The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

3 responses to “Bra story”

1. 

   jameshigham

   August 17, 2009

   I might just get into this. It seems a good alternative news source and far more immediate.

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2. 

   JMB

   August 17, 2009

   That story is enough to turn one into a socialist, isn’t it? 🙂
   As usual, margin of profit is the bottom line and companies are always seeking ever cheaper sources of labour, while never lowering prices. It’s a dilemma for the informed consumer as you say.
   Often I will hold some inexpensive item in my hand, perhaps a child’s toy for a dollar or two, packaged to the nines, transported more than half way around the world, sold at probably 100% markup, and wonder how much the worker was paid for producing the item.
   Piece work, while it has almost disappeared from the Western world is alive and well in the Third World.
   Happy? I am sure these women are happy to have had the job but it is hard to imagine that what was described was conducive to a happy work environment. That they took great pride in their work is a credit to them. How many failed to live up to the rigorous standards and were let go? These women lived in constant fear of losing these precious jobs but after all their sacrifices, they lost them anyway.
   Maybe this was due to the current recession, who can really say. But the moving around of jobs by the big companies from country to country in search of ever cheaper labour has been with us for a very long time.

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3. 

   Tom Paine

   August 18, 2009

   There’s nothing wrong with piece work per se, though some practices in that factory (moving the goalposts by ratcheting the time allowances down for example) seem aggressive. My grandmother worked in a textile factory on piece work her whole career, operating a heavy steam press. She spent her whole retirement missing it.
   If this work was “brought back” to Western countries (a) these ladies in Thailand would have to make an even harder living and (b) we would find no-one locally willing to work like my grandmother did.
   Bloggers like the one I linked to can do great things if customers read about those brands and monitor how the companies protect their distant suppliers’ workers. Western companies are incredibly sensitive to the notion that they are exploiting Third World workers and will (if they know their customers are alert) insist on better working conditions than local employers ever would.
   Such bloggers can do terrible things, unintentionally, if they lead to sentimental Westerners boycotting goods from such countries generally; plunging workers back into the pre-industrial age, which (pace the literary pimps of nymphs and shepherds) was no picnic anywhere.
   As for “enough to turn one into a socialist”, no. If the workers in the factory in China where the MacBook I am typing this on was made have any better conditions than these ladies, it will be because of Apple, Inc. and its sensitive shareholders, not because of the PRC government. Socialism kills growth and therefore increases poverty. So many millions died and hundreds of millions were impoverished by the 20th Century’s experiment with Socialism, that’s it’s incredible there are still mugs to believe in its free (because stolen) lunch notion. Not you, of course, JMB. I did notice the 🙂 and I know you are just winding me up.

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