Despite decades of growing engagement of transnational private regulation in labour standards, debates
remain high regarding their effectiveness. The literature shows that some improvement may be expected
in outcome standards, such as benefits, working time, health and safety issues; and not much should be
expected for process rights, such as freedom of association, collective bargaining, and employment
dialogue. Yet, outcome standards without process rights provide a bleak prospect for the future of
certification, as workers need such rights to have a voice and to participate in the organizational processes
by which outcome standards may be improved and compliance with them reviewed. The paper contends
that the effectiveness of transnational private regulation in labour standards ultimately rests on workers’
capacity to act to improve their working conditions in global production networks. Our analysis provides
no evidence that either the presence of standards at a supplier’s site, or the awareness of such standards
by workers employed at that site have an effect on union membership – taken here to assess workers’
capacity to act in order to improve their working conditions. Moreover, our results provide no evidence
that standards would even help workers gain influence on matters of relatively minor importance on the
agenda of workplace cooperation. Our findings are based on a dataset from original site level surveys of
221 workers and 113 managers in companies from Brazil and Kenya in the agricultural, manufacturing
and service sectors.