Today’s Le Figaro had a link to this website:
http://www.slaveryfootprint.org/
You are supposed to answer questions to find out how many “slaves” you have working for you. Apart from all the complaints that this does not work on many browsers and that you have to insert an American zip code before you can answer the questions, my complaint is that the politically-correct Yanks who dreamed this up cannot differentiate between slaves and poorly paid workers. We know that slavery is still widespread in the Arab world and parts of Africa. But those who work in sweatshops, often in insalubrious conditions, usually get paid some sort of pittance.
I got onto the survey using Google Chrome, but the whole thing was so badly laid out that I gave up. But in trying to make consumers feel bad, these Americans are going about things the wrong way. Workers may be earning very little, but would they prefer to be unemployed and earning nothing? I doubt it. Why not attack the real slave trade instead of the soft target of western consumers?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Sheonah….this is exactly what I said to my daughter when she was complaining about Primark after seeing a programme about the little Indian children girls sewing sequins on clothing….the children were happily chatting with each other and the place loked quite clean. There is no doubt it’s slave labour but at least they are earning some Rupees rather than nothing, this contributes to the family who are basically poor. I remember when I was a small girl in the forties picking rose hips for the government to make rose hip syrup. 6pence for 4lbs but it was some pocket money and were not unhappy and didn’t think of being slaves.
It’s really quite an idiotic quiz. I tried getting the results of how many people are slaving away for me, but it wouldn’t show it on fire fox and on internet explorer it wouldn’t even get past the post code page.
There is something that the creators of this quiz missed, namely, that the jobs might be rubbish, BUT they put food on the table. Before they had these jobs malnutrition was much, much worse. Now if you excuse me, my slaves are getting out of line and I must whip them back into shape. Oh CO, would you care to lend me a hand?
I didn’t have any problems with accessing the survey.
I remember some time ago something similar was published on MyT regarding child labour. A few people from the various places that were condemned for using child labour said much the same that has been said here – the families need the money to survive.
Having said that, I do understand that there are some countries which do use what we would call ‘slave labour’ in pretty appalling conditions. While I wouldn’t support a ban on goods made with child labour – I do think that western manufacturers have a moral obligation to ensure that some reasonable level of working conditions prevail.
Yes, it’s not quite that simple is it?
I agree with you, Boadicea, I deplore the conditions but it might just be better than starvation or prostitution.
Whilst we do not really have much control on conditions in the third world. I agree that we could do better. We don’t though, although there are some improvements, but an agreement to pay a little over the odds to the workforce would not go amiss.
It’s all about profit though, so it’s not going to happen overnight.
Araminta.
You’re right – it isn’t simple. The UK brought in child labour laws in the 1800s – but many families still needed the money that their children could earn to survive…they might not be able to send them down the mines or into factories but there were other ways that children could work to help the family budget – and they did.
I’m not sure that paying over the odds would work – I have a sneaky feeling that that would simply go into the factory owners’ pockets! But there are, I believe, a number of Western companies that try to ensure that there is some level of reasonable working conditions – and Apple is NOT one of them…
Eventually the changes will come about in the countries concerned. I went to a silk factory in China. It may have been spruced up for Western eyes – although some of the other ‘factories’ we visited were most definitely not!
The factory guide said that it would not be too long before they could no longer afford to make silk carpets, since they had always taken young women from the countryside who were happy simply to work. They were now having problems keeping their workforce because they could earn so much more money elsewhere.
While we, in the West, may deplore the working conditions of some of these countries – we might do well to remember that we, too, have our pittance-paid work force who struggle to make ends meet, while their top-line managers take home obscene sums of money…
I am reminded of ‘The Young King’ by Oscar Wilde.
http://www.artpassions.net/wilde/young_king.html
More PC nonsense. The points about people working for minimal wages rather than staying in a subsistence existence are well made. I have personal experience of due diligence surveys and audits in connection with working conditions in poor countries – mostly China but also many other places in SE Asia; Vietnam, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Cambodia…
International Corporations make great efforts to ensure that their suppliers comply with the basic requirements for their workers, but, as I pointed out on another blog, it’s OK to go in check, and report, but what happens once the inspecting team is back over the horizon is difficult to monitor. Most International companies have, for example, whistle-blowing programmes in place and require suppliers to comply with international standards… however, it is all very well to have a fine-sounding policy in place but conditions on the ground often make it, hmm, how can I express this, ‘extremely difficult’ for an employee to ‘raise concerns’ about working conditions.
I would be interested to know why you single out Apple as an example, Araminta. In Asia I worked closely on this area, as in Intellectual Property programmes, with Microsoft, Apple, HP and IBM, to name but a few, as well as other major companies like LV, Waterford, (crystal,) Stanoco, Burberry, Westinghouse, GM, BAE, Boeing – those last two might give you a little pause for thought; counterfeit aeroengine parts anyone? Or brake-liners?
Back to the point, all of those companies work hard to make sure, as far as it is practicable, that the people who make goods or parts for them are treated properly. There are two main reasons why this is so. The first is that they are all headquartered in jurisdictions where labour protection laws are rigourously applied – a case can be made that that should read ‘over-rigourously.’ (I am thinking of cases, for example, where a typist in the MOD gets paid upwards of half-a-million quid for ‘repetitive strain industry’ while a severely-injured soldier gets ten bob and and a pat on the head.)
I’ll give you an example. The company I was working for was forced to close down, (by a campaign by a ‘yooman rights’ organisation,) a factory in one particularly shitty third-world country because we were paying our workers the local equivalent of seventy-five pence a day, (On average.). The company was not allowed to pay the workers any more than that by government regulation. On top of the wage, the company provided each worker with a weekly benefits-in-kind package – not covered by government regulation, and also, btw, given to hangers on like the local ministry of labour and party apparatchiks, (this was not in China, btw,) – of food, toiletries, household goods etc. The workers also had a subsidised canteen, kindergarten and primary school, and laundry, sewing, crafts and further education facilities for them and their families. The factory closed and so…
As I said, PC BS.
PS. missed the second reason. It is ‘Brand Reputation.’ A company’s brands are its most important asset. Damage to the brand name can cost a company a fortune and is a top risk in most company’s risk registers – hence my involvement, as a security guy,* in the due diligence enquiries mentioned above.
*It is also the case that security guys tend to dig a little deeper than box-ticking auditors in such surveys and audits,
Bravo
It was actually me who singled out Apple – for the reason that there has been some very bad publicity, including on the spot investigations, about Apple here.
Thanks for your very interesting comment, bravo. You see more than the rest of us because of your work. I begin to feel sorry for companies who are stuck between government regulations on one side and “do-gooders” on the other. It is a difficult problem, but surely any employment is better than none, or as Araminta says prostitution or starvation.
Hope you’ve got the “slave” problem sorted now, christopher. Every time we go for a drink in a particular bar in Antibes, we know we are sitting beside the site of the old slave market. Antibes apparently had a big one in Greek and Roman times; real slaves being traded with little prospect of freedom ever again, never mind payment.
Oops, apologies all round. lack of attention, there bravo. Bad Bravo, bad!
Boadicea, I could hazard a guess about who made those on-the-spot investigations…
Wouldn’t work for me either.
Not that there would be much of a count.
Bloody do gooders appear to fail to take into account that there are those of us that would rather go without than buy trash from the third world.
Some of us do not buy far East made clothes of cheap cotton that does not launder satisfactorily or nasty artificials. I’d rather wear stuff 20 years old from my wardrobe made in Europe of decent fibre.
Nothing on God’s earth would persuade me to buy woggo food, disgusting muck from heavy metal infested ratholes. With the exception of coffee and tea everything else is local. I run hastily from glow in the dark cheap seafood etc.
Shoes, all Italian and Spanish, boots German.
Furniture, mostly inherited or second hand/antique.
I have always subscribed to the theory that buying high quality expensive stuff and keeping it 30 years or more is far cheaper in the long run than replacing trash every five minutes.
Now, since I won’t last another 30 years I just run on stock so to speak!
I’m sure a lot more people would buy better quality 1st world manufacture if they could get it at a reasonable price. OR AT ALL.
I have given up shopping in Macys when I couldn’t get any USA made towels of USA cotton, and complained mightily about it! Plus I never did see shopping as a recreational sport.
So as far as I am concerned the ‘slaves’ will have to die quietly.
Too many people in the world anyway, they should cease to breed what they can’t feed.
I have the horrible suspicion that because they breed so many, real slavery acts as a satisfactory way of getting rid of unwanted progeny in the festering rat holes of our world and some cash to boot.
Personally I’d leave them to get on with it, no aid, no wars no nothing, that would soon knock their populations back to more manageable levels which would solve an awful lot of problems all round.