Introduction to sweatshops in the global economy

Discuss about the Lifestyle Of Western Nations.

Several aspects of the average material lifestyle of Western nations can be attributed to the business associations with Western countries and Asia. A major portion of apparels, toys, cloth accessories as well as technology used by the West are produced in various regions of Asia. However, it has been noted that the commercial sector with significant developing nations like China and Indonesia or other regions of South East Asia is stated to be crucial for the persistent economic development of the US as its overall manufacturing activities have been operated in the developing or economically emergent nations whereby around ten in billions of dollars as well as huge series of manufacturing plants are operated based on contractual basis with the US organizations (Shahjahan and Kezar 2013). However, it has been noted that several US citizens are uninformed on the increasing level of their consumerism has been influencing an intensively divisive and controversial industry by further intriguing critical disputes and debate relayed to the sweatshop phenomena. The essay aims to shed light on ethical obligations that businesses have been undergoing while operating their manufacturing activities on low labour cost or developing nations by shedding light on Nike organization that has its operations on several financial developing nations.

The connotations of sweatshops has significantly remained broad by describing any manufacturing plants which have the potentialities of comprising unreasonably dependable administrators with hazardous, detrimental working conditions and further implements longer working durations with low level wages. It must be noted that several developed nations such as US have been associated with sweatshop production facilities on a large scale as well as a significant segment of the remaining sweatshops of the world have been located in several regions in Asia (Arnold and Bowie 2003). However, with the enduring tradition of the West has given rise to the ethical evaluation of these trade practices that has been incorporating utmost significance in recent times. Furthermore, from the business perspective, sweatshops have been regarded as immensely profitable and beneficial as they tend to capitalize on low labour costs in developing nations and significantly reducing the cost of production. Several major clothing, footwear, technology companies such as Nike, GAP, Levi’s have been associated with sweatshops and further have been accused of several violations and breach of demands and requirements for justifiable an d moral working conditions in the process of their production facilities (Arnold and Bowie 2003). It is important to note that the headquarters, consumer base are effectively situated in the US whereas the manufacturing units of production procedures are executed in several Asian regions. However, studies reveal that these business organizations have been encountering several forms of criticisms as being complicit in the mistreatment and exploitation of labourers as they have been incompetent to rectify the malpractices and exploitative nature of the manufacturers. However, few internal reports executed by Nike has revealed that around two thirds of over 170 manufacturing plants manufacturing Converse shoe products have failed to accomplish the company’s own financial standards for executing manufacturing activities (Arnold and Bowie 2003). Several studies reveal that sweatshops have been regarded as a fundamental approach towards modernization, globalization, growth and development. Though several studies have been suggesting these sustainable global investments in low economic Asian countries as an significant factor for economic progress, certain reports claim that several countries have no fundamental aim for effective economic development rather than such manufacturing facilities which generate low subsistence wages.

The profitability of sweatshops for businesses like Nike

Business organizations with manufacturing operations in low economic development have been undergoing several obligations and challenges with their manufacturing processes such as severe rate of conflict of interests and issues and complexities related to moral and ethical decision making procedures in contemporary business environment. These manufacturing plants have been consistently paying low level subsistence wages to the employee base and thus being incompetent to alleviate rural financial deprivation in places like Southeast Asian countries and Africa.  However, modern theorists have posed the need and demands of essential and productive approaches in order to effectively address such areas of concerns and complexities by identifying certain relevant moral determinants and their respective aims and objectives. Firstly, the governance bodies of the US is considered to be liable of safeguarding the interests of their people including however not limited to the essential human rights and material welfare. Secondly, the US corporate trade business which employ sweatshop labour in economic emerging Asian countries have their fundamental concern with utmost profit maximization have been engaged in conflict and significant dispute situations with the necessity to encourage human rights and authorities such as providing employees with fair, acceptable and decent working conditions. Furthermore, the need to assure fundamental conditions for survival for the people of developing nations have often been encouraged to involve the workers with exploitative treatment.

