Sweat Shops - Redux

I had an intense debate with The Beard a while ago about sweat shops. My basic position was that there was nothing we could do to improve the working conditions in manufacturing jobs in the developing world. The reason wages are so low and conditions so bad is because there is an oversupply of labor. My argument is that the economic circumstances will resist our efforts at reform. Our goal therefore should be to do as much as we can to build up their economies while will drive up wages and allow for improved conditions.

My underlying assumption though does cause me problems. I do feel strongly about poor labor conditions in the developing world, but I also feel like some efforts to intervene will be useless (or even counterproductive – meaning driving jobs away). I have a lot of difficulty reconciling these two points in my mind. I want to say that I see these same issues at play in other policies like fair trade coffee and domestic price supports for agriculture (which I oppose for different reasons).

The issue here is what do we do about a situation that we think we are powerless to change? My position of waiting for the economies to grow allows for the suffering of the workers to continue for the foreseeable future. The Beard on the other hand, even if he accepted that the economic principles at play impede progress, would likely still advocate for some reform rather than accepting the current situation.

As I consider myself a moral being, I should not be okay, accepting the workers’ fate, even as I realize that dangerous working conditions for low wages are everywhere in the developing world (notably in agriculture and mining).

I realize now that the Nicholas Kristof column that inspired our debate, and my post supporting that column, were both insensitive to the horrible working conditions of the workers. What I should have said is that we want to somehow force better conditions, without driving the labor away. The workers need the money, and the countries need that boost to the economy.

But I also want to distance myself from the well-meaning but poorly thought-out proposals, like the ones that make comparisons between wage increases and price increases of the final product. A proposal like this one ignores the fact that the downward pressure on wages isn’t coming from consumers always needing cheaper Banana Republic shirts, but instead from the over supply of labor in the developing world and the need for bigger profit margins by the companies to remain competitive.

The bottom line is that I should not tolerate terrible working conditions. But I think we need to be more creative and think of solutions that keep in mind the serious economic constraints we work under.