Exploitation: Who is to blame?

Many people dislike companies who move their factories and plants to third-world companies in order to exploit cheap labor. Many claim that this is exploitation. And it is. But is it solely the fault of evil capitalist companies? Is big business to blame?
While businesses would ideally pay everyone a living wage, everyone knows that businesses stay competitive while cutting costs everywhere. I’m not trying to say that this makes exploitation right; I’m just expressing that all companies within any form of government are going to cut costs wherever possible. No system will change that. That said, socially aware companies might choose to pay higher wages to third-world labor and advertise their product as socially responsible. Of course, that would also be a form of exploitation. Most of us can agree that companies should pay people more fair wages, but what would that lead to in the end?
Companies are exploiting cheap labor in third-world countries. But what would happen if they were forced to pay workers a living-wage? If that were the case, what incentive would companies have to move their plants to other countries, where high shipping prices, and dealing with foreign governments may drive their costs up? If companies have to pay higher prices on labor, it may well be just as economically wise for them to stay in America. Many citizens like the idea of American-made products, and companies could exploit this advantage. If companies stayed in America for labor, where would foreign workers be? Certainly, the jobs they have don’t pay enough, but the fact remains that they are lining up for such jobs and every position in factories is filled. The fact that such little pay keeps people lining up for jobs says nothing about American factories and everything about governments of countries that allow such exploitation. If foreign companies and governments could provide jobs with living wages for people, they would not be dependent on exploitative American companies.
In summation, the root of the problem lies in foreign countries. While American businesses are being exploitative and socially irresponsible, the solution to the problem lies in governments taking a stand against such companies. The problem runs two ways; and it isn’t fair to cry foul only on companies, who are doing what companies are known to do, cut costs. Governments are in place to protect their citizens. In this case, they aren’t doing their jobs. It’s time to cry foul on them.

Workers and Freedom

The discussion of whether or not workers are free has come up a number of times in our class discussions. It was initially introduced through the Braverman reading, and then again in the “Modern Times”, “Life and Debt”, and Honduras movie clips. Within our class discussion we created a list of factors which affect a worker’s freedom. For instance, it was discussed that workers do have the right to choose where they want to work and therefore can choose which specific freedoms they will give up. But society forces them to make a decision—a forced choice, and once they make that choice the worker may be giving up their freedom as growth, an idea discussed earlier in the course in the Boisvert and Dewey readings. One factor that I think would significantly affect the discussion of whether or not a worker is free that was not brought up in the class discussion was a society or individual’s economic status. Perhaps it is so obvious that it was just assumed, but workers become increasingly less free as their economic status depreciates. In other words, workers give up (as opposed to directly lose) their freedom to choose where to work when it is a choice between freedom and starvation. Or a choice between freedom and providing for one’s self and family. We saw this in the “Life and Debt” and Honduras clips. We even saw this in the “Modern Times” film clip, although it was not as obvious. The film was made in 1936, which was during the 1930’s depression, and thus would naturally represent how workers were treated and how workers felt as a response to the economic status of the country.

Braverman and Life and Debt

Free trade zones are special areas inside of a country which ban or lower many of its home country’s trading and manufacturing laws. For example, a country may open a free trade zone in an area by removing certain tariffs in hopes of attaining greater foreign investment. Also, most free trade zones are located in developing countries. This past week in class we watched a portion of Stephanie Black’s documentary, Life and Debt. In the film, Black depicts a free trade zone in Jamaica. Here, thousands of Jamaicans are employed in what seem like sweat shops helping produce products for such well known companies as Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry, and Brooks Brothers. The depictions of the free zone tie in well to the writings of Harry Braverman. One example of this is the breakdown of labor to very detailed non-complicated tasks. According to Braverman, capitalism has lead to the division of labor into smaller and smaller tasks, and this can be seen when watching the factory workers in Life and Debt. Instead of sewing an entire shirt, workers at the Jamaican free zone only do one small portion of the job (like sew on a pocket) repetitively over the entire day. While this becomes incredibly boring for the worker, it is seen as the most efficient method and is therefore used by capitalists. This leads me to the second way in which Life and Debt ties in with Braverman.