At this juncture, the significant issues associated with moral and ethical decision making must be taken into consideration whereby it has significantly been stated that labourers engaged in sweatshops deserve enhanced as well as improved working conditions and several conflicting situations would arise with the deprivation or lack of such compensation factors towards the labour base (Bressán and Arcos 2017). Studies explicitly demonstrate the unjustified factors for sweatshop workers to undergo severe hazardous working conditions. However, taking into consideration the level of inequalities between US along with the developing Asian countries which have developed several transformations over the course of history, people inhabiting on developing Asian countries are considered to be considerably engaged to the marginalized sectors than those situated in the host nations with or without vital directives and regulations against sweatshop labour. Furthermore, the Southeast Asian government from the Worker Rights Consortium perspective have comprehended those stringent labour rights directives would increase the expenditure costs of product manufacturing and further cause challenges for retailers to place orders in those regions (Weiss 2014). The anticipated increase in the rate of minimum wage of over 40% in Southeast Asia has left several manufacturers operating in those regions who have been immensely dependent on employing factory workers for the minimum rate of US $ 200 per month have posed high level concerns regarding the potential migration rate of investment which could reduce the region’s persistent level of competitiveness. However, it must be noted that the practical moral imperatives stated by Immanuel Kant significantly asserts that human beings, must be treated as ends in themselves and not essentially as means and thus sweatshops have been intrinsically being unacceptable as viewed from the deontological perspectives as the labour force of these manufacturing plants are considered to be treated as machines in order to develop sustainability and increase the revenues of these businesses (Kissiah 2014). However, from the moral perception, it has been noted that the growth and development of the world into a ‘global village’ has stated a vital point yet has remained unrecognized and vary from the stated moral perspective (Singer 2016). It has further been noted that if these sweatshop labour system has been prohibited, people of these Asian countries that have been decisively dependent on these industries for their survival would face severe rate of complexities in reality (Murphy, Laczniak and Harris 2016).

Moral and ethical obligations of US-based businesses with operations in developing countries

At this juncture, it is important to recognize the critiques and evaluation stated by several globalization critics whereby they have perceived such sweatshops as classic examples of the ‘race to the bottom’ phenomenon (Boylan 2013). It further signifies that this phenomenon takes place when world economy have been opened to free, unrestricted and unregulated trade operations. However, critics of unregulated trade reveal that few companies have been employing slave labour whereby the labour force has been compelled to work without sufficient pay by the authoritative administrative rules to claim to receive greater revenues by encouraging these trade practices of labour standards by the Western business organizations (Beauchamp and Bowie 2014). Critics though refer to the sweatshop labour as the way for business enterprises to exploit or utilize the rate of poverty as well as desperation of third world nations by allowing the workforce in order to circumvent the conditions of living wage, labour and organizational rights along with workplace safety regulations (Balko 2013). Though certain global critics are of the opinion that only with the prosperity developed by global trade operations, globalization’s advocates believe that a nation can afford to pose demands for improved working conditions for its labour force (de Lagerie 2013). However, several anti-sweatshops state the cause of affluence of West which has result the third world countries to be experiencing continual deprivation (Zeng 2017). However, it has been considered as a significant responsibility of the developed countries to bring the financially developing nations undergo modernization without any acts of worker exploitation or harassment. Nike, being one of the leading footwear manufacturing companies has been reportedly paying around 16 cents per hour to its labour force employed in the Wellco Factory in China where it has been noted that the minimum wage for a small family is about 87 cents (Singer 1972). Moreover, the labour force has been engaged in 11-12 hours work shifts for the entire week whereby workers are posed fines for declining additional hours of duty (Khan, Rodrigues and Balasubramanian 2017). The increased rate of global justice has further revealed the exposed unsavoury working conditions of Nike and has further found several instances of minor working over 12 hours shifts.

