Threads of Labour draws on a rich body of action research gathered by organisations supporting women workers in ten different garment-producing locations in Asia, Europe and Mexico. This research provides important new empirical information about the global garment industry and also creates a blueprint for conducting worker-oriented action research in order to better understand and resist the negative impact of globalization on labour.

This book combines bottom-up research conducted by women workers' organisations with the latest academic research and debate. It seeks to ensure that workers' voices reach those who are trying to reconfigure global capitalism in more humane directions. Finally, it explores the ways in which workers might begin to develop new forms of organization that are more suited to securing gains in the global garment industry than those strategies deployed in the past.

Angela Hale is Director of Women Working Worldwide, an NGO based at Manchester Metropolitan University. She previously lectured in sociology at the university and has published many articles relating to women workers. Women Working Worldwide works with a network of trade unions and NGOs supporting the rights of workers in international supply chains producing consumer goods for the world market.

Jane Wills is Reader in Geography at Queen Mary, University of London and a board member of Women Working Worldwide. Her previous publications include Dissident Geographies: An Introduction to Radical Ideas and Practices (2000), Place, Space and the New Labour Internationalisms (Blackwell Publishing, 2001) and Union Futures: Building Networked Trade Unionism in the UK (2002).