Transnational Corporations And Human Rights Violations Essay

Abstractly, Global corporations have a key role to play in issues ranging from human rights to environmental policies. Specifically, corporations can be most effective in helping the poor by investing in local and global communities on a long-term basis rather than by acting as charities or aid agencies. However, to do so, corporations must restore the public 's trust. They must demonstrate that their presence, particularly in poorer countries and the emerging market economies, is a source of human progress. They must demonstrate that globalisation is not a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In this regard, those who argue against globalisation are denying 1.5 billion people, who live in absolute poverty, the means of escape. To do nothing is morally unacceptable. The world is watching the corporate sector. This is a moment of great challenge, but also of great opportunity because if corporations can demonstrate that they are agents of progress, they can remove the doubts and renew the trust that is essential for both prosperity and security.

In this paper, I chose to apply the works of Marx to the Nike Sweatshop situation that has been going on for decades. The Nike corporation has been criticized for a long time, ever since there has been evidence linking them to sweatshops that exist in factories all around the world where they have outsourced jobs to for cheaper labor. Individuals who want a job with one of the clothing factories are forced to sign a contract that binds them to work for a certain length of time and forces them to live in the arrangements provided by the factory. In some cases, the workers don’t even know the conditions of their employment as the contracts are written in a different language. The name “sweatshop” has come from the extremely high temperatures that have been reported from inside of the factories that workers are forced to endure every day.

In this article he tries to prove his point of view of the sweatshop by proving and stating how the women suffer being there just so in the end we can have a brand accessory like Nike or Gap. Also he talks to his audience because he mentions that we can write letters to companies when workers’ rights are violated and to show support of their efforts to organize, “we can put pressure on our government to adopt policies and regulations that make companies accountable when they fail to address flagrant and persistent violations of workers’ rights.” As of today there are some major brands that have the ‘company code of conduct compliance staff’ in order to answer complaints and investigates the situation and report back and tell what they were going to do to fix the problem. But with all those advances made there’s still any changes in the workplace because he states that a “a little less child labor, fewer forced pregnancy tests or health and safety violations in the larger factories used by major brands” but they still give them poverty wages, long hours of forced overtime and massive firings of workers that tried

This paper describes the legal, cultural, and ethical challenges that confronted the global business presented in the Nike sweatshop debate case study. The paper determines the various roles that the Vietnamese government played in this global business operation. This paper summarizes the strategic and operational challenges facing global managers illustrated in the Nike sweatshop case.

Companies need to ensure they are practicing according to certain guidelines and so employees need know what these principles are through understanding their rights under the Human Rights Act and the Charter. Standards of companies would be set by treaty and contracts given from the companies to the employee when given the job. The Universal Declaration of Rights gives the fundamentals of freedom that can be used by everyone in society. Setting norms would help sustain and involve and evolve states over time. When having rules set for both private and public companies, governments can easily work around those laws to remedy human rights violations. They can do this by ordering trade associations and partnerships aboard. For example, “The standards may affect the public regulatory process in a number of ways: global and regional trade agreements may explicitly recognize them; government regulations may refer to them for definition of terms; and government procurement rules may adopt them”. This quote shows that standards do impact the public and because of the agreements, they can help guarantee that each company is being fair and not treating a handful of people better in comparison to others. It also shows that the governments need to have rules so that they know what the company's standards are if they were to commit a human rights

1. What responsibility does Nike have for conditions of work at foreign factories making its products?

The world has seen a huge rise in the number of Transnational Corporations. Since the 1970s the number of TNCs has risen from 7,000 to over 60,000. To begin with, around 95%

The UN Global Compact sought to create a partnership between the UN and many transnational companies to promote ten essential principles in the areas of human rights, labor, the environment, and anti-corruption. (Anderson, International Regulation of Transnational Corporations, p.5) These principles include the right to equal opportunity, right to security, right to workers, as well as the respect for independence and human rights.

The inevitable growth of globalisation over the past few decades has gradually created the occurrence we now know as the “Trans-national Corporation (TNCs)”. This essay will aim to the highlight and explain the situation in which nation states are continually being reformed by these TNCs.

Arendt's ideas in The Human Condition have laid the foundation on which American society is grounded, and are particularly useful for looking at America today. American citizens have been displaced from the Arendtian model of the modern age. The American government has lost its freedom by having been expropriated from the realm of freedom in the vita activa. Capitalism and large corporations now wield the most power and economic influence in America today. This explanation has become increasingly more appropriate in describing the role of oil corporations in America, in light of the actions America has taken since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

‘Third World’ nations need the investments of transnational corporations and the jobs they provide, otherwise hundreds will die and millions will be worse off. Sweatshops exploit human beings and that fact must be rectified. The poisoning and abusing (verbally, physically, and sexually) must be stopped. Perhaps it would be unreasonable to expect wages to increase and compensations paid, but the fact still stands that corporations must be held accountable for the abuse of the their workers. It is becoming more and more expected of corporations to turn their tide towards a more morally sound future, with the rise of liberal and educated young adult consumers. It is never denied that sweatshop owners must be reigned in and conditions improved, but there is never a shortage of controversy over how this reformation should be done and to what

The aim of the human trafficking manual is to raise awareness of the laws and ways how people may be trafficked within the Nike Inc. The Board of Directors must know which laws apply nationally and internationally to avoid serious consequences, both civil and criminal, such as high penalties or economic loss by significant decrease in sales. It is the company’s responsibility to keep the practices of business lawful and ethical at every stage of production and sale as well as to protect children that may be the victims of human trafficking too. This compliance manual will explain in detail the labor human trafficking issues and give Nike Inc. idea what to do to avoid human traffickers.

Transnational Corporations have been steadfast in calling for respect, support and promotion of human rights (Kline, 2005). This has been done in reference to the United Nations Universal

The topic of this paper is business ethics within Gap Inc., a multinational retail – clothing company. The foundation of its corporate ethical approach is summarized in the Code of Conduct . This paper outlines the ethical problems Gap Inc. faced in the last years and more important, the solutions they found in order to remain a successful company. It shows how large companies deal with common issues like child labour and sweatshops.

The modus operandi of the major apparel corporation has been a controversial issue for the longest time. After a while, it has become evident that whenever Nike moves its operation between countries, it has been to a place with an abundance of lower wage workers (Herbert, 1996). Doing business with independent contractors which are notorious for unethical practices is legal but not