Stoopid Stuff

Kristof's Sweatshops - REAL Problem Solving in the 21st Century

Have you read Nicholas Kristof's column on the relative value of Sweatshop manufacturing in raising the quality of life in the poorest nations? If not, go read it now. It's important.

I'm still thinking about it. I'm not sure I agree with the premise, but what's more interesting is that I'm not sure I can challenge it, either. It's important to recognize that we don't WANT it to be true, but that's no basis for making a judgment.

There are no easy solutions to global poverty and wealth imbalance. If there was any actual low-hanging fruit, it would have been picked by now. Every decision is a trade off, a compromise of the first order. You give up something to get something. And maybe, in some cases, you give up a piece of your soul.

It's hard for most of us, living comfortably here in America, to conceive of life in a sweatshop. Hard, but at least possible. We know about manufacturing, we know about agriculture, and it is within our reach to imagine the same jobs without any employee protection, without safety rules, without even a minimum wage. But it's well nigh impossible for us to imagine how people get by without even the luxury of a sweatshop job. Indeed, in a situation where a sweatshop job is nothing more than a hopeless dream.

So we overlay what we know on what we can imagine, and we say, "just pay a living wage, provide for a minimum of employee comfort and safety, and don't poison the community with toxic pollutants". This seems like a reasonable, responsible goal, and as good global citizens we're perfectly willing to support good actors by paying more for their products.

But it's important to remember that the retail price we're willing to pay is not the sole variable in play here. The companies that contract with offshore manufacturers are trying to squeeze as much of the costs out of bringing their products to market as possible, so if a shop that pays a better wage and has higher internal costs due to better practices gets underbid by a sweatshop, the more desirable player loses the order and cannot increase his employment.

As Kristof points out, low-cost offshore manufacturing is a two-tier market. In some cases, better infrastructure like roads, housing and electricity need to be available, so these facilities tend to locate in relatively wealthier nations, while the more labor-intensive manufacturing can be done in the poorest of countries. It is in those countries where it is at least possible that more low-cost manufacturing jobs would provide a very welcome increase in the local quality of life, even if we would consider them, quite rightly, sweatshops.

I don't know the answer. I do know that this is a very timely reminder that the answers to many global challenges are neither obvious nor easy. We need to think about local solutions, and if they seem counterintuitive to us, well, perhaps thats more due to local perception than global reality...

posted by mikey @ 3:04 PM