Blog 8 – Amst 475: How acceptable is cheap? Or do we just turn our heads?

Hello readers

          Today our topic really hits home, this is about just where and how are our mass purchased and out sourced material good are made. Those working conditions, and why don’t we care, I mean we care, but lets be honest, we don’t really care, as long as we can get our Nikes’, Under Armor, and pumas for cheap. Now, lets start with the first bullet point, which is “What are your personal assumptions about “Made in China”?” My own personal assumptions are now more accurate about “made in china” than before I started this class. I knew, through regular talk and dialog with people I know that the work conditions over in China were bad, but after seeing just how bad I honestly understand just how bad their working conditions were. For instance, in the film we watched “Mardi Gras Made in China” the machine that ran an electrical current through the small piece of wire that was used to connect the ends of the necklace together was so hazardous!!! If you noticed their fingers, they were all scarred red and blistered, and that is AFTER many many rotations and hours at that station. I can’t even imagine how many times their fingers have been burned, seared, melted, and penetrated by a super headed piece of wire. Those conditions, as far as I know (assuming) would never happen in the US! The reason I say this is because, as Americans, we complain, if it’s not this, or that, we complain until we get our way, and we have people and representatives that listen, for the most part anyway. There will always be exception, like the other film we watched about the HP factory. That factory I would definitely not call safe, but it was much safer than the Chinese factories we saw.

Next “Who produces goods for the U.S. market and where?”  Well as we all know, a large amount of our purchased material goods come from China. These are made by Chinese workers in extremely poor conditions, but while searching for information on this, I came across a terrible article.Read here “ http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/03/28/295715854/made-in-china-but-was-it-made-in-a-prison ” A basic synopsis of this article is that not only is a large amount of our goods coming from terrible factories in China, but some of those items may even come from FORCED LABOR CAMPS in China. “Supposedly” we are working on making our consumption of these products illegal, but that battle has been fought since 1930, and apparently its still an issue with no resolution in sight. Our consumption of these forced labor goods won’t be completely abolished because of a loophole that says, according to The Us Tariff act of 1930″ prohibits the inflow of goods made with any types of forced labor, but it has a “consumptive demand” exception, which allows goods, even made by prisoners, to be imported if they are short in supply in the U.S. Efforts to plug this loophole have failed.”

Lets move on to the next point :Why do more and more U.S. companies manufacture and source products overseas, and why do U.S. consumers purchase these products?” This is quite simple actually. Profits. Every company, corporation and producer of material goods wants to make profits. Why would a company want to pay a worker 7/8/9/10  dollars an hour to make shoes for 8 hours a day, and keep them under overtime, which is time and a half, only to sell that shoe for 60 dollars. When they can have some foreign company pay their employee 2 dollars a day or less for 12/14/16 or more hours of work per day? A shoe costs that company FRACTIONS of what it would cost to produce in the US. Cheap labor is just that, cheap labor. Those factories are so hazardous and regulations are so easily skirted around they can get away with terrible pay because they know that the materialistic American society will continue to purchase their goods at exceptionally low prices. As with the “Mardi Gras Made in China” film, his company had profits that were less than 10 million per year, but that is still profit and he is only making Mardi Gras beads for gods sake…He can make profits because he can pay a factory full of people the same amount as what a handful of workers in the US would be paid. So of course he will make profits in his slavery business.

Second to last point, which is “What are the working conditions at foreign factories producing goods for the U.S. market?” Here, this page explains just how terrible their conditions are “http://www.greenfudge.org/2010/08/14/johann-hari-on-the-rise-of-china%E2%80%99s-laborers-%E2%80%93-and-how-we-keep-them-down/” and here are some accompanied quotes and images.

“Workers in China don’t just have to fight ruthless parent corporations, oppressive subcontractors and draconian labor laws. They also have our insatiable desire for newer, cheaper and more cutting edge goods to contend with.” This quote perfectly outlines the American desire for new, fancy, and cheaply made items, sad but true.

Here is a Nike Sweatshop

http://fashion.lilithezine.com/Nike-Sweatshops-in-China.html

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-apple-can-learn-from-how-nike-dealt-with-its-chinese-labor-scandal-2012-3

For those Apple enthusiasts

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html

I think those images really speak for them selves, you can clearly see just how cramped their working conditions are, you can see that there are many many MANY individuals within arms length of each other, with hardly any breathing room. And most importantly, you can not a single one is off task, they are glued to their slave work, they know they will be punished, which is usually a financial punishment in which up to a months wages or more can be taken from them at the slightest hint of disobedience.

The last point to elaborate on “Why do factory workers in foreign factories work under the current conditions?” This is also a simple question that is elaborated in any one of the links above. They can get away with these conditions because the Chinese people are abhorrently poor. They cannot afford to not work, they must slave away to exist in any form of the word. To tie in with the movie,one of the female, young factory workers had a quote that struck a chord with me to my soul. She said, in a nearly whimsical manner “Unfairness is irrelevant. I am willing to sacrifice everything for my brother” This is exactly what she is doing, she is slaving away in a factory so she can see her brother off to school, just so she can live vicariously through his success and happy life. She is willing to be, and is, unhappy with her work, but at the same time she is happy that she can give her brother the opportunity to survive and outlast their hellish life. I can’t honestly say that I have ever heard an American say anything so deep yet tragic, I can’t even think when I have said anything with respect to my own brother, I love him, but I can’t imagine a situation where I would sacrifice everything for him. I would die for him, except I would do everything within my power to survive.

I hope this wasn’t too boring a read, but I hope it was informative and maybe you learned something you didn’t know before.

Quin