At this juncture, it is significant to develop the effective and reliable approaches in order to evaluate the developing hazardous and challenging working conditions for the labour force engaged in the manufacturing industry of developing third world nations which has been regarded as the exposures relevant for the ones who are engaged with the laborious work and strenuous working hours (Phau, Teah and Chuah 2015). Furthermore, certain other major standpoints in the domain of social sciences have been concentrating on the invalidated associations whereby health conditions have been regarded as individualistic resource that further establishes the paid work involvement and quality of the working conditions (Beckert 2017). As a result, employees undergoing vital health issues may be outsourced for jobs comprising of deprived working conditions which could thus lead to severe deterioration of health conditions because of previous health deficits and not because of hazardous working conditions (Corpwatch.org 2018). Thus, such obligations can pose less significance to the process of outsourcing and can further transform the employment status as well as working conditions of the manufacturing plants of third world nations by further establishing sequential order among these forms of exposures and alterations in health as labourers often criticize such outsourcing procedures (Stewart 2014).

Critiques of sweatshop labor practices

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that the persistent debatable issues associated with sweatshop labour has been analytical to the ethical complexities undergoing the US- Asia trade relations which has been highlighted by the need to negotiate the level of incompatibilities among the comparative expenditures and beneficiaries that would occur from the course of interactions between the practical as well as normative insights on such concerns. The essay has explicitly evaluated the way modern business enterprises with manufacturing operations in third world nations experience certain ethical obligations and dilemma by shedding light on one of the manufacturing operational activities of Nike in certain nations of Asia.

References

Arnold, D.G. and Bowie, N.E., 2003. Sweatshops and respect for persons. Business Ethics Quarterly, 13(2), pp.221-242.

Balko, R., 2013. Sweatshops and Globalization. A Connected World. Publish Date Unknown. https://www. aworldconnected. org/article. php/525. html.

Beauchamp, T.L. and Bowie, N.E. eds., 2014. Ethical theory and business. Pearson.

Beckert, J., 2017. The Ambivalent Role of Morality on Markets. In The Moralization of the Markets (pp. 123-142). Routledge.

Boylan, M. ed., 2013. Business ethics. John Wiley & Sons.

Bressán, J.M. and Arcos, A., 2017. How do Migrant Workers Respond to Labour Abuses in “Local Sweatshops”?. Antipode, 49(2), pp.437-454.

Corpwatch.org,  2018. Bangladeshi Government Cracks Down On Garment Workers Sweatshop Wage Protests | corpwatch. [online] Corpwatch.org. Available at: https://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=16103 [Accessed 6 Jun. 2018].

de Lagerie, P.B., 2013. The wages of sweat: A social history perspective on the fight against sweatshops. Sociologie du travail, 55, pp.e1-e23.

Hewetson, R., Evaluating Businesses’ Obligation to Promote Global Justice. Special Issue: Business Ethics, p.43.

Khan, Z.R., Rodrigues, G. and Balasubramanian, S., 2017. Ethical consumerism and apparel industry-towards a new factor model.

Kissiah, C.J., 2014. The Deontological and Utilitarian Cases for Rectifying Structural Injustice in Sweatshop Labor Ethics: A Critical Assessment.

Murphy, P.E., Laczniak, G.R. and Harris, F., 2016. Ethics in marketing: International cases and perspectives. Taylor & Francis.

Phau, I., Teah, M. and Chuah, J., 2015. Consumer attitudes towards luxury fashion apparel made in sweatshops. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 19(2), pp.169-187.

Shahjahan, R.A. and Kezar, A.J., 2013. Beyond the “national container” addressing methodological nationalism in higher education research. Educational Researcher, 42(1), pp.20-29.

Singer, P., 1972. Famine, affluence, and morality. Philosophy & Public Affairs, pp.229-243.

Singer, P., 2016. Famine, affluence, and morality. Oxford University Press, USA.

Stewart, K.L., 2014. An ethical analysis of the high cost of low-priced clothing. Journal of Academic and Business Ethics, 8, p.1.

Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Zeng, Y., 2017. Does globalization enhance countries’ ability to combat human trafficking?.