Yo, Lexi,

I'm trying to understand how it is that we can source our goods from companies that provide conditions for their workers that we wouldn't permit in any shape or form in our own society.

I'm thinking that's very wrong.

So it's not so much about them "leading" themselves out of these travails, but of us ceasing to exploit them in this way.

How can it be right to have our companies source goods from these people when they are treated in ways that emulate the worst horrors of our own industrial revolution.....so that we can walk into places like Kmart and buy at rock bottom prices. I mean to say, clothes are cheaper in some department stores now than they were thirty years ago.

So I read stories of eight year-old children in Pakistan working with toxic chemicals and dust to make balloons for eight year-old Western kids to pat around at parties.

I read stories of villages full of grandparents raising children who only get to see their parents once a year - that's whole villages housing only children and old people.

I read stories of Foxxcon putting up nets around its buildings to stop people jumping off the roof to commit suicide.

And all of this is so we can buy stuff at rock-bottom prices, use it, discard it and buy some more...even some charities have become corporatised because these days there's so much profit to be made from good quality rarely used cast-offs.

Lexi,

We exploit them - and we pretend we're doing them a favour.

Lexi,

I'll just add that it's a "first world perspective" that delivers them into these factories in the first place.

A first world perspective that wants lots and lots of "stuff"...and it wants it very cheaply.

I can understand a developing country engaging in manufacture, making the things it needs and exporting the rest.

Globalisation, however, delivers the precise arrangements for the exploitation of people in developing economies.

And most of us couldn't give a hoot, because we get lots of stuff, and we get it cheap.

Thanks for your feedback, Hasbeen. Like I said - I know it's naive! I'm very publicly exposing my economic ignorance here, but I certainly don't pretend to be an expert.

Ultimately, though, a solution to the problem identified by Poirot needs to achieve three aims:

1) We in the West must continue to have access to affordable clothing
2) The workers who make those items of clothing must be able to earn a sustainable income
3) The conditions in which those workers make those items of clothing must be safe and, once again, sustainable (which is likely to increase the cost of production)

I don't know how to achieve them simultaneously. Logic says that if we want to bring the bottom up without pushing the top further up, the cuts have to come from the middle. No business likes to lose its share of the profit, though, and that's understandable. I really have no idea how to keep everyone happy!

Poirot,, I can understand why you are so concerned, but it is too late because the horse has already bolted.

Western countries, and others, are not going to give up their 'cheap' goods and throw-away lifestyle, and developing countries are not going to give up their jobs in manufacturing and exports of cheap (and not so cheap) products.

Any change in conditions etc within those factories and companies in developing countries will have to come from within, just like it did for Western countries during the industrial revolution.
And I believe it has already started, given that communication and movