DesideriScuri
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
quote:
ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
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ORIGINAL: FunCouple5280
While you don't need to pay people US/EU style wages in places like India, you can always demand that if you buy imported crap that at least it was a fair wage for the area. So as to the OP maybe $1/hr (arbitrary, for sake of discussion) rather than $.25/hr, which would be a huge step up for these people. Yet, It would still mean cheap clothes and jobs, just a little more at the register and a lot more for the worker's families.
How do you determine what is and what isn't a fair wage for the area? Running with your numbers, if 25¢ is a decent wage there, why should it be bumped up to $1? What if those that are lining up for that 25¢ are doing so because the only other job they can get is only paying 12¢?
Those numbers certainly look ridiculously low to us. And they are, from our viewpoints. But, we are drawing on our own experiences and I'm not even sure 25¢ buys you a piece of Bazooka gum anymore. Who in their right mind thinks that working for an hour so you can buy one piece of Bazooka gum isn't ridiculous? But, again, that's from our viewpoint. 25¢ might be a wage they can brag about.
It might be but it isn't. Still a poverty wage in Bangledesh. The other issue is worker safety. Five hundred dead from a building collapse. And there was prior warning! The workers heard loud cracks in the concrete. An engineer was summoned to inspect the pillars and approved the safety of the structure. Workers were ordered back to work. The building collapsed the following day. I hate to sound like a Marxist but this is nearly a perfect world for transnational corporations. They buy cheap labor overseas. Sell their stuff in upscale markets. Withhold taxes from their home country. Pressure down the wages of workers at home. And corporate execs make 400 to 1000 (two recent reports) times the workers on the line. Wage disparity and worker safety are super major issues. Not only transnationally but here at home as well. We are 102 years out from the Triangle Shirtail Factory fire in NYC where young garment workers were trapped in a locked building. One hundred two years of progress in worker safety discarded like old rags.
Discarded like old rags?!? Holy shit! When did we get rid of OSHA?!?!?!? I didn't realize kids were back in the mines! And here my kids are wasting their time idling in school when they can be working their fingers to the bone in areas where grown men don't fit. What slackers! 
Why do people take those jobs, Vince? Are they being forced by their governments to work for shit wages, in shit conditions?
IMO, the plant owner/manager is partly responsible for the collapse of the building and the deaths of the workers. Only partly, because - unless there is proof of post-inspection tampering - the engineer certified the safety of the structure. That engineer/engineering firm, holds the rest of the responsibility.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/29/bangladesh-factory-tragedy-sweatshop-economicsquote:
Sweatshops, the argument runs, don't pay much (about $40 a month in Bangladesh), but they pay a good deal more than subsistence agriculture, the primary alternative available to poor workers in developing countries. The appeal of a higher wage, steadier hours and, for women, independence draws workers from rural areas to urban slums in search of factory work. Globalization, and with it the outsourcing of manufacturing labor from rich countries to poor ones, has lifted millions out of extreme poverty (defined as living on less than $1 a day). Shutting down sweatshops completely would only erase those gains.
This is true up to a point. But it does not follow that the model cannot be improved.
The pro-sweatshop argument, of course, is favored by the anti-regulation right, but it finds itself mirrored on the left, which also attempts to impose a false choice between accepting sweatshops as they are and having no factories at all. Anti-sweatshop activists often fold their critique of sweatshops into a broader critique of globalization. Pushing not only for raised safety standards but also for wages that match those in the developed world is a tactic that will have the effect of shutting down developing world manufacturing altogether. Businesses need to save some money on labor in order to justify the additional cost of manufacturing abroad.
Indeed, many anti-sweatshop campaigners would be quite happy to see these factories closed down, globalization reversed, and manufacturing jobs returned to the west. That makes it hard to take them seriously when they claim to have the best interests of Bangladeshis at heart.
Instead, campaigners need to separate the issue of western industrial decline (and what to do about stagnant post-industrial economies), from the wages and working conditions of developing world factory workers. They need to advocate for a better and more humane globalization, not against globalization altogether.
This advocacy will have to include making a distinction between wages, which do not have to be the same everywhere, and workers' rights, which should. The cost of living in Bangladesh is far lower than the cost of living in the United States or Europe; campaigners should be pushing for Bangladeshi workers to make a living wage relative to the local cost of food and shelter. According to Bangladeshi labor organizations, that would be at least $60 per month.
So, at $40/mo., the collapsed structure's occupants weren't providing a "living wage." Yet, the wages were higher than what the workers were leaving. If the pay was higher, what would the benefit be to the company? Seriously. If they are paying at least 25% more than the other available job (ag jobs at <$1/day, figuring on 30 paid work-days per month (no idea if that's the case, but if they only work 5 days/wk, they would be getting even more at the factory compared to the farm).
What can you do? Find out who makes what where and only buy from where from who you feel is most conscientious in their treatment of workers and push for higher global work safety standards. In some countries (like the US), the government represents the will of the people (well, to some degree). If our government didn't represent the will of the people (within the framework of authorities written in the Constitution, obviously), the people have the option of replacing those officials every 2, 4 or 6 years. If that is accurate for another country, isn't it the responsibility (and right, I believe) of the citizenry to force their government to represent their wishes? It is not our responsibility (nor right) to force the governments of other countries to improve their standards. That's part of the issue that has caused much consternation in our history.
So, the only thing you can do, is to support those businesses whose supply chains are acceptable to you and shun those who don't meet your minimum acceptable criteria. At some point, you have to ask yourself if the citizens in Bangladesh want better safety standards enough to actually go out and get them (you know, like what the original Unions did)? If not, then, well, that's their choice.
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What I support:
- A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
- Personal Responsibility
- Help for the truly needy
- Limited Government
- Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
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