

Christmas: Brought to you by chinese slave labor - meadhikari
http://owni.eu/2011/12/21/christmas-brought-to-you-by-chinese-slave-labor-mattel-disney-china/

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fragsworth
There is a major flaw in economic logic here. Yes - Chinese labor conditions
are bad. Unfortunately, if we boycott companies that use Chinese
subcontractors, there will be less demand for Chinese labor, which will reduce
the number of available jobs, thus reducing their salaries, and making their
labor conditions even worse. A shitty job is better than no job.

If we spend _more money_ on foreign-made goods, we provide more demand for
their labor, and effectively increase the available labor options for
foreigners, which improves their labor conditions.

~~~
seagaia
Hm, this sounds tough then. So what would be a more viable mode of action?
What do people currently do to work on improving these labor conditions?

I'll admit my first thought was "I'm just never going to buy these toys for
so-and-so ever!", but unsurprisingly it's more complex than that.

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usaar333
I really dislike these hyperbolic titles.

Yes, there are labor rights abuses in China, but nowhere does it come close to
slave labor.

"According to him “the workers can not earn more than 154 euros a month, so
they need those extra hours.""

Tossing around numbers means nothing. Chinese is a middle income country. 154
euros per month works out to be roughly half of China's GDP per capita, which
is a pretty reasonable number. No you aren't going to be getting your own
apartment on that, but it is a lot higher than say working on a farm.

If anything, the developing world's outsourcing so much low-end factory work
to China has resulted in more people getting out of poverty faster than ever
before in history.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of violations, which should be
corrected, but I would hardly consider these workers to be systematically
exploited.

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mwhooker
Surely China is more culpable than Amercan consumers and corporations?

~~~
sp332
If SOPA is getting this much flack for supporting a bill that threatens free
speech, I think corporations that fund slave labor should be taken to task as
well.

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DanielN
To be clear, from what I could tell nothing described in this article is
honest to goodness slave labor.

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Mz
I am reminded of discussions I have had on health lists about errors being
made in US hospitals which can lead to patients dying. One of the things I
noted: I think more mistakes get made where I work during crunch times, when
more work is coming in than we can handle in a timely manner with only working
regular hours, so we get pressured to work faster, put in overtime, etc. Of
course, no one is likely to die if someone in my department makes a mistake.
I've had a class on workplace hazards, eons ago. Even at my job, where I work
for a company with an excellent reputation as a fantastic place to work,
people bitch about overtime, there is risk of winding up with carpal tunnel
from doing your job, and so on.

I'm not saying there aren't real problems here, but a) almost everyone bitches
about their job (and would bitch more if unemployed)and b) work will always
entail health hazards (and not working is generally worse). I do think there
is room for improvement in these things and I don't want to discourage people
from discussing that, but vilifying employers like this makes no sense to me.
Just like the factory workers take these awful jobs because it's better than
the alternative (starvation and homelessness), the employers are also working
within the constraints of real world limits.

At my job, we get asked to produce more during crunch times (and work overtime
and all that) because a) turn around time impacts customer satisfaction, so
not meeting the expected turn around time is a threat to the company health
and welfare b) high demand is periodic/seasonal, so it does not make business
sense to hire more people (hiring more people would hurt the bottom line,
shorten turn around time further during non-peak times, thus raising customer
expectation to this newer shorter turn around time, thus leaving the company
in the same boat during certain seasons when demand is high but with increased
overhead), c) when we get backed up, things snowball because more customers
call in to complain about the turn around time, so rush requests and the like
get sent over and so on which results in even more work and urgency and all
that. Ironically, rush requests take more time and slow down production even
more and in many cases if they left us alone, they would get it about as fast
because we would get more done generally but the customers neither know that
nor care, they just want their own needs met. The best way to deal with all
this is try to keep things within the expected turn around time -- which means
crunch times happen, like it or not, and it's not because the company is run
by evil overlords or some crap.

I did write a proposal at work with intent to try to resolve some of the
systemic issues and improve both company performance and the quality of the
work experience for the people in production. It got met with excited
enthusiasm and then promptly butchered and bastardized into something
unrelated to the analysis I wrote. So if someone can come up with a better
answer, a path forward to more humane conditions in these factories, and also
find some means to effectively get the word out so people will, in fact,
implement it, I am all for that. It's easy to bitch and criticize. It's hard
to come up with real solutions that genuinely improve things -- which is
exactly why the people running these factories aren't doing a better job of
treating people more humanely and all that. And even if you can do the
analysis and come up with an idea with potential, you still face challenges in
"selling" it, in getting the word out so it actually gets done. Conversations
like this tend to be long on vilifying people and short on exploring "what
would actually work to improve things?" That never goes over all that well
with me (not that anyone here is obligated to care what I feel about it, just
sayin').

