A Longitudinal Study On Decent Work And Upgrading Of Textile And Apparel Enterprises

In Early 21st Century the textile and apparel industry has experienced a series of significant changes, facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. With the globalization of world economy and China's accession to the World Trade Organization, the textile and apparel global production network (GPN) is undergoing reconstruction, the termination of multi-fiber agreement has accelerated this process. With a comparative advantages of labor, China has become the world's largest producer and exporter. however, China's textile and apparel enterprises are still mainly in manufacturing, under the control of international brands owners and retailers. At the same time enterprises are faced with rising raw material costs, labor costs and RMB appreciation pressureChina's textile and apparel has long been an industry, in which producers were engaged in a growth pattern of low-grade, low-cost, and low-price. This friction-style way made enterprises in the awkward position, with increased volume, dropped price and lower profit. The financial crisis made great impact on enterprise, further demonstrated that low-cost competition model has come to an end. With the proposed of decent work, the consumer paid closed attention to corporate social responsibility and labor issues, labor-intensive textile and apparel enterprises attracted more attention. Decent work is not only the request of competitors in developed countries and the ILO on Chinese textile and apparel enterprises, it is also the way to solve their own problems.China textile and apparel enterprises can promote their position in GVC through technical innovation, product development and other ways to enhance enterprise's economic performance, through economic upgrading (process upgrading, product upgrading, functional upgrading and chain upgrading), to achieve the long-term goal of transformation from China manufacturing to China brand. Enterprises can improve its social performance, the enthusiasm of workers, and creat more profits, through social upgrading, actively practicing CSR and decent work.The conceptual framework of Context-Structure-Conduct-Performance (CSCP), the desk research, questionnaire and case analysis are applied in this paper, which in the background of dynamic process of the global production network (GPN) reconstruction, and on the basis of theoretical analysis of decent work and enterprise upgrading(economic upgrading and social upgrading), analyze the pressure of international buyers and labor pressure (context), describe the basic conditions of textile and apparel enterprises in China (structure), analyze the practice of decent work and the behavior of enterprise upgrading (conduct), discuss the performance of different decent work strategies, and analyze the successful enterprises (performance).This paper intends to show the relationship between decent work and social and economic upgrading, based on the theoretical and longitudinal study on decent work and enterprise upgrading in the global production network, There are several appropriate policies and recommendations of upgrading put forward for China textile and apparel enterprises.