China
has all the factors that I wrote about in the “Why do
large-scale exploitation of people start?” section. There is a
large number of Chinese people that are unemployed, poor and
desperate for a job. There is a huge demand for cheap labor with in
the cloth- and sport-shoe industry. The majority of the exploited
people are relatively uneducated. All the pieces are there and
together they create a rather disturbing picture.
In
just half a century the inhabitants of China has more than doubled
and today the country's citizens count to 1,3 billion people. The
trend is not turning, but rather just continuing. China's population
is still increasing. This rapid population boom has created a large
group of poor people that are desperate for a job. Most of these
people are from rural areas and they migrate from the economically
less developed countryside to the cities. Due to the Hukou system, a
lot of problems occur when you move from some Chinese rural area to a
city, or the other way around. If you are written in a rural area,
you only have access to social rights such as healthcare and
education in rural ares and if you are written in a city you only get
your rights in a city. When people migrate they lose their right to
these fundamental services. This system really benefits the
constructions of exploitation since it deprives the people who move
of their rights to medical care and education. If one of these
migrants get sick they will receive no help from the state and they
will have to spend the little amount of money that they earn on
medicine and hospital bills. The factories in China are good at
putting their employees in dept too. This they do because they do not
want to have to employ new workers all the time, because the old
workers resign once they have earned enough money. Educating someone
in how to do the work cost more money then if you have workers who
already know how to do things, and it is therefor cheaper to find a
way to make the workers stay on for as long as possible. The easiest
way is to put the laborers in debt, because they cannot go anywhere
if they do not have the money. The factories are charging their
workers for the food, for the accommodation, for each minute they are
missing from work and the factories often keep the workers first
payment, this in order to put the laborers in debt right from the
start. If the laborers had the option I believe that most of them
would leave the factory, but as long as they do not have any money
they do not have much of a choice. They need the little they earn to
survive and for their families survival. The laborers cannot afford
to miss even one paycheck, because they are already living on so
little. If you want to go out to look for a new job you will need
some source money, and if you have no one to help you you will
require savings. When you are using up every bit of your wage in
order to keep yourself and your family alive and sometimes even end
up in dept to your employer you will not be able to put away money
for the future. So, the environment that the poor Chinese laborers
live in is shaping them into being the perfect victims to the
exploitation of factories and the factories know what they need to do
to keep them as their workers.
When
all companies are demanding low prices on goods it does not matter if
one factory want to treat their workers right, they alone cannot
change anything. If they wish to compete with the other factories
they cannot pay their workers to much, since increasing the salaries
raises the production cost. It will cost a lot more to produce the
goods, while the companies are still going to give very low prices
for the products. If the factory owner pays the workers more, the
factory will make less profit and the winnings are slim to begin
with. If there is going to be a change I do not think that it is up
to the factory owners. Sure, the factory owners could go together and
form a united front against the companies and demand higher prices
for their goods, but why would they? The factory owners are making
some money as it is and that they would risk what they have got for
the sake of their workers, is highly unlikely. I believe that the
change must come from the companies. The problem is how you are to
get the companies to want to alter. They are the ones making the
biggest profit in all this. The disturbing thing is that the
companies do not seem to care about their workers at all. For
example, the companies send supervisors to the factories and their
official duty is to scrutinize if the factories fulfill the demands
and standards of conditions for the workers. That appear to be an
attempt to ensure the laborers their rights. However, in interviews
done with workers and mangers of the factories, many of them have
said that the supervisors do not really care about the wages and
working conditions, but they are rather there to check up on the
quality of the products. The companies are most concerned about the
money, that is the cold hard truth.
The
poor people in China often have a quite low quality of education if
they have any. In the education received I have it hard to believe
that workers rights and the politics surrounding business and economy
are a part of it. It is hard to know something that you have never
been thought. As I wrote before, “How
are they to effect the injustices that they experience, when they
have never heard about such a thing as a labor unions? It is hard to
hope and work for a change when you have no idea that things can be
different and that they are in other places.” The
thing about labor unions in China is that they are illegal, as are
demonstrations of any sort. If the poor laborers have even heard
about labor unions and strikes, they surely heard that they are
considered to be a crime too. People usually trusts in what the state
tells them and many therefore confuse laws with morality. Just
because something is illegal and wrong in the judicial sense, it does
not have to mean that it is morally incorrect, just as something that
is legal can be highly unethical. For example, starting a labor union
and going on strike is punishable by law, but if you want to exploit
human beings for your own winning there are more than enough
loopholes in the legislation for that. Following the law and being
morally correct does not have to be the same thing, neither does
being seen as a criminal and being morally incorrect. But why do the
Chinese state allow the factories to exploit their workers and even
worse, why do they prohibit the laborers to take action against this?
I believe that the reason is money and power. If the conditions were
not as favorable as they are for the companies in China, they might
move their factories somewhere else and that would mean less business
for the nation. The Chinese leaders have therefore negotiated with
companies to ensure them that their factories and the conditions
there will remain as they are. The state does this directly by making
worker-empowering action such as the forming of labor unions and
demonstrations, illegal, but they are also do it indirectly by
keeping their population uneducated about worker's right and
international standards of work-place environment.
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