Yet another great example of our corporations outsourcing to take advantage of slave labour and lack of regulation.
This latest fatal accident, coming five months after a fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory killed at least 112 garment workers, is likely to again raise questions about work conditions in Bangladesh: workers told Bangladeshi news outlets that supervisors had ordered them to attend work on Wednesday, even though cracks were discovered in the building on Tuesday. Bangladesh’s garment industry has grown rapidly during the last decade, particularly as rising wages in China have pushed many global clothing brands to look for lower costs elsewhere. Bangladesh has the lowest labor costs in the world, with minimum wage in the garment industry set at roughly $37 a month. Retailers and brands including Walmart, H&M, Sears, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and many others have outsourced the production of billions of dollars of clothes there. But critics have blamed the Bangladeshi government, factory owners and global brands for doing too little to protect workers with safe working conditions or to pay them a livable wage. Labor unions are almost nonexistent inside garment factories, and a labor organizer, Aminul Islam, was tortured and murdered last year. His death remains unsolved.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/asia/bangladesh-building-collapse.html
This latest fatal accident, coming five months after a fire at the Tazreen Fashions factory killed at least 112 garment workers, is likely to again raise questions about work conditions in Bangladesh: workers told Bangladeshi news outlets that supervisors had ordered them to attend work on Wednesday, even though cracks were discovered in the building on Tuesday.
Bangladesh’s garment industry has grown rapidly during the last decade, particularly as rising wages in China have pushed many global clothing brands to look for lower costs elsewhere. Bangladesh has the lowest labor costs in the world, with minimum wage in the garment industry set at roughly $37 a month. Retailers and brands including Walmart, H&M, Sears, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and many others have outsourced the production of billions of dollars of clothes there.
But critics have blamed the Bangladeshi government, factory owners and global brands for doing too little to protect workers with safe working conditions or to pay them a livable wage. Labor unions are almost nonexistent inside garment factories, and a labor organizer, Aminul Islam, was tortured and murdered last year. His death remains unsolved.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/world/asia/bangladesh-building-collapse.html
Even if the peasants rally for better regulations and wages, how much you wanna bet these corps will just move their operations to the next 3rd world country.
hmmm strange, I seem to remember late 60s and early 70s people having TVs and telephones and they were made by people my parents could, at the time, afford to have a BBQ with. To say we would not have a computer now if not for cheap labour is not valid to me.
myfist0 -
There's no question that the meaning was that computers and other devices have become relatively less expensive because of shifting production to countries where labor is cheaper. To argue that is absurd.
It's sad that had to happen, but it has and there's no real way of returning to the prior manufacturing situation.
yeeeaaahhhhhh ....
Its not a matter of willing, its do this or starve. That's not choice.
And anyone profiting off putting workers through conditions like those should be prosecuted for manslaughter ... I don't care if its corrupt Bangladesh officials or stock traders on Wall Street.
It gets really old listening to the wealthy complain about how greedy workers are, slamming underpaid workers as not being responsible when their full time wages don't even cover the basics of food, shelter and medicine, yet the same wealthy people deny all responsibility for profits they make circumventing basic human rights, labor and environmental laws by exporting production to places like China and Bengladesh that have little or no regulations nor enforcement.
Shame on you, Brad. Not that its unexpected from you ... but still, shame on you. Your right to profit does not come at the expense of others' basic human rights.
I apologize if I let my temper get the better of me sometimes. I will edit the last post, as I don't think anyone's comments are absurd or nonsense. All comments welcome along with there rebuttals.
myfist0 ....due to the 'implied-but maybe not entirely real' anonymity of the net sometimes questions like 'what do you do for a living' actually help with a respondent's understanding and ability to actually appropriately respond.
In other words it's a fair question.
Re the quoting/editing that had you in disaster-street....that'll be thanks to anything embedded...such as youtube clips and such....but it's entertaining all the same...
Shame on me for what? For believing that people have the right to choose their own destinies without the interference of pampered wealthy foreigners telling them what they should and shouldn't do? Or perhaps I should be ashamed for not accepting that some arbitrarily chosen group is blamed for a particular tragedy?
I don't think workers are "greedy". That's not a term I'd use anyway. What is "greedy" anyway? What I do know is that given the choice of buying two shoes that are identical in every way except price and where it is made, virtually every person will choose based on price and not where it's made. It's a fact of life.
Every time someone buys a product made in China, they have outsourced. I'm not judging people for doing that. But it strikes me as hypocritical for people to complain about outsourcing when odds are, they do the same thing every day.
Everyone posting in this thread is "wealthy". Trying to single out whether you're in the top 0.1% of the human race or merely the top 0.5% of the human race strikes me as ridiculous.
The best way to solve these problems is to either make a conscious choice not to buy products from companies that are involved in the poor treatment of employees or vote for politicians that will try to encourage other countries to pass laws to protect their workers.
However, it is important to remember that the US and Europe and Canada went through this same phase as well. The 1850s through the 1940s saw the same kinds of things routinely. Moreover, we still have this kind of thing happening in the United States regularly -- it just doesn't get reported because it occurs out in rural America in our agribusinesses.
As a business person, what I can do is try to hire the best people I can, pay them competitive wages and try to make sure they're treated well. Unless you've done more, then spare me your "shame on you" rhetoric.
* - "their"
And you should read the response more carefully:
Means "to argue the fact that the price of computers is lower due to lowered labor costs is absurd." because it's so clearly true. It does not mean "you are absurd" or "your comment is absurd".
LOLTrying to rewrite frogs post and the rewrite your explanation will not make me change the way I took the meaning of that post.No amount of rewriting or explaining will so give it up, beating a dead hoarse there, they're their.
