Story here. It’s mundane industries such as these where the real slavery occurs over here, but such stories are not salacious enough to merit much coverage.
Well, that explains all of those $6.00 two-pound frozen shrimp rings at the grocery store. :dubious: It always mystified me that seafood could be harvested, processed, packed and transported halfway around the world for three bucks a pound.
Yet another reason to become familiar with where your food came from.
The interesting part to me was that one of the worker advocates discourages boycotts because it harms the workers. And I thought, “Whew, that lets me off the hook!” What a twisted, ironic reason to continue to consume imported food provided by slave labor – keep paying the exploiters so they’ll stop exploiting the labor!
Maybe I’m over-simplifying, but if they doubled the price of the shrimp, I’d still buy it and they could pay decent wages. Am I over-simplifying?
Knowing the businessmen over here the way I do, I’d say it would all go into the owners’ pockets without a thought to the workers. They won’t pay anyone a penny more than they absolutely have to.
But I confess I eat shrimp, too. This story is so typical of most products produced over here that if I started boycotting stuff, I’d be walking around naked, hungry and homeless. This is one reason why I find it ironic about all of the stories “exposing” the sex trade; many of the girls who enter that trade used to work these factory jobs, and even if they dislike the new line of work, they get paid a lot more money and can up and leave for another bar if they don’t like where they are now. It’s bar owners’ worst nightmare, a bunch of girls up and walking out, while these factory-type owners are like feudal lords over their serfs, and there are always hundreds waiting to take their place.
Sam, this topic is neither mundane nor mindless and is certainly worthy of belonging in Great Debates. I know you didn’t frame the OP in debate form but both gotpasswords and Sunrazor both bring up issues worth pondering.
Marc
If the mods want to move it to Great Debates, that’s okay with me.