Have you considered the polyester mills that fabricate the raw material? I’m fairly certain that workers are exposed to far more glues(resins) and solvents than is minimal for a healthy life for man or woman. O sure, the workers wear respirators with filters that give no indication when they have outlived there usefulness. You may own a beautiful sailboat painted with the top quality linear urethane,in which no filter can remove the brain dammaging isocyanates during the painting process. The common answer provided by generous boat yards is direct air feed off a compressor, requiring in line filters which are not approved in Canada because of carbon monoxide risk, but are accepted as the only possible way. There are innumerable cases of worker abuse right under your nose, in America and Canada, two of the most regulated countries in the world.
In short, I’m fairly pessimistic. Your example will do nothing to alleviate conditions in third world countries, but may make some people feel better about themselves. As far as economic feasibility is concerned, If I charge you a thousand dollars for painting your boat, because I provide my workers with respirator filters that warn of expiry,clean compressed air,and provide them with boots, disposable coveralls, ample gloves, worker insurance, holiday pay, vacation pay, dental and health plans and an air conditioned work environment complete with lunch room as well as paid time for safety meetings etc, I’m not going to get the job, because you will find someone that can do it for $700.00 .Altruism does have its limits.
grienspace:In short, I’m fairly pessimistic. Your example will do nothing to alleviate conditions in third world countries, but may make some people feel better about themselves.
You’re right: you are pessimistic. Almost criminally so, in my opinion. You seem to be saying “Eh, since we can’t guarantee that our actions to encourage workers’ rights will definitely improve their conditions, we might as well just sit back and let unchecked capitalism grind as much out of them as we possibly can.” Or did you have an alternative proposal for alleviating these conditions that you haven’t told us about?
And certainly “altruism has its limits”, but I’m not so sure they’re set as low as you’d like to think. I know people who cheerfully pay 33% more than the cheapest possible price for goods and services, partly to ensure that workers and the environment are treated decently in the process. The more we promote those principles in our legislation and our policies, the more people are going to accept them as necessary conditions of doing business. Eventually, we might even get people to take those conditions seriously in regulated countries like the US and Canada.
So prosecute me for my opinion. What’s the charge?
Well yes, a little more money than before, a little unavoidable experience and education in the process will prepare these third world economies to take their own action whether it is revolution or striking or other job action. That is the American way which worked for America.
Oh please! Except for countries that use forced labour for which we should halt all trade including China workers choose the best option they have which unfortunately may mean poor conditions but at least food on the table. Your solution may very well result in alleviating some welfare cases in America at the expense of the life of some little child whose widow mom had worked in one of those sweatshops that lost a contract for making college sweatshirts. Hopefully, the child’s mother might still look good enough to prostitute herself, but then what about women’s rights?
I suspect you are a student Kimstu or fresh out of university. Do you still eat at MacDonald’s where the kids work at a feverish pace for minimum wage and no tips? Or do you eat at restaurants where the staff are not harried, treated well and the customers feel uncomfortable unless putting out the 20% tip? Ya Right!
I don’t want to come across as belittling you. I was where you are at one time, and admire your social conscience. It is not easy to defend your position, and you have to be tough. And I have been proven wrong before.
I’m afraid I’mn going to have to disagree with Kimstu for once:
Local conditions define sweatshop then? Very well. Do you focus on only foreign owned or do all, including informal sector, shops fall into the scope?
To what extant do you take into account costs of application of often idealistic laws, modelled on western standards but never enforced?
To what extent do you compare these costs to absence of opportunities?
There are real costs involved in all this. They may or may not be worth it depending on what locals want.
Who defines the subsistance wage? I’ll go with the legal right to organize, but what do you do when this right is only excercised through state-controlled entities?
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And yes Freedom and Lemur, the legal rights of workers are often deliberately downgraded by national governments precisely in order to attract foreign investors with cheap labor, so that’s a strong argument that sweatshops are not in the long run beneficial (except to the paid-off politicians, that is).
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I’m afraid I shall have take exception with this statement
(1) Changes in national labor standards may be necessary to reflect actual practice rather than downgrading to benefit. Terribly corrosive when you have laws on the books which are not in fact enforced.
(2) “Downgrading” or adjusting labor standards/laws, if the subsequent loosening of the labor market leads to greater investment and economic growth, will be long-run beneficial.
I’m afraid I don’t find the article terribly convincing. First, the article clearly is neo-Marxist. I’m not a Marx baiter by far, but its economics is fundamentally unconvincing. (Big Capital, playing off workers btw North and South… classic marxist class analysis. This avenue of economic analysis has already failed, do we still need to go over it?)
I would advise everyone to read, for something better grounded in the problems here, the Globalization articles in the recent issue of Foreign Affairs: there are some good critical articles in there.
What matters is being able to eat. Third World countries need x% in economic growth (x may be btw say 6 and 10) in order not simply get poorer bec. of population growth.
Investment ergo, along with local capital accumulation, is required in order to expand their economies. What are the choices w/o the investment?
Investment will follow economic principals, that’s the free market. It is an efficient, if amoral system. Expecting something else is foolish and defeats the purpose. Now, there are legitimate roles for governments to play in assisting workers in training for the market, providing social services etc. However, investment based on “social needs” hasn’t ever been a road to sustained productivity and economic growth, which is the sole way out of the poverty trap.
Because rich, comfortable first world people rarely understand the challenges of poverty and economic growth or the costs involved in .
Because imposing outside rules will generally produce nationalistic reactions.
Because growth in wealth will inevitably create native, domestic pressures for better work conditions.
Hey Collunsbury,
When you invited me over here, I thought we were going to come down on opposite sides. I can’t say that I really see even one thing you posted that I disagree with.