English pleaseWas that the double post stuff? So, no editing posts with embedded tags? Strange.
Very true, but why not let people be more aware of these decisions having consequences. Why do we also wait for large scale tragities that bring it to the forefront.
The point is pretty obvious, myfisto0. I don't think many people would want to go back in time and live in 1963 when a television and a phone were major purchases for a family. We enjoy the lifestyle we have today because of globalization and the freedom of people everywhere to work where they so choose.
Obviously, you think corporations and globalization are a bad thing. Am I misinterpreting you?
I think they should know of those consequences. But you're not really doing that, imo. You're trying to focus blame on a particular group (corporations, wall street, evil rich people, etc.). That's a cop-out. The responsible parties are all of us. I have no idea where my shoes or shirt or pants were made. But I bet they weren't made in the United States.
Not for the case of this thread, no. But in the 40s - 50s very few could afford a TV and the 60s seen it affordable to virtually everyone. The same would have been for computers or smartphones with the people that built them actually being able to buy them. The only people I can see benefiting from outsourcing are stock holders.
Unless you've only ever purchased local-sourced everything you've "profited" off of off-shoring too. Have an iPhone? Xbox? PS3? Any Intel or AMD chip in your computer? All of those companies have had safety issues at some third-party manufacturing plant in the past. If you answered yes to any of them (or hundreds of others I could list) you're a hypocrite. Good job casting aspersions at others for behavior you yourself likely undertake.
I see your profile shows you live in the US. Ever shopped at Walmart? Their entire business model is predicated on having a supply chain able to procure items as cheaply and efficiently as possible, selling those items for only the slightest markup, and then making up the profit in volume sales. If you shop at Walmart you might as well have been in Bangladesh with a jack hammer knocking the supports out of the building to help it come down. Everyone is a mass murderers! All of us!
Or you can realize that as third world countries go through this process, these awful, tragic events will happen from time to time. They happened everywhere else that has gone through the industrialization and modernization process including Europe and the US. The fact is only rich countries can afford high construction standards. Only rich countries can afford the giant pile of added costs from safety regulations. That's not saying safety regulations and high construction standards are bad. They're clearly not, but they are very expensive. Too expensive for a poor, developing nations that barely have an industrial economy.
The fact that Bangladesh even has a textile industry is evidence that globalization benefits both sides of the equation. The first round of countries that western companies off-shored too are now too developed and too expensive, because their economies have progressed, for the cheaper types of manufacturing like textiles. They now supply higher end, more expensive manufacturing because they are capable of it.
QFE.
No, no and no. Does a work computer count? or the one I built out of other peoples throw aways?
GOD DAMN DEAD before I step foot in that shit hole. Carry me in feet 1st and stand me in a corner holding a greeting.
Do you make your living off of it? Does it have a chip made by Intel or AMD? Have a Sony TV? I'm sure the other manufacturers have had similar issues, but I don't know that for a fact so I won't call them out.
Target? Kmart? Bob's? Kohl's? Costco? Sam's? BJs? etc, etc, etc..
I'm not trying to be a dick. Honestly I'm not. My point is that we all benefit from off-shoring nearly every day, even if we don't consciously make the choice to do so. I'm just willing to be honest about how I benefit from it and try to do my small part to leave this rock better than I found it.
If you manage to consciously live a life that avoids all of this, more power to you. I respect that. Given the convictions you've shown in this thread even mostly avoiding it is commendable. The problem is, and Brad touched on this, nearly everyone who throws stones at "corporations" or "Wall Street" or, more generally, capitalism and globalization actually live drastically improved qualities of life because of those very things and somehow think they are above the stones they throw at others.
The system is flawed, no doubt about it. All human endeavors are. Sometimes the flaws are awful and tragic and so obvious that we wonder how they weren't noticed ahead of time. But the fact remains that the quality of life of your average human has increased drastically in the decades that capitalism, and more specifically globalization, have been the dominant economic force. And despite tragedies like this, that trend is accelerating, not slowing down.
I also don't want to sound like a dick, but I am pretty sure the same arguments came up with american slavery, and the fact that a person arguing against slavery was wearing a cotton shirt is not very valid to me.
No box stores, food from the market, and I would rather buy 20 year old jeans from the local good will then buy what passes for jeans now-a-days, it's crap.
As for my TV. it's around 25 years old and one of the last built in my city before they closed it.
Fair enough. Good for you. I respect people who try to live what they preach.
As for slavery & globalization, the difference is that early third-world countries who were the targets of off-shoring and globalization have much high qualities of life for their citizens than they did 30 years ago. That's a tangible benefit of globalization on their end. Yes, it's sometimes harsh, but it's also the only way to do it. You can't just snap your fingers and turn fishing villages into cosmopolitan towns with proper electricity, schools, medical care, and access to consistent food and healthy water. It takes time and so far the current system, with all its flaws, has done more for that than any other system in human history.
It's not perfect, and we should strive to always be better, but no human system will ever be perfect. It's the nature of the beast.
That's all anyone can ask for really.
Out of sight, out of mind, to me, is not healthy for a society.
It was English, but maybe not as you 'know' it...
Embedded code can somtimes trigger unexpected results when a post is edited....your experience was an example.
I trust that's now in an English more acceptable to you? ....
LOL ya, had to read it a couple times before I figured out to what you were referring.
Also, the the link in the quote does not take you to that post
Yes, that's part of the fun I was referring to...
Edit....to be more 'correct' [which you cannot...it's like pregnancy...it's an absolute]...
Yes, that's part of the fun to which I was referring.
Oh please...most of here speak American, not English, right?
Anyway...this event reminds me of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire...only time will tell whether it has the same repercussions or not....
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