Abstract
Industrial relations and workers' rights issues have been embedded in an national, tripartite and (collective) negotiation setting. In this paper, we argue that this industrial relations landscape currently is undergoing fundamental change in terms of types of arenas and involved actors. The traditional national industrial relations system is being complemented by an emerging transnational system. The purpose of this paper is to - based on a study of Swedish garment retailers and the Swedish Clean Clothes Campaign between 1996 and 2006 - analyze different actors' attempts to define and embed firms in this transnational industrial relations system. We argue that the actors' efforts could be framed as a competition between a "Rules Model" of transnational industrial relations (promoted by firms and NGOs) and a "Bargaining Model" of transnational industrial relations (promoted by unions). Our study indicates that the "Rules Model" currently dominates transnational industrial relations, but we outline a way to integrate the rules and bargaining models.