Summary: The Ethics Of Outsourcing Labor

Sweatshops have been around for centuries, beginning around the late 1880’s. Sweatshops are classified by three main components, long work hours, very low pay and unsafe and unhealthy working environments. Sweatshops are usually found in manufacturing industries and the most highlighted production is clothing corporations, who take full advantage of the low production costs of their products. Many may think sweatshops are a thing of the past but they are still affecting many lives across the nations. There are many ways sweatshops affect lives, but a recent article titled “New study finds ‘more sweatshops than Starbucks’ in Chicago” explains that there are many low wage industry jobs that are violating labor laws in the United States alone. The article also reports how employees who are working in such conditions won’t speak up in fear of the retaliation employers will implement. Analyzing Sweatshops through the lens of the Sociological perspectives will help us better understand the illegal conditions of workplaces that still exist today.

In continuation, the United States federal government should enforce legislation to restrict outsourcing to protect human rights of foreign laborers. Today, American citizens simply cannot know the working conditions of the factories that make the products they buy. This is hugely beneficial for corporations who want to keep us ignorant of their activities. We know about extreme incidents such as the Rana Plaza collapse that capture the world’s attention, however briefly, or when workers get so fed up with the conditions that they strike long enough and loud enough to get the Western world’s attention. But the day-to-day disasters that maim or kill a single worker or the accumulation of lead in workers’ bodies—those go almost completely unreported.

Time and time again, there have been opposing views on just about every single possible topic one could fathom. From the most politically controversial topics of gun control and stem cell research to the more mundane transparent ones of brown or white rice and hat or no hat—it continues. Sweatshops and the controversy surrounding them is one that is unable to be put into simplistic terms, for sweatshops themselves are complex. The grand debate of opposing views in regards to sweatshops continues between two writers who both make convincing arguments as to why and how sweatshops should or should not be dealt with. In Sweat, Fire and Ethics, by Bob Jeffcott, he argues that more people ought to worry less about the outer layers of sweatshops and delve deeper into the real reason they exist and the unnecessariness of them. In contrast, Jeffrey D. Sachs writes of the urgent requirement of sweatshops needed during the industrialization time in a developing country, in his article of Bangladesh: On the Ladder of Development. The question is then asked: How do sweatshops positively and negatively affect people here in the United States of America and in other countries around the world?

• The enormous surplus of labor in China imperils workers worldwide as international competition puts incessant downward pressure on wages and working conditions, leading the apparel and textile industries to favor the cheapest and most Draconian producers.

Dexter Roberts and Pete Engardio in “Secrets, Lies, and Sweatshops,” writes about the various struggles that the United States has with production factories overseas. Wal-Mart claims they have rules for the sweatshops to follow but China still violates the labor laws by hiring consultants to give tips to sneak around auditors. The American people enjoy their everyday items at a low price, which Wal-Mart demands to the sweatshops. The sweatshops are struggling to provide these low price items to Wal-Mart and keep their working conditions humane. Roberts and Engardio explain in the article how companies that have overseas production are attempting to provide the managers and employees with skills to make the overtime required more effective.

However, this could not be more wrong. First off, all of the employees in other nations who flock to Wal-Mart’s factories have the choice to do so. Even though the wages paid in third world nations is inconceivable in United States, those wages will still increase the employee’s income, which in turn increases the employee’s standard of living. The increases in standards of living will lead to economic innovations and increased productivity/efficiency. This process of evolving mirrors that same steps that the United States went through in its early beginnings as well. Secondly, critics want Wal-Mart to enforce labor laws in its overseas factories that are consistent with United States. However, Vedder refutes this demand stating, “We have no more right to expect Wal-Mart to enforce Chinese labor laws than the Chinese have the right to enforce ours” (Vedder). Clearly, this criticism is without reason and impossible. In addition, the regulations and laws in third world countries are not kept up to date as well as in America, not everyone has a birth certificate or passport proving their age. It is unreasonable to assume that Wal-Mart would be able to verify the ages of every single employee in Indonesia or China. (Vedder)

