The consequences for granting exemptions to U.S. federal labour laws to garment subcontractors operating on Saipan was that they could pay the workers a fraction of the minimum wage, work them harder in poor conditions and for longer hours. Following suicides at Apple’s main supplier in China, in 2010 Foxconn has been reported for labour law abuses such as child labour, forced overtime and unsafe working condition and violations of minimum wage laws, when in actual fact Apple’s profit has reached an amazing $13 Billion. This contrasting with Apple’s image as a forward thinking innovative company that produces the latest in the most sort after electronics.
This proves that the neoliberal agenda breeds the growth of inequality as the multinational corporations will naturally move their factories to countries that allow exploitation of third workers, free trade only benefits the one percent, the other ninety nine percent are left without jobs in their own countries because all the factories have moved to third world countries to save the companies money or are those workers who live in squalor and are paid next to nothing. All that matters to the factory owners is that their employees can work and women cannot work if they’re pregnant, that’s the reason they force female employees to take birth control because they don’t want them to have time off work. Their profit matters more than their workers family and in some cases they tell pregnant workers to have abortions so in that respect, the business is more important than the life of an unborn child. If this happened in a first world country it would be a disgrace, your job should have no say in what you do to your body.
The only way consumers could take action against these multinationals is to stop consuming but that’s almost impossible, as consumers by their namesake are programmed to consume. There’s really no way of stopping corporations from not following labour laws as long as there are countries with lax labour laws. Where there is a will there’s a way, as they say and as long as companies can save money outsourcing to third world countries they will because profit means more to them than the suffering of others, so the only way to combat that would be to tighten the labour laws and unionise the third world countries so their governments can’t allow the workers to be exploited by multinational corporations. It’s retailers’ responsibility to research who they get their products from and where the products are made, and if they’re made in a sweat shops at the expense of a third world worker, it’s their responsibility not to stock those goods so the callous corporation do not profit from other peoples misery. It’s the federal government’s duty to not allow goods to be imported into the country that comes from third world sweat shops. Until it can be established that those exporters follow us labour laws and their workers are treated fairly.
More importantly it’s the corporation’s responsibility to put the well being of their workers above that of their profits and even as I’m typing this I’m seeing a flaw because that’s impossible. Only labour laws separate the average first world citizen from the same fate, the only goal to a corporation is money and the fact it would move to a country without stringent labour laws proves how unscrupulous they are. The ethical code these corporations should be following is that of utilitarianism which is the greatest happiness for the greatest number as it’s the complete opposite to how they’re operating now. Their unethical actions cause the suffering of millions from poor working conditions/hours/pay in third world countries and the loss of jobs in first world countries causing poverty and misery for the sake of the one percent that benefit from this corruption of the idea of free trade.
In conclusion these the exploitation of third world workers is not only unethical but it’s not a sustainable business model because moving the factory jobs overseas has caused loss of jobs in first world countries. The reason corporations move overseas is to save money on labour so they can make more money selling their products to consumers in first world countries but how can this be possible if the job losses they’ve caused have caused a recession and the consumers can no longer consume? It will eventually collapse.
