Hearing the unheard: theorising the moral fabric against labour precarity

Purpose – Labour precarity is pervasive across global production systems, yet workers' lived realities remain largely marginalised in supply chain narratives. This study challenges dominant framings of labour issues by advancing an alternative account attentive to human relations and connections. Design/methodology/approach – This research enters the factory shop floors of a key production hub for a global fashion giant in southern China. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted alongside garment workers, we combined a feminist approach with an interpretivist-constructivist positioning and engaged in theorising through reflexive reasoning while continually revisiting the researchers' positionality and ethical commitment. Findings – Supply chains governed by patriarchal logics generate precarious working conditions through predatory purchasing practices. The pursuit of efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness obscures the human cost of labour, trapping workers in multiple dimensions of structural precarity. Grounded in workers' everyday experiences and interactions as they navigate these conditions, this research reveals how ethical agency manifests through care practices that sustain collective resilience. We theorise these findings into a moral fabric for addressing supply chain labour precarity, attentive to contextualised epistemological and methodological approaches. Originality/value – This study introduces the ethics of care from the feminist literature as a framework for addressing supply chain labour precarity, emphasising human relations over universalised standards. Contextualised approaches that acknowledge indigenous and local knowledge are essential, and this study links these approaches to the Confucian virtues evident in the research context.