It seems a weekly occurance that some company in the United States or Europe is blasted by reporters and workers' rights groups about unethical practices used in their overseas factories. Apple is only the newest target, clothing and shoe companies are the most frequent targets.
I am not here to blame these companies; they have had plenty of that. They may well have knowingly allowed factories to provide them the best price for an unknown human price. Those that do have auditors and actively seek to keep these factories in line face a tough challenge, though. A recent International Herald Tribune article reports "institutional approaches to deception." In other words, these factories work together to falsify reports, fool auditors, and train employees what to say when the "sweatshop snoops" come around.
Foreign companies will do what they have to do. They know their legal obligations, and they will fulfill them or get caught. The core of the issue, I think, lies in China, and the many other countries providing cheap labor for rich developed countries. The big difference between China and the other developing countries providing cheap labor is that the Chinese excel in making more, cheaper, faster. So, what is their secret?
The problem is unethical business practice. They specialize in forcing people into low-wage, long-hour, no-rest production of anything that somebody will buy. Controlling the workforce is not so difficult with thousands of replacements waiting for a job at the door.
Just recently, I heard of a another increasingly common practice in the ongoing glut of greed. The factories often do not pay workers for the first three months. If a worker can survive through, they will start receiving pay. If not, the factory has free work for the time the worker tried to survive. This is the Chinese solution to a high turn over rate, cruel and effective.
And even with the abuses of the factories, a deeper factor that perpetuates the problem is the workers themselves. Most would jump in line for more hours and more money. They go to Guangdong with the knowledge that they will work long hours. They do not care. They often say, "I work just as hard back in the fields, but if I go to Guangdong, I get paid for it." For many workers, it is an issue of paying tuition fees for the education of children or siblings. I do not want this to sound like a sob story, though, the obligatory television and DVD player are usually first on the list of things to buy.
This all goes to show the depth and diffusion of the problem. Sure, it needs to be solved, but it is not as easy as saying any one party is completely to blame. The truth is, the foreign companies enjoy the cheap cost of production and do not want to lose it, the Chinese companies will do anything they can to make more money, and the migrant workers are accustomed to working hard and listening to their superiors. Where is the chain broken? Who will break it?
