Sweatshops?

[Siren]

What are your thoughts on them? Do you believe that companies should be allowed to have these sweatshops on [insert country(countries) here]? Are they ethical? If we should have sweatshops, should we increase the standards of working in a sweatshop? Debate over if you're con or pro. As for me, I'm pro sweatshops to a degree.

 

[Galileo]

I have always disliked the idea of cheap clothing and goods coming at the price of the continued oppression of other people.

I tend to buy things that I can be certain did not involve the exploitation of others, but you can never be sure.


I dislike the idea of inequality and hense believe that businesses should have to treat their workers equally, regardless of what country they are in.

 

[the]

Just like tortured prisoners give poor intel, so do slaves make inferior goods. I prefer to have well made or at best custom clothing. Both are expensive but last for years.

 

[bamf]

I find them to be a terrible excuse for cheap products that dehumanizes the workers and gives immoral monetary gains to the owners of the company.

 

[bickelz]

Ok, so you guys will hate me for this but there are very good economic reasons for supporting sweatshops where everyone is treated fairly and agrees to work in the sweatshop.

Poor countries are poor because they do not produce enough shit. The way to make them gain wealth is to produce more shit. If you spend your day scavenging for food in the wastelands, you produce no shit. If you go from the wastelands to the sweatshops, you make more money because you are productive. That is essentially how it works. Look back at America's history in the 1800's with poor working conditions. It was awful but it had to happen so that I can take time off to post on this forum from my mac.

Now... Quiz Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which country is the biggest target for direct foreign investment by United States firms?

That is correct... The United Kingdom followed shortly by the rest of Europe. (Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Why? Because its friggin shady to invest in a bunch of Indonesian people who live in the middle of nowhere. No transportation. The government is crap. Lawlessness. Uncertainty. It's just safer to invest in a place that is well, safer.

 

[Neuropedia]

sweatshops are economically unsustainable in the long term and without them the american empire would collapse

 

[bickelz]

sweatshops are economically unsustainable in the long term and without them the american empire would collapse

What do you mean by unsustainable? Our need for cheap labor? I agree that we are lazy but unfortunately sweatshops are the beginnings to an economy like the American and European model. What kinds of things do we buy from sweatshops? Cheap bullshit. Toys, some clothes (not all) and bits of electronics. Not everything that we buy is made in a sweatshop.

The system would not collapse. Many things would become more expensive but I think that more countries with a model like ours would increase competition by a lot, counteracting the extra cost of production.

A study done by Pollin,Heintz and Burns (google it, firts one to come up if typed w/o commas) investigating the effects of wage increases on product price increases found that doubling the wages of apparel workers in Mexico would only add $1.80 to a $100 jacket. The cost of wages is a small part of production.

Start with sweatshops and then advocate for slightly higher wages with better working conditions and then a country will start to enter the first world. I used to not think this way, then I took economics. The solution is in the system, you just have to trust it.

 

[the]

Ok, so you guys will hate me for this but there are very good economic reasons for supporting sweatshops where everyone is treated fairly and agrees to work in the sweatshop.

Poor countries are poor because they do not produce enough shit. The way to make them gain wealth is to produce more shit. If you spend your day scavenging for food in the wastelands, you produce no shit. If you go from the wastelands to the sweatshops, you make more money because you are productive. That is essentially how it works. Look back at America's history in the 1800's with poor working conditions. It was awful but it had to happen so that I can take time off to post on this forum from my mac.

Now... Quiz Time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which country is the biggest target for direct foreign investment by United States firms?

That is correct... The United Kingdom followed shortly by the rest of Europe. (Bureau of Economic Analysis)

Why? Because its friggin shady to invest in a bunch of Indonesian people who live in the middle of nowhere. No transportation. The government is crap. Lawlessness. Uncertainty. It's just safer to invest in a place that is well, safer.

People should stop producing shit and instead produce quality items.

 

[not sure]

I find them to be a terrible excuse for cheap products that dehumanizes the workers and gives immoral monetary gains to the owners of the company.

Really? I see them as legitimate work for poorly skilled labour. An opportunity to get into the job market that they wouldn't have had otherwise. We used to have them here. Gone now, thanks to unions and now we have one of the highest murder rates in the world to give us comfort. Sorry if that sounds angry but it's the truth as I see it.

 

[Nixie]

Uh, yea, pro-union here considering I am an union steward at my job site. I think it has been proven time and time again that big business does not have the best interest of its workers or the environment at heart. If I remember correctly, one of the things that wasn't passed in NAFTA was the call for a minimum wage. You may be unskilled labor when you start but I assure that after slaving away for hours, days, months, years--these people have skills and they should receive adequate pay for them. Labor is the largest variable expense and long has big business sought to curtail the amount spent on it. It is the basic flaw in a capitalist economic system--cheapest goods via reducing labor costs means reducing the amount of people who can afford to buy the goods/services you are offering--domino effect. Not terribly bright. I say living wages are the way to go.

 

[not sure]

We have a minimum wage, 40 hr work weeks, guaranteed 2 weeks holidays, maternity leave, redundancy payments, insurance and pension benefits. What our unions were most interested in was making it impossible to fire workers, even with high levels of theft, sabotage and absenteeism. They have basically killed the economy of downtown Kingston, which is the real Kingston by the way, and Spanish Town. Coincidentally, those are the two of the three most dangerous places to live in my country. Are the unions satisfied? No. They continue their campaign to protect criminal behaviour amongst their members so that our petroleum industry is practically held hostage by a bunch of kleptomaniacs. Yes, free zones and so on, help a country. Workers get a job, get skills, educate themselves and move on or their children do. Yes, move on, not sit in the same low skilled job, never improve themselves and expect to earn like a billionaire investor. These things have their utility. They bring capital into countries that have none. I can see the devastation of the thinking that drove free-zones out of this country, everyday.

 

[bickelz]

Uh, yea, pro-union here considering I am an union steward at my job site. I think it has been proven time and time again that big business does not have the best interest of its workers or the environment at heart. If I remember correctly, one of the things that wasn't passed in NAFTA was the call for a minimum wage. You may be unskilled labor when you start but I assure that after slaving away for hours, days, months, years--these people have skills and they should receive adequate pay for them. Labor is the largest variable expense and long has big business sought to curtail the amount spent on it. It is the basic flaw in a capitalist economic system--cheapest goods via reducing labor costs means reducing the amount of people who can afford to buy the goods/services you are offering--domino effect. Not terribly bright. I say living wages are the way to go.

Let counter-ambition counter the ambition of others. True, big business does not have its workers at heart. That's what unions, regulations and economic incentive are for.

And they are not skilled laborers, no matter how many cardigans they make. Sure, I can't make a cardigan or a shirt for myself. But I doubt those people could perform calculus, program a computer or fly a friggin' airplane. Hell, most of them can't even read. I wouldn't call that skilled.

Oh, and the minimum wage is bullshit. Mind you, coming from the mouth of a 19 year old gay liberal hippie. It's ineffective at what it is supposed to do. Earned Income Tax credit and other such programs are vastly more efficient and easier on the hiring economy.

 

[Nixie]

I am referring to the skill they bring to their jobs, not some random benefit of being educated. That is the point, YOU can't make that cardigan but that worker can crank out X amount in an hour--which is a learned skill.

@kiu; There is no doubt that any organization has the ability to be corrupt. Unions are really no different. It would be nice if we could live up to all our lofty ideals but sadly that doesn't seem to be happening. Unions are the check that is supposed to balance out the evil greed of big business. It is the difference between management and labor that determines whether one is "no system (union)" and "a system is better than no system".

As for a living wage. I advocate that the market will only improve when our I (investing) arm strengthens--the consumer has to have funds to save. You can't keep using G (gov't spending) and C (consumer spending) to fund the economy or we maintain and increase the same risk we have now--an overleveraged consumer base and defaulting loans in the finacial markets. Of course, we could also curtail the number of employees in the workforce which makes the market more competative. War is usually good at taking out a segment of the working population and revitalizing hiring. I say cut out all the high school kids in the market and make companies pay thru the nose for hiring kids at the expense of hiring people who need full time jobs to tend to their families. What do I know though?

 

[bickelz]

[MENTION=3096]Sonyab[/MENTION] What kind of investment spending? In firms that produce what? Stuff that consumers buy. Consumerism isn't leveraged. There is no reason for me to leverage a pair of pants. It's when you buy a house that you want leverage. What difference would taking the teenagers out of the workforce do? Only a small percentage of low wage workers live in a poor household or are the head of a family.

Do you really expect someone to support a family on $7.25 an hour? And many of the high school kids need that money for college. Without a job, you could be preventing some kids from going to school.

War is also awful for an economy. Don't use the US after WW2 because that was an exception ti the rule. If you want to look at the US after WW2 as evidence for war helping the economy, I would submit to you that the UK finished recovering from that war in like, the 90s.

 

[Nixie]

War is very profitable. The US benefited greatly because it was not fought on our soil. War mobilizes resources and removes segements from the working class. I am not a war monger by any means---my comment was meant to be cynical.

I am speaking of the consumer spending associated with credit card debt. You know we are a buttload of trouble when people can't afford to buy groceries and are putting them on their credit cards. Overextended then if you prefer another terminology. There was a time when the average american also invested into the economy, it was called savings and retirement.

3 components of our economy are I + G + C.

 

[not sure]

I am referring to the skill they bring to their jobs, not some random benefit of being educated. That is the point, YOU can't make that cardigan but that worker can crank out X amount in an hour--which is a learned skill.

