thereby weakened traditional institutions that supported worker’s rights. Seidman believes that enhancing the state’s ability to regulate corporations will also strengthen local labor mobilization. Another potential force for change that is less prominent in her conclusion is the continued mobilization of consumer activists. One of the problems with the current system is that consumers are mostly detached from the monitoring itself. While consumer activists initially create boycott campaigns and monitoring schemes, it is not clear what sort of involvement, if any, consumers have in monitoring after the boycott ends. Perhaps one reason why monitoring consistently fails to live up to the hype is because consumers have no role in shaping its implementation. Seidman hints at this solution in her conclusion, arguing that more trust needs to develop between transnational and local activists. Rather than decoupling local labor organizing from global activists’ efforts to build monitoring and compliance schemes, the two should work together more closely. Monitoring would not be the end, but rather should be seen as an essential target that both kinds of activists can rally around in their continued efforts to enhance workers’ rights. Seidman’s book is highly informative and a welcome contribution to the study of activism and corporate change. Beyond the Boycott should find a receptive audience among scholars of labor, social movements, and organizational change.