The Profit Motive: Can Corporate Networks be an Effective Conduit for Improving Worker Rights?

The rise of the anti-sweatshop movement in the 1990s made it clear that absent public pressure, multinational corporations tend to ignore the working conditions of employees in their subcontracted plants. Yet, these same corporations, once their profits became correlated with treatment of their workers, have implemented various policies aimed at promoting and protecting labor rights in their factories. In this essay, I trace some of the pressures that led to the turnaround of the corporate profit model and argue that despite their past, today’s branded firms can and are being used by labor activists as a conduit to improve labor rights worldwide.