@kiu; There is no doubt that any organization has the ability to be corrupt. Unions are really no different. It would be nice if we could live up to all our lofty ideals but sadly that doesn't seem to be happening. Unions are the check that is supposed to balance out the evil greed of big business. It is the difference between management and labor that determines whether one is "no system (union)" and "a system is better than no system".

As for a living wage. I advocate that the market will only improve when our I (investing) arm strengthens--the consumer has to have funds to save. You can't keep using G (gov't spending) and C (consumer spending) to fund the economy or we maintain and increase the same risk we have now--an overleveraged consumer base and defaulting loans in the finacial markets. Of course, we could also curtail the number of employees in the workforce which makes the market more competative. War is usually good at taking out a segment of the working population and revitalizing hiring. I say cut out all the high school kids in the market and make companies pay thru the nose for hiring kids at the expense of hiring people who need full time jobs to tend to their families. What do I know though?

Firstly, we are discussing this from two different perspectives because we are in different countries. I will not tell you what is right in yours. You know better than I. However, free-zones brought no harm to mine.

Hundreds and hundreds of women were able to feed their families and educate their children. They were paid a livable wage, as I mentioned before. We have a minimum wage and my country has had progressive labour laws thankfully, to unions. As you have said, unions are liable to be corrupted like other organizations and ours have. This is simply a case where people in my country have assumed that unions cannot be wrong and business cannot be right. It's absolute rubbish.

The jobs are gone now so, the women who had some self-worth because they could provide for their families now, sit on their bums instead. They wait for cheques from their relatives overseas and have basically been reduced to beggars. Their children don't take education seriously because their parents don't. Their parents don't because there is no work. Who needs an education if it there are no jobs to be had.

I find it really funny when we here discussion about how hard people worked in free-zones. They worked even harder before free-zones with subsistence farming, back breaking work. Women breaking stones into chips with no safety equipment so that they could sell the chips for little or nothing to the government to build roads. Trust me free-zones are an improvement over that and they are an improvement over unemployment. With no legitimate work, thanks to a lack of foreign and local investment because no one trusts our government or unions, these people end up with illegitmate work in the illegal drug trade. That is where our crime problem is coming from.

Sure, there are beautiful ads of my country and everyone says, "Oh! horrible look at Mexico." I tell you it is an illusion, we are no better than they are. I maintain it is a step on the ladder to wealth and progress. Ever since we decided to cut that ladder down here we have been in a death spiral. I am afraid for my country and I am afraid for myself because as far as I can see we will continue to descend into barbarism but paste pretty wallpaper over it. We need jobs and we ran them away.

Quite frankly, I am exhausted. I can tell stories about my experience in this country starting from the year 1980. I can tell you a story for every year of the horrors we endure. The constant fear that we live in. I would say that I was battle weary but we have no official war.

These anti-big business ideas are naive. We have bauxite companies here and once again, unions whine and complain. Well, they pretty much shut down after Lehman Bros. collapsed and it didn't take long for a spike in crime, a spike in suicides and an increase in mental health cases in the affected towns.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be checks and balances, that human rights should not be protected but I think we need in my country, to face the reality that we don't have anything and it is only through sweat, blood and tears that we will have. No one is going to put their wealth in our pocket without something in return. Sacrifices must be made. Either the sacrifice of labour or the sacrifice of life. Right now, I'm sick of seeing life sacrificed.

 

[Nixie]

I agree. We have no common frame of reference for the term union considering the vast differences in the economic climate of our two countries. Not trying to stress you out or anything. I would give a hug but yea, um, whatever.

 

[not sure]

I'm not stressed just passionate and I appreciate your concern [MENTION=3096]Sonyab[/MENTION]. I guess what I want to bring to this discussion is that these things can't be discussed as absolutes. Things look very different from the perspective of each of the countries that these companies operate in. I personally, am not a fan of globalization nor the WTO and I have high suspicion of them. However, there are benefits to free-zones that it is difficult in a developed country to appreciate and a balance needs to be struck where we all can prosper. I agree that unions should protect the rights of workers but care must be taken not to be too heavy handed or you kill the goose that lays the golden egg. One of my grandmothers, was a free-zone worker and she made sure that her children were educated from her earnings and their lives were better than hers. It can be done. I guess balance is all I expect.

 

[Nixie]

I agree. Balance is always the key.

 

[Faye]

Does it matter what I think of them? If I try to act in such as way as to hurt transnational sweatshops, I may be comforted by the fact that national sweatshops often treat their people even worse than the transnational sweatshops (sarcasm), which gives more economic power to them. As a result, my anti-sweatshop behavior only hurts people in developing countries who desperately need jobs. Only organized movements could force sweatshops to adopt more ethical standards. And those movements should also raise the living standards of people in the country.

Do I like sweatshops? Not at all. But I don't see what I can do to change that except hope that the existence of sweatshops in a country is raising the standard of living in that country overall so that one day they will eliminate those sweatshops.