As Braverman describes, capitalism has led to an increase of the capitalists control over labor. Life and Debt provides many examples of this control over the work force. For instance, the companies controlled if and when the employees could work. When the workers began to complain about poor working conditions, the companies brought in replacement workers from Asia and eventually ended up closing down shop. The companies also controlled whether or not and how much the workers would get paid. Many of the employees complained about receiving pay checks 3 weeks late and only made about 3 dollars a week. In addition, the companies controlled more bizarre aspects of the labor like forbidding eating and bathroom breaks. Overall, this division and control over labor helps show a horrifying real world example of Braverman’s theories.

Big Brother @ Work

The above clip is from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, a 1936 comedy starring and written, directed, produced, and party scored by our friend with the mustache. The film takes a slap-stick satirical approach to many aspects of "modern" (1930's) life as Chaplin's misfit character has [relatively] silent adventures through factories, dance halls, jail, and the world of his imagination.

A little bit of research showed me that Chaplin was himself a socialist; big surprise, coming from something we watched in C&E (perhaps we should call the class "communism and ethics"?) While I do not plan to address Mr. Chaplin's political views any further, I do want to talk about something from the factory sequence of his movie, pictured above.

In the factory of Modern Times, there is a highly detailed distribution of labor typical of 20th-century factory work; each person only has a small and repetitive task to perform, and production is overseen by a heirarchy of seemingly lazy managers and company executives. The big guy in the suit seen on-screen above (ala Big Brother) is in charge of the entire factory and can appear at will on giant TV screens to monitor and yell at unproductive employees. He also tells a bare-chested worker we might call the Lever Operator when to crank up conveyor belt speeds to increase output. In short, Big Brother knows exactly what you're doing, how you're doing it, and whether you ought to be doing it faster.

I hope that this situation does not sound far-fetched to you, the reader. According to Sara Baase, the leading CS professor of San Diego State University, computers have allowed the intensive monitoring of employees to extend far beyond factory work and into white-collar (professional) jobs. Many employers now feel free to read emails, listen in on phone calls, and even remotely monitor the computer screens of employees in the name of increased productivity. Some employers even do the unthinkable by secretly keylogging their workers. This means that any password used on a company computer may then be stored and saved in the records of that company which, thanks to exponentially increasing data storage capabilities, may be held indefinitely. Talk about invasion of privacy - yikes!

Many contend that these practices, while implemented to ensure productivity, may actually hurt it more often than not. According to Baase, the effect of automatic monitoring in fields such as phone-based customer support may be to lower employee effectiveness by placing quanitity of above quality of service. More generally, surveillance of employees tends to lower their morale, commitment to doing a good job, and overall effectiveness. It is thus held by some that restrictions on employee monitoring may simply be good business and eventually win out in many cases whether or not any proposed worker privacy legislation is actually passed.

Even so, those finding new jobs in a white-collar work environment would do well to investigate their employers' policies and track record on employee monitoring. Google isn't the only one laying claim to your personal life.

It’s hard not to wear them…

High fashion and name brand clothing are a must in today’s society. Everywhere you look you see people wearing name brand clothes such as Tommy Hilfiger, Lacoste, Burberry, Express, Guess, Nike, etc. People wear these brands to show a social status or to be “in/cool.” I am not going to lie and say that I don’t own these brands because I do. Mostly all of these brands make use of sweat shops. Even though everyone is so opposed to sweatshops people continue to purchase and wear these products. People making these products earn barely even a percent of what the item is sold for. There is little regulation that can be placed on these companies because they are not operating in the United States. Even though some argue that these multinational companies come in and help the local economy by improving infrastructure and producing tax money for the country, the worker is still treated harshly and paid meagerly so they can barely survive. Once the company comes in the citizens are thrown in a vicious cycle that draws workers in for a low wage. First, the workers are attracted to working for a wage instead of farming or creating good to sell. They then are paid a very low wage. Soon they are barely able to afford to live and try to get more money. The company denies and threatens to leave or hire lower wage worker to replace them. Thus, those sweatshop workers are stuck and are controlled to stay there. Many people advocate against these product but still use them because a lot of the clothes out there are made in sweatshops. It is hard to avoid wearing something that is made in a sweatshop maybe that is why the only way protesters make their point is by being naked.

