Workers unload coffee in Papua New Guinea. counterculturecoffee/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
BTS: Ben, you have done a huge amount of work on supply chains and their part in the structure of contemporary capitalism. Your recent books have also been very critical of the powers-that-be. What are your hopes for this year’s International Labour Conference? Will anything positive come out of it, from the perspective of workers’ rights?
BS: The institutional discourse about global supply chains – or, as they are sometimes called, ‘global value chains’ or ‘GVCs’ – is endorsed and promoted across a broad political spectrum. Institutions ranging from the World Bank to the International Labour Organisation all buy into it. And it is based upon ‘win-win’ assumptions about development.
