I commented on Shelbey’s and Lisa’s and Drew’s blog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States
Labor Unions are a form of collective bargaining that originally had its merits, but now has gone horribly wrong. While it is and should be completely within the rights of the worker to try to get better wages or take their work elsewhere, the problems arise most recently with the huge amount of globalization going on in the world. Unions no longer address their own workers benefits so much as trying to stop globalization and the natural process of jobs going to those who most need and desire them. Take the last bill I mentioned, the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition act. The second half of the name of the bill almost makes me puke. Take for example Barney, a fat American who hasn’t worked too hard in his life, did only marginally well in school, but now has a cushy union job. With globalization coming in, Barney’s job is now threatened by Therese, a poor 18 year old Guatemalan with a son who is trying to support herself. The company where Barney works would of course much rather pay Therese $3 a day than Barney $12 an hour to do the same work. It is also easily apparent to the average person that Therese is in MUCH more need of the three dollars to buy a bowl of beans and rice for herself and her son, a little clean water, and maybe put a dollar away to save than Barney is in need of his wages to pay for his electric bill, fast food, and rent for his (comparatively!) luxurious apartment. However, the union Barney joins has the nerve, the absolute gall to call a law that would force companies to pay the wage to Barney instead of Therese “fair competition.” How absolutely sick is that? Unions (in America!) do not help the poor of the world. They rob them of their daily bread.
China is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and thus, necessarily, one of the world’s largest employers of intensive human labor factories, known colloquially as “sweatshops”. While my blog was originally about business in China, I intend to actually shift the focus entirely to “sweatshops”, not just in china but also in the rest of the developing world.
Sweatshops, (which I would love to use a different term for… perhaps intensive human labor factories, perhaps industrial human labor workshops; but alas, none such term exists, so from here on I will continue to use the status-quo term “sweatshop”.) while often having difficult working conditions, are often considered havens for those in developing countries working in them. I want to later address several arguments against sweatshops, and the logical flaws behind (most of) them.
In my blog I also intend to focus on what sweatshops are, where they come from and originate, human rights concerns arising from sweatshops, and why I believe that they are, much more often than not, a powerful force of good in the world.
While I realize that most of the anti-globalization policies I hear are crap, I can’t help but wonder if I’m primarily driven simply by the fact that I like to disagree. If this was a Kelley Business School class, perhaps my blog and my latest posts would be a little different… hmmm… I must note that although I abhor the idea of people trying to shut down sweatshops to “help” the workers there, the process of industrialization took about 150 years in Great Britain and the United States of America, but took only 30 years in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan and Hong Kong. These areas are king when you look at current GDP and standards of living. All development comes through suffering, and these poor countries have some shit to get through before their quality of life will increase. I definitely do not preclude the possibility of an evil cabal trying to keep the status quo as it is though.
So after reading about some sweatshops in Bangalore, this idiot U.S. senator Tom Harkin proposed banning imports from countries that employed children in sweatshops. In response a factory in Bangladesh laid off 50,000 children. What was their next best alternative? According to the British charity Oxfam, who we in the GV love so much, and for good reason, a large number of them became prostitutes. What the hell was Tom thinking? That once the company lost all business the children would run and skip happily back to their little shacks where their daddies would sweep them off their feet and go get ice cream and never have to work again? I love charity. I am a very charitable man. But what I can’t stand is idiocy and poorly thought out acts of “charity”.
While talking today in class and after reading a website, I realized something: workers never get anything unless they ask, NAY, THEY DEMAND IT! They must seize control of their lives and DESTINIES! So I have to say I have no problem with unions organizing to ask for better pay wages, but it still seems reasonable that if I’m kind of poor and am working at a union and enjoying my job and the company fires me, somebody even more desperate than I should be able to take my job; unions sometimes use violence to stop that from happening, which is why corporations police themselves. Beating their workers is another matter though…
After doing a little more research, I would have to say that while working conditions are often horrible in other areas compared to America, they are still much better than foreign worker’s alternatives. While I still support workers in other areas trying to advance their own personal conditions, and love hearing when Americans are trying to improve sweatshop conditions, I think that people who think the solution is to move jobs to America are only making the situation worse. Check other posts for info.
I hate that word. Nobody can make me grow except myself and sometimes my growth is way too complex to be explained in a couple of slick paragraphs. This project sucks. Anyway, I still feel like any energy used to try to make large corporations obey laws to help people isn’t going to go anywhere. Workers need to organize and take things into their own hands. If more companies come in there will be more competition for wages.
I feel a little better now that I’m arguing for a cause. Especially one that I feel so strongly about and that seems completely logical to me. I appreciate many people’s desire to do good in the world, but more often than not, people intervening in the way things work, the natural order of things, actually just messes everything up. I will post a little more about this on a links page regarding a certain environmental situation in Borneo.
BLOGTROLL? What’s a blogroll? According to the dictionary, a blogroll is “A list of blogs on a blog (usually placed in the sidebar of a blog) that reads as a list of recommendations by the blogger of other blogs.”
I don’t have any of these things, so here is my 8 blogrolls that i found out later how to do on links side cause saya told me how:
http://www.chinatechnews.com/2009/02/18/8873-eicc-will-investigate-technology-sweatshops-in-china
http://www.senser.com/biii-6.htm
http://www.halexandria.org/dward347.htm
http://www.chinasourcingnews.com/2009/02/23/351085-technology-factory-sweatshops-face-scrutiny-in-china/
http://www.chinalaborwatch.org/en/web/
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011001.htm
http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/fashion/Nike-Sweatshops-in-China.html
http://www.ufcw.org/press_room/fact_sheets_and_backgrounder/walmart/sweat_shops.cfm
God Chinese characters are hard to read. If I had a little more time I would learn some more but they sure are boring. I like talking though. Saturday was 中秋节 or zhong qiu jie, the Chinese moon festival. This is considered a very auspicious occasion for businesses to grow and may lead to a lot of start up companies and investment all over China. China’s petroleum and chemical company is still number one on it’s list of top 100 most profitable companies, but perhaps that will not last much longer when they begin their green revolution.
In our little debate today I realized afterword something I thought to be a key point: one main argument “against” the forces of globalization was that they force or coerce people into obeying their doctrines. This comes with the presupposition though that governments are usually helping their citizens, which I of course believe to be usually the opposite, given enough time for corruption to sink in. Usually governments that the WTO “forces” to open themselves up to trade are ones who would otherwise be basically be holding their people hostage by not allowing any foreign goods in. The people of China in some ways appear to be getting past the powers of government, at a realistic level, but superficially maintaining their devotion to communism. While it is Mao’s face still up at Tienanmen square, it is really Deng Xiaoping, the brave leader who opened up China to the West, who is really being celebrated. Nobody celebrates mass executions and poverty, but everyone celebrates China’s current glory.
