Labor Issues

Unpack global labor issues: child labor, outsourcing, and worker rights.

Globalization is a process of global economic, political, and cultural integration. It has made the world become a small village; the borders have been broken down between countries. (Economic Globalization in Developing Countries, 2002).For many corporations, outsourcing is much more than expanding the business; it is a financially efficient and logical solution to many corporate issues and is applicable in many situations. Outsourcing a corporation’s noncore operations allows the corporation to focus more time and energy on the core, high-priority operations of the organization.Working Conditions in Developing NationsBecause of the strictly enforced labor laws in the United States and most of Europe, it is often difficult for Americans to understand the extreme and desolate conditions in which many of those living in the developing world work. Individuals born and raised in developed nations often take for granted the safe and healthy conditions of their work environments, not even realizing that many people working in third-world countries live with preventable diseases caused by their working conditions. In the early 1990s, it was estimated that one million individuals in China had silicosis because of occupational exposure to dust, and in some developing nations, asbestosis is the primary occupational disease among workers in mining, construction, and asbestos industries (La Dou, 1992).However, despite these stats, the Canadian asbestos industry supports and even promotes the use of asbestos because the concerns for workers’ health are outweighed by the desire for low-cost construction and building materials.Child LaborWhen inexpensive, unethical labor comes to mind, one most often thinks of child labor. One always imagines children living in developing nations being forced to work in desolate conditions for little to almost no pay. It is estimated that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen are working (Nam, 2013).A 2006 National Labor Committee report entitled “Child Labor is Back: Children are Again Sewing Clothing for Major U.S. Companies” stated that “an estimated 200 to 300 children are sewing clothes for Hanes, PUMA, and Wal-Mart at the Harvest Rich plant in Bangladesh”According to this same report, some of these children are under the age of eleven and work for pay as low as six and a half cents per hour and at times work up to one hundred and ten hours a week. This factory was approved by the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) monitoring group with the understanding that Hanes and the other corporations were in full compliance with all relevant workers’ rights laws and standards. Unfortunately, WRAP and the corporations failed to notice the many child workers, routine beatings, forced and excessive overtime, and failure to pay any of the workers the overtime they were legally due (National Labor Committee, 2006.)Adult LaborThe presence of substandard working conditions does not always mean that individuals are working in dangerous situations. Oftentimes, it means that the working conditions are harmful to the health of the workers, either physically or mentally, and that those health conditions could be prevented by an improvement in the equipment or facilities used by the employees.Economic diversification is a major need in many African countries, and in 1990, the Botswanan government passed the Financial Assistance Policy in an attempt to bring in investors who would build manufacturing plants, thereby not only diversifying the economy but also creating employment opportunities for the 30 percent of its population living below the poverty line. Through this, the textile industry grew in Botswana, but at the cost of worker health due to deficient factory facilities and equipment. Additionally, these sewing machine operators worked ten-hour days with only a thirty-minute break and the chairs they sat in caused Musculoskeletal Disorders that could have been easily prevented if different chairs and varied tasks had been provided. Another cause of these Musculoskeletal Disorders was a lack of training that these sewing machine operators had in the operation of sewing machines, a reality that was only furthered by the fact that most of the workers were not able to understand, due to a lack of education and reading ability, the sewing machine manuals (Sealetsa Thatcher, 2011).Impact of Labor Laws and RegulationsThe labor laws and regulations imposed by governments play a major role in whether or not substandard working conditions are an issue in the country. Additionally, there is a significant and obvious difference between passing labor laws and regulations and actually enforcing those standards. As will be discussed further, China is a prime example of what it looks like to have unenforced health and safety regulations for workers.Developed NationsIn the United States, labor laws and regulations have long been in place to protect the rights of not just workers, but of employers and individuals in general. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed in 1938, establishing regulations on “minimum wage, working hours, equal pay, and child labor”, and the FLSA was just the first in a series of laws that would further regulate labor standards (“Fair Labor Standards Timeline”, 2013, p. 2). Many states require individuals to be sixteen years of age before they can legally work.Developing NationsIn many developing nations, sweatshops and factories are the preferred employment opportunity for most individuals, since frequently these production plants pay equal to or more than the average living wage of the country. In Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, working a seventy-hour workweek in a sweatshop provides that individual with an income that is twice the national average income. The working conditions found in local businesses are often extremely substandard and dangerous, a reality that makes working in a sweatshop preferable for most individuals. The alternative employment opportunities for individuals in El Salvador include agricultural work and street vending, and those are not careers that offer any kind of stability. Therefore, while sweatshops and similar factories do provide better working conditions for working individuals in developing nations, these low employment standards provide a loophole for multinational corporations to take advantage of the situation and utilize fewer financial resources in ensuring the physical and mental health of their employees (Skarbek, 2012).Additionally, while these sweatshops and factories do produce goods for multinational corporations, most of the clothing and textile products produced around the world are not directly manufactured by the corporation, but rather are produced by organizations that are subcontracted by the multinational corporations, a fact that allows the labor standards of the country to be even more prominent in the working conditions (Clark Powell, 2013).References:Schenimann, C. (n.d.). Running head: CORPORATE OUTSOURCING AND CHEAP LABOR 1 Corporate Outsourcing to Take Advantage of Cheap Labor in Developing Countries. Processing Questions: 1. What qualifies as an unfair labor practice? 2. What are the various labor issues that are discussed in the article?