G.M.: Guilty Motives?

Recently in class, we watched a documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car, on the experimentation and consequent destruction of a General Motors electric car named the EV1. According to the documentary, a number of Californians were leased the car in the late 1990’s for real world experimental purposes. After a brief stint on the road, the cars were snatched up by General Motors, and almost all were destroyed. The documentary presented several of the “test drivers” and their discontent with General Motors’ actions. Many of these test drivers had found complete satisfaction with the EV1 and were quite puzzled when General Motors prohibited them from purchasing their electric cars. The film then insinuated that the EV1 was destroyed due to ulterior motives, more specifically: evil oil and car companies colluded to stop production of the electric car in order to ensure maximum profit for the oil companies. While the movie may suggest this, I would like to offer a possible explanation to why production of the EV1 was really terminated.

For one, General Motors stated that the demand for the car was not great enough to support its production and sale. The film attempts to depose this idea with interviews from former owners of the EV1. Each owner enthusiastically supported the car, and a number of them had actually created a protest group to bring it back. As convincing an argument as these people may make, they do not represent the American domestic automobile market in the least. All of them are Californians who voluntarily signed up to test an electric car. Their opinions, as a group, cannot be extrapolated to the greater public. Furthermore, the only group that truly had a grasp on the car’s potential demand is probably GM itself who spends millions of dollars a year testing automobile market demand. The fact is that the car was extremely expensive to produce and market demand did not justify its production. According to GM product development czar Bob Lutz, “they [EV1’s] cost us well over $80,000 to produce, and, being a two-seater, we could only sell 800 in four years. We lost over one billion dollars on that experiment." If GM were looking to save the environment, it would have continued selling the EV1’s; but, GM exists to produce profits and returns for its shareholders. For this reason, the EV1 was not continued. However, looking at GM’s current economic prospects, who knows if a little more research into the EV1 technology could have altered their current fate.

What killed the EV1?

So what killed the EV1? One of the first electrically powered cars, the EV1 was popular in Southern California, so much so that when their EV1s were taken away, many former owners tracked them down and found them crushed in junk yards. Many consumers were outraged and many drew the implication that big oil companies pressured the car companies into withdrawing their electric vehicles.
Car companies are massive. They pull just as much weight as oil companies. There is no reason that a car company should be intimidated by big oil. There is really nothing that oil can do to car companies, anyway. Furthermore, it is in the car companies’s best interest to develop a greener, more sustainable car. So why was the EV1 scrapped?
Perhaps the car was scrapped because it was ahead of its time. There is no infrastructure to support it, after all. In order to fully support electric cars, most parking lots would have to be torn up, electric grids placed down, and the lots repaved. Machines to collect payment would be installed, because electricity certainly isn’t free. Furthermore, the entire electric grid would have to be revamped to support a mass number of cars. Yet, this cannot be the reason the cars were scrapped, because car companies were not planning on a massive market penetration. Their main cars were still gas burning.
Perhaps the car was scrapped because it was quite an unfinished product. After all, the battery could last for about 70 miles at best. They were considered unreliable. And after the disaster with ethanol (which, by the way, the government funded and lost massive amounts of taxpayer money on), car and fuel companies were gunshy and prefer to do more product testing and refining. So maybe the car companies just want to test electric cars more before allowing them to be on the market. But then again, the people were happy with their cars and did not seem to mind that they could only travel 60 miles at a time.
There were a lot of issues with the EV1, but it doesn’t make any sense for the car companies to destroy existing cars. Except for that pesky law. A government law requires companies to provide service for 15 years after sell date on cars. And car companies do not want to spend the money to provide it. Here is a clear example of how excessive government laws infringe upon the lives of citizens. Otherwise, there would be no reason that the car companies would spend money to round up all of their existing vehicles. Furthermore, precedents have been set allowing ridiculous law suits to be pressed upon companies who allow imperfected products on the market. While a customer may have bought an EV1 with the understanding that they could not travel more than 60 miles at a time, if a customer were to be stranded and irritated, they might decide to sue the car company. And would inevitably win. Thus, car companies must take extreme measures, such as the destruction of cars, in order to protect themselves from both the government, and consumers.