7 ms·
It's not the low-pay per se that concerns those who criticise the outsourcing of everything to the developing world. It is the lack of comparable safety standar
by sambeau 13y ago
It's not the low-pay per se that concerns those who criticise the outsourcing of everything to the developing world. It is the lack of comparable safety standards, environmental standards and workers' rights. We in the developed world fought hard for around 200 years to achieve these standards and rights and it smarts to see large corporations side-step them by outsourcing to countries that don't require or enforce them.
It is in everyone's long-term interest to continue lobbying the companies who make our stuff to start requiring equal standards and rights wherever their stuff is manufactured. It will benefit the people of those countries who do the manufacture while re-balancing some of the giant manufacturing cost differential that these companies achieve by such a side-step.
Cheap stuff comes at a high cost.
- math 13y agoMaybe worth sharing an observation from my building endeavors in Cambodia: often the workers don't realize the risks they are taking, so before lobbying for decent standards, they often need to actually comprehend what they are. This can be more difficult to get through to them than you might think. For example getting welders to always wear eye protection, getting people spray paint for a living to do so in a properly ventilated space. You can try to explain to them the risks - and buy them all the stuff - but many of them will just ignore you and do it the "sensible way without all that silly overhead".
- khuey 13y agoWe [the west] didn't understand it either until people started dying. Sometimes lessons have to be learned the hard way.
- betterunix 13y agoIt sounds like the lessons were already learned. Why are workers still being endangered? Just because they live in a different country?
- mmagin 13y agoOne of the shocking things (to those of us in the developed world) is that in many cases, human life is treated as less valuable in less-developed parts of the world. Not just by other people, but by the person themselves.
- kamakazizuru 13y agobingo! its people themselves - when your option is to starve - or take a potential risk that maybe in the future you'll get sick from the spraypaint. You pick spray paint. People dont realize that not everyone has that many options in the developing world.
- kaybe 13y agoWeren't we talking about people who have the option of protecting themselves from the spray paint and choose not to?
- kamakazizuru 13y agoNo.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoA company doing business in Bangladesh has a fixed amount of money they can spend on compensation + safety + etc. In a competitive industry like garment manufacturing, the margins are already very thin, so increasing safety will result in reduced worker pay (or shutting down and workers becoming unemployed). There is no free lunch. The most we can do is force workers to trade pay for safety, which they might not want to do. ...re-balancing some of the giant manufacturing cost differential that these companies achieve by such a side-step. The primary goal of many activists is exactly this: re-balancing the cost differential so that low skill American workers can continue to be paid well. I.e., a redistribution of wealth from Bangladesh to the US.
- jonknee 13y ago> A company doing business in Bangladesh has a fixed amount of money they can spend on compensation + safety + etc. That's not true, the safety expenses should be mandated and everyone's prices will increase accordingly. Prices are set according to costs and in the developed world, safety is a required cost. It could happen overnight if the big customers actually required it. Imagine if Walmart suspended billions of dollars worth of contracts until safety standards were met.
- yummyfajitas 13y agoIf prices go up sufficiently then there is no advantage to building a factory in Bangladesh. Bangladeshi workers then become unemployed. Right now, Bangladesh needs wealth more than anything else. Once they have wealth, they can spend it on things like OSHA.
- betterunix 13y agoOr, you know, those countries could have factories that satisfy their markets, and we could have factories that satisfy ours. All without having to kill people in the process or burning dirty fuels shipping goods halfway around the world.
- 13y ago
- pavs 13y agoI don't disagree with anything you wrote. But wage issue often does come up on western media, with or without reference to safety standard (I am talking about Bangladesh, this might not be true about other countries).