So, how do the sweatshops get policed? The majority of US apparel manufacturing companies(I will use apparel, since they are the ones I am most familiar with), have internal programs to identify problems and correct them. The problem comes with factories the company does not directly own. Usually, these are inspected by a representative of the company, then required to sign an agreement that states that they will comply with the company’s policy regarding factory conditions. If said contractor is found to be violating the agreement, all production can be withdrawn.
In addition, the American Apparel Manufacturers Association(AAMA) has developed a program known as WRAP-Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production. In part, this program requires:
*Laws and Workplace Regulations: Apparel manufacturers will comply with laws and regulations in all locations where they conduct business.
Forced Labor Apparel manufacturers will not use involuntary or forced labor – indentured, bonded or otherwise.
Child Labor: Apparel manufacturers will not hire any employee under the age of 14, or under the age interfering with compulsory schooling, or under the minimum age established by law, whichever is greater.
Harassment or Abuse: Apparel manufacturers will provide a work environment free of harassment, abuse or corporal punishment in any form.
Compensation and Benefits: Apparel manufacturers will pay at least the minimum total compensation required by local law, including all mandated wages, allowances and benefits.
Hours of Work: Hours worked each day, and days worked each week, shall not exceed the legal limitations of the countries in which apparel is produced. Apparel manufacturers will provide at least one day off in every seven day period, except as required to meet urgent business needs*
This program requires both self-policing and outside inspections before and after certification. Is it perfect? No, and no program will be, because many times the governments of these developing countries are willing to look the other way, either because of the $ that is brought into the country by the factories, or because of bribes(yes, this is against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and the majority of companies with overseas manufacturing facilities work to comply with this act as well.) In addition, one corrupt employee of a company could cause that company to unknowingly operate a facility that is, in essence, a sweatshop.
Self-policing within the industry is the best option, along with a refusal to purchase garments that are made in sweatshops. The problem is, how do you know that a garment was or was not made in one? Go to any department store and look at the tags. Very few of the garments you find will be made in the USA.
If you have a solution, I’d love to hear about it. But, remember, most Americans are concerned with price, and as long as that is the case, no one is hitting the manufacturers/retailers/contractors in a way they cannot ignore.
It may surprise you to know this, but the ‘sweatshops’ that have been in the news are often the BEST jobs in an area, and these companies often have huge lineups of people trying to get work there. I did the research a while back on a sweatshop that was in the news after some investigative reports did a hatchet job that showed the people in the factory only made 80 cents an hour, worked 14 hour days, and had to sit on bare stools working the machines with very few breaks. There was much handwringing over this ‘sweat shop’, and lots of calls to get the particular celebrity who endorsed the products of the factory to renounce it and demand that the workers be given a ‘fair’ wage and working conditions.
What the story DIDN’T say is that the average per-capita income in that country was $710. That meant the workers in the factory were making over four times the national average income. And the alternative to sitting on the stool in the factory was crawling on your hands and knees in the dirt under a hot sun on your subsistence farm digging seed furrows with a stick.
So why can’t the factory just pay them more? They can’t. American workers don’t make more money and have better working conditions because of laws, or because they’re special, or because American factory owners are nicer people. American workers make more money because they are more productive. They get to leverage the benefit of good roads, railways, proximity to market, etc. They have better educations, and are in better health. Their labor is magnified greatly by capital investment in tools. Something as simple as a good Snap-On screwdriver can make an American mechanic much more productive than a 3rd world mechanic who has to spend half his labor trying to overcome the shortcomings of his lousy tools.
So why can’t these companies just sacrifice some profit for the good of the workers? Because there isn’t that much profit. The average corporation in the U.S. operates on a net profit margin of only a few percentage points. In commodity industries like garment manufacture, those profit margins are often only 2-3%. If the company’s products are very labor intensive, then there just isn’t much room to increase wages over and above the national growth rate. (this, by the way, is what has FORCED many garment manufacturers into the 3rd world - the lower cost of labor is required to keep them competitive. All else being equal, I guarantee companies would rather build factories at home where the logistics are far more manageable. But the ‘invisible hand’ of the market has taken that decision away from them). And you can’t take it from those greedy CEO’s, because while their salaries may be sky-high, there aren’t very many of them. Take back Jack Welch’s multi-million dollar salary and distribute it amongst all of GE’s workers, and you might buy them each a cup of coffee every week or so.
When a company builds a factory in Vietnam, or the Phillippines, or some other remote area, it has to deal with a poor infrastructure, huge shipping costs, the risks of political turmoil (meaning destroyed factories or nationalized property), etc. If the reduced cost of labor can’t compensate for those deficits (plus the added hassle of long-distance management, having to pay travel and relocation costs for management, etc), then the factory simply won’t be built.
Would that be a bad thing? For the locals, almost certainly. These factories are often the best hope of an increased standard of living for all the citizens of the country, because foreign national companies have to make significant investments in the infrastructure of the country. It’s often these companies that wind up stringing phone lines, building roads, setting up ancilliary facilities to maintain equipment, constructing homes for management (thus not only providing construction jobs, but training the locals in modern construction methods), etc. And almost always the other citizens of the country benefit from these improvements. The foreign companies often invest in education for their workers (not to be nice, but because educated workers are more productive), and that education carries back to the worker’s families and community.
All industrial nations started this way. It takes time to build the kind of infrastructure that allows workers to be productive enough to earn what we would consider a reasonable living. But until that time, there is no legislation in the world that can force those salaries to rise. All you can do is close the factories and doom those countries to a continuation of the same kinds of living standards they have now.
Well, I was thinking you would end up saying something extremely libertarian and I would end up differing. We do have philosophical differences around how much government is useful…
But alas, the debate has not reached such a point. So I am stuck with mipsman and the ghost of a certain peace.
