Globalisation has offered most Third World migrants a tough choice: scrape by on the family's farm or do only slightly better in in a far-off factory in the city.
With workers lacking political strength or economic options, Western companies and the factories they employ sacrifice employees' rights for profit. This is despite many corporations’ widely publicised but mealy mouthed commitments to ethical and legal conduct worldwide through codes of conduct and “supplier responsibility“ promises. By consistently using factories that violate workers' legal rights, companies are, at the very least, failing to fulfill their promises to consumers and society. In short, the multi-ntional corporations exploit Asian political and economic inequality to earn greater profits, turn around to tell the American or European consumers that they hold workers’ standards in high regard, and then turn their back on Asian workers.
Boycotting are not the answer. Indeed, successfully boycotting of products made in the sweat-shops of Bangladesh or Indonesia will likely get workers laid off—and it will not change the country's systemic and widespread labour rights abuses.
Cornell University’s Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labor Eli Friedman criticizes American consumer guilt as misguided: “Chinese workers are depictedas the pitiable victims of globalization … Passive and exploited toilers, they suffer stoically for our iPhones and bath-towels. And only we can save them, by absorbing their torrent of exports, or campaigning benevolently for their humane treatment at the hands of 'our' multinationals.”
We should not be apathetic, nor should we feel guilt, but instead be angered - righteous rage at a society that makes us, as advantaged consumers, accomplices in the misery of our fellow men and women. We must demand a change in the system, not palliative amelioration. And to change the system we must end our own wage-slavery. In the meantime, when many Asian workers are deprived of truly representative trade unions and their resistance is frequently isolated, we can offer our own trade union solidarity and support when strikes and protests take place in the Asian factories.
AJJ
With workers lacking political strength or economic options, Western companies and the factories they employ sacrifice employees' rights for profit. This is despite many corporations’ widely publicised but mealy mouthed commitments to ethical and legal conduct worldwide through codes of conduct and “supplier responsibility“ promises. By consistently using factories that violate workers' legal rights, companies are, at the very least, failing to fulfill their promises to consumers and society. In short, the multi-ntional corporations exploit Asian political and economic inequality to earn greater profits, turn around to tell the American or European consumers that they hold workers’ standards in high regard, and then turn their back on Asian workers.
Boycotting are not the answer. Indeed, successfully boycotting of products made in the sweat-shops of Bangladesh or Indonesia will likely get workers laid off—and it will not change the country's systemic and widespread labour rights abuses.
Cornell University’s Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labor Eli Friedman criticizes American consumer guilt as misguided: “Chinese workers are depictedas the pitiable victims of globalization … Passive and exploited toilers, they suffer stoically for our iPhones and bath-towels. And only we can save them, by absorbing their torrent of exports, or campaigning benevolently for their humane treatment at the hands of 'our' multinationals.”
We should not be apathetic, nor should we feel guilt, but instead be angered - righteous rage at a society that makes us, as advantaged consumers, accomplices in the misery of our fellow men and women. We must demand a change in the system, not palliative amelioration. And to change the system we must end our own wage-slavery. In the meantime, when many Asian workers are deprived of truly representative trade unions and their resistance is frequently isolated, we can offer our own trade union solidarity and support when strikes and protests take place in the Asian factories.
AJJ
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