It's not the low-pay per se that concerns those who criticise the outsourcing of everything to the developing world. It is the lack of comparable safety standards, environmental standards and workers' rights. We in the developed world fought hard for around 200 years to achieve these standards and rights and it smarts to see large corporations side-step them by outsourcing to countries that don't require or enforce them.
It is in everyone's long-term interest to continue lobbying the companies who make our stuff to start requiring equal standards and rights wherever their stuff is manufactured. It will benefit the people of those countries who do the manufacture while re-balancing some of the giant manufacturing cost differential that these companies achieve by such a side-step.
A company doing business in Bangladesh has a fixed amount of money they can spend on compensation + safety + etc. In a competitive industry like garment manufacturing, the margins are already very thin, so increasing safety will result in reduced worker pay (or shutting down and workers becoming unemployed).
There is no free lunch. The most we can do is force workers to trade pay for safety, which they might not want to do.
...re-balancing some of the giant manufacturing cost differential that these companies achieve by such a side-step.
The primary goal of many activists is exactly this: re-balancing the cost differential so that low skill American workers can continue to be paid well. I.e., a redistribution of wealth from Bangladesh to the US.
> A company doing business in Bangladesh has a fixed amount of money they can spend on compensation + safety + etc.
That's not true, the safety expenses should be mandated and everyone's prices will increase accordingly. Prices are set according to costs and in the developed world, safety is a required cost. It could happen overnight if the big customers actually required it. Imagine if Walmart suspended billions of dollars worth of contracts until safety standards were met.
Or, you know, those countries could have factories that satisfy their markets, and we could have factories that satisfy ours. All without having to kill people in the process or burning dirty fuels shipping goods halfway around the world.
Factories that satisfy their markets won't magically become safe and clean, much like the ones in the now "developed word" during the industrialization phase weren't.
Yeah, and the solution is not to only mandate safety standards at your own factories, but to impose a stiff tariff on goods produced in countries without comparable standards (and without meaningful enforcement). Yeah, I know, "free trade," but it is not a fair market if some people are playing by a different set of rules, and we do not want to have a race to the bottom.
Agreed. Then some factory owners will build robots instead (as they're already doing due to wage rises in China) and wipe out any foreign competition along with jobs. It's for their own good, after all.
It is for their own good. Robots are inevitable, better to push them out now and start addressing what they mean for society than pretend they're never coming.
Sure, that would be better. It'd be awesome if they could transition to any type of better economy. But I think given all the circumstances and what is happening, facing and accepting reality is the best way to go. Because the robots are coming, waiting for the country to be ready just isn't going to happen.
That's why I suggested the customers mandate safety. If Walmart/Nike/Apple/etc required safety it doesn't matter where the factories move.
Western nations could incentivize this by not assessing fines for firms caught producing their products in unsafe factories (I assume a couple billion dollar fine would be more impactful to Apple than a scathing NY Times article).
First... China has a humongous work force, which solely on numbers no other country can compete with, you need whole continents to get the same mass of workforce.
Second, in comparison to the rest of the BRIC competitors - Chinese workforce is relatively homogenous, well educated and most importantly of all they have a work ethic (Brazil? Hahahahah).
Third, low price is not the sole reason why stuff is produced in China (Go read why Ipad production is never returning to the US according to Steve Jobs).
"The most we can do is force workers to trade pay for safety, which they might not want to do."
This is a weird way to frame things, as though workers don't really mind being killed or injured on the job. Safety is management's responsibility, not an employee choice.
The question is not whether workers mind being killed or injured. The question is which they mind more - lower pay, unemployment, or an increased risk of injury or death.
There are many things we could do to reduce your first world risk of death - mandate that all cars are have a mechanically enforced speed limit of 20mph, for example. We choose not to. Why?
That argument presupposes that people are not facing a real risk of starving to death if they are unemployed. I am not sure that is something that can be assumed.
When there is a gun pointed at your head, you do not have a real choice.
>as though workers don't really mind being killed or injured on the job.
It's a matter of probabilities, not certainty. And workers quite often DO prefer to trade off safety against other concerns. Not just pay, either. Convenience is a big one. When I worked at a factory in China, I was told the people using heavy machinery had safety goggles available but often preferred not to wear their googles, because doing so was hot and uncomfortable. Management would nag people to do so but wouldn't require it. In that sort of circumstance, giving workers objectively more freedom and personal responsibility allows them to be less safe - but more comfortable! - compared to how they would be in the US with OSHA breathing down people's necks.
Yeah that's why OSHA puts responsibility on business owners instead of employees. People have cognitive biases that cause them to make all kinds of terrible decisions about safety, which is why leaving safety to "personal responsibility" is a horrifying idea with serious negative consequences. OSHA might be frustrating at times, but it didn't appear in a vacuum.
We can also educate consumers and show them they really should be buying garments made in America or at least in better conditions/wages than the average. I happily pay more for my clothes knowing that the extra money goes towards that.
Maybe worth sharing an observation from my building endeavors in Cambodia: often the workers don't realize the risks they are taking, so before lobbying for decent standards, they often need to actually comprehend what they are. This can be more difficult to get through to them than you might think. For example getting welders to always wear eye protection, getting people spray paint for a living to do so in a properly ventilated space. You can try to explain to them the risks - and buy them all the stuff - but many of them will just ignore you and do it the "sensible way without all that silly overhead".
One of the shocking things (to those of us in the developed world) is that in many cases, human life is treated as less valuable in less-developed parts of the world. Not just by other people, but by the person themselves.
bingo! its people themselves - when your option is to starve - or take a potential risk that maybe in the future you'll get sick from the spraypaint. You pick spray paint. People dont realize that not everyone has that many options in the developing world.
I don't disagree with anything you wrote. But wage issue often does come up on western media, with or without reference to safety standard (I am talking about Bangladesh, this might not be true about other countries).
It is in everyone's long-term interest to continue lobbying the companies who make our stuff to start requiring equal standards and rights wherever their stuff is manufactured. It will benefit the people of those countries who do the manufacture while re-balancing some of the giant manufacturing cost differential that these companies achieve by such a side-step.
Cheap stuff comes at a high cost.