corporations to use cheap overseas labor” my first thoughts were yes because of my personal beliefs. But upon further thought and through discovery, I realized that from a business point of view we as a nation should still help promote economic globalization. In order to do so we need to outsource production and encourage trade. However, because we are fiscally involved in another country’s economy that doesn’t give American corporations the right to implement our laws and standards into other countries’ business practices and laws. Just because we see child labor, unfair wages, and violating overtime as immoral, doesn’t mean that the host county does. However global labor standards need to be unified.

In the past decade, a pattern has emerged of large corporations choosing to contract their labour to foreign countries in order to remain competitive. However, companies tend to relocate production to the poorest nations where labour is cheap and output is chief. As a result, outsourcing labour has made multinational companies subject to criticism for their immoral practices. This has created the classic ethical debate as to whether it is possible for multinationals to engage in developing nations in both an ethical and lucrative manner. For businesses, the difficulty is if one of these values should be favoured over the other.

In these sweatshops, workers are generally offered low wages with little nonwage benefits. In certain factories, workers have been denied of a “living wage” as their take-home pay have been insufficient to satisfy basic standards of living. Typically, in these countries, the minimum wage laws were violated and workers were weakly unionised to bargain for higher wages. For example, a typical Chinese worker earns a wage of Rmb$250-$350 while the minimum wage was supposed to be Rmb$350.

China is one of our biggest labor competitors. The reason many US companies go to China for outsourcing is again, because of their workforce’s willingness to operate at low costs. Michael Zimmerman describes this as a disparity in worker “tolerance”. Where the low wages found in China are “far lower than U.S.

Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the vast range of goods produced overseas and the often horrifying conditions under which workers labored to produce them. College students, activists, and certain scholars were quick to condemn “Sweatshops” and the multinational companies (MNC’s) that used them. However, this initial moral condemnation was based more on a natural sense of horror than moral reasoning, and critics often demonstrated a lack of sensitivity to both the underlying economic conditions that gave rise to the sweatshop phenomenon and to the beneficial consequences of sweatshops for both their employees and the broader economies in which they functioned. As a result, many economists quickly leapt to the

Imagine only seeing your family for one day once a year. Having to compete for a ticket home with millions of other workers in order to see your family that you haven’t seen in a year. This is the life of 130 million migrant workers in china. These workers make most of the things we own. Most of us don’t think about the people who make our clothes, our phones, our computers; items that we use everyday. Our way of life revolves on mass consumerism, where we value the article more than the person or persons who made it. Mass media and multi million dollar industries keep the conditions on how these people work as a total mystery. Some brands have been exposed for sweatshop and

Critics of globalization often decry about the exploitation of Chinese workers who are forced to endure harsh working condition and other violations of human rights. From

“Inside the factory, amid clattering machinery and clouds of sawdust, men without earplugs or protective goggles feed wood into screaming electric saws, making cabinets for stereo speakers” (Goodman and Pan 1). In the article Chinese Workers Pay for Wal-Mart’s Low Prices by Peter Goodman and Philip Pan the mistreatment of the migrant workers in China is evident. These kinds of behaviors are taking place all over in China. The abuse of the Chinese work force has reached terrible proportions and created unlawful conditions because of the demanding economy of China, and other countries’ needs of the goods; however, the companies that are centered in China are working to make sure their workers are treated fairly.

Another large ethical problem that the vast majority of outsourcing companies have is the low salaries for employees. Most employees are migrant workers and aren’t eligible for in house health care or education benefits. To most workers, the current wage seems very high because they are migrants, but in reality they can’t afford to pay for health care or a future education. Even the mid level factory workers can’t afford to buy a single iPhone that they spend 12 hour days putting thousands of chips in, on the assembly line.