Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute
Few can have failed to notice the slew of stories in recent weeks on a
common theme: the prevalence of labour exploitation within the global
economy.
The stories are harrowing. They include the deaths of well over 100
workers in a fire in a garments-producing factory in Bangladesh,
supplying firms which are household names for the world’s consumers; the
discovery of trafficked workers employed in the UK by Nobel Foods, a
company supplying eggs to many major supermarkets and retailers; the
admission by Ikea that it knowingly used forced labour in its supply
chain in East Germany during the 1980s; the escalating strikes by farm
workers in the Western Cape of South Africa in protest against appalling
conditions of work.
