A Relational Analysis of the Labour Control Regime in the Bangalore Export-garment Cluster

Abstract This chapter applies a practice-oriented, relational analytical approach to labour control regimes in GPNs to the empirical case of the Bangalore export-garment cluster. It illustrates how the labour control regime in the Bangalore export-garment cluster emerges from the intersection of six different sets of processual relations with the labour process: sourcing relations, wage relations, workplace relations, industrial relations, employment relations and labour market relations. For each set of relations, the chapter reveals the specific exploiting and disciplining practices performed by actors at various levels, which together constitute structural labour control relations. These practices include inter alia Bangalore garment managers’ production targeting, union-busting and wage theft practices, garment retailers’ predatory purchasing practices, and employers’ and state actors’ practices of constructing a complex multi-level training and migration regime to secure adequate labour supply. In the face of this complex mesh of labour control practices, the chapter highlights the various constraints and challenges for local garment unions to build and activate associational and institutional power resources.