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The Forum > Article Comments > The invisible hand > Comments

The invisible hand : Comments

By Rosie Williams, published 10/12/2008

We are able to pay bargain-basement prices for our consumer culture because of the torturous conditions of child workers.

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Consumers of goods produced in developing countries take no responsibility at all for how the goods are produced and by whom. No matter how much workers are exploited in developing countries, the price of the goods they produce is near enough to the same as those produced in our own country. Just a few lousy cents less – enough apparently to make consumers ignore Australian owned and operated producers, and so help our politicians to bugger up the country even more.

Thousand of Australian jobs have been lost thanks to ‘cheap’ imports which can be downright dangerous to health in the food area, and which are often total rubbish in the manufactured goods area. Toys are certainly dangerous to children.

Australian consumers are not even interested in their own workers and country. They certainly will not take any interest in Third World workers. Does this author really believe that people who want to save a couple of cents on an item, to the detriment of their own people and country, will care about foreign workers being exploited?

Globalisation has altered the world to the bad for both developed countries and undeveloped countries. Who caused the changes? Politicians. Let them sort it out. And let Australian consumers help them on their way by buying Australian.
Posted by Mr. Right, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 8:53:48 AM
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Mr Right forgot to add that when we purchase goods from overseas we increase our foreign debt. In 2009 Australia will pay for our huge reliance on foreign debt run up by the private sector.
Posted by billie, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 9:02:46 AM
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Hi Mr Right,

I don't know if other Australians care about third world workers or not. I do and I write about what I care about rather than what I don't. Perhaps, like me, many people are not aware that many products are manufactured/produced with exploited labour. There was a time not long ago when I was not aware of it and it came as quite a revelation. As a mother, I find the idea of children and vulnerable people being forced to produce goods quite repugnant so perhaps I have hope that other parents will also have a conscience. If not, at least I have done something rather than nothing on this topic.

Having said that, in a practical sense it is very difficult to buy products which are not tainted with exploited labour. Buying Australian seems like a good suggestion I had not thought of so I'm glad it was raised.

I am interested in debate on this issue in case there are angles or information I have not thought of or wasn't able to mention.

regards
Rosie
Posted by Rosie Williams, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 9:21:36 AM
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The International Labour Organization has video documentaries on these issues:

http://www.ilo.org/global/About_the_ILO/Media_and_public_information/Broadcast_materials/Documentaries/lang--en/index.htm

Rosie
Posted by Rosie Williams, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 9:54:40 AM
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Thankyou, Rosie. I share your views on the exploitation of labour in Third World countries, and the GOVERNMENTS of developed countries can take the blame for it. Globalisation has damaged the very people it was meant to help.

But, as an ordinary consumer, my first loyalty is to Australia and I will buy Australian wherever possible. I can do absolutely nothing about what my own lousy politicians do once they are elected, let alone what goes on in foreign countries. There is a limit to what the average human being can take on board and concern himself/herself with.

I did not mean to disparage you at all.

Leigh
Posted by Mr. Right, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 10:10:34 AM
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It is extremely hard to use trade pressures to engineer an improvement in children’s welfare, and those measures often backfire. About 95% of child labour in developing countries is not in export sectors and so is not likely to be influenced by trade boycotts or so-called "fair trade" conditionality. More importantly, boycotts often end up harming the very children they are intended to help. Many children working in bad conditions – horrible though they often are – do so because their alternatives are even worse.

Usually those calling for sanctions and boycotts don’t think though the effects. In 1996 UNICEF reported the effects of the threat of boycotts on clothing producing using child labour in Bangladesh. It found that:

“… the mere threat of such a measure panicked the garment industry of Bangladesh, 60 per cent of whose products — some $900 million in value — were exported to the US in 1994. Child workers, most of them girls, were summarily dismissed from the garment factories. A study sponsored by international organizations took the unusual step of tracing some of these children to see what happened to them after their dismissal. Some were found working in more hazardous situations, in unsafe workshops where they were paid less, or in prostitution.”

Source: UNICEF, State of the World’s Children Report 1997, p.23

http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/pub_sowc97_en.pdf

The best way to raise living standards in poor countries, as in rich countries, is to make them more productive. International trade and investment flows have been demonstrated time and gain to be the most effective way of doing that that.

Admittedly, globalisation and trade alone might not end child exploitation and the desperate poverty that often (not always) underpins it. I’d support the Australian government and citizens taking constructive measures to encourage and assist poor countries to move away from harmful child labour. But trade embargoes and similar measures are likely to do more harm than good.
Posted by Rhian, Wednesday, 10 December 2008 1:56:46 PM
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