The Forum > Article Comments > Manufacturing in Australia: critical, not terminal > Comments
Manufacturing in Australia: critical, not terminal : Comments
By Celeste Howden, published 8/12/2006Australian manufacturing industries will need to be clever and innovative to keep up with the competition.
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Tao, umm I am actually serious! I am sure that there are huge
amounts of things wrong in China. I am sure there are many
shocking examples. But go back 20-30 years and people were still
literally starving in China. There are good reasons why they fled
the countryside, into the factories. What we now have in many
parts of China is an actual labour shortage, so wages and conditions
are pushing upwards, or workers have the option of going elsewhere.
GDP is going up in China and in general people are far better off
then they were 30 years ago, so yup, they have never had it so good!
Turning the lives of 1 billion people around is not so easy, it
will take time, but things are on the improve and heading in the
right direction, from where they were before. That is my point.
Us buying goods from China not only benefits us, in particular
our poor, but also workers there, whose other option is close to
starvation in the countryside. No wonder they grab the factory jobs.
There is still lots we can do. Consumer pressure on brands to pay
fair and reasonable wages to employees is one way to do it. One thing
that brands worry about is the image of their brand name. Having them
shamed for exploiting labour, is a great way to do it, so there should be more of it by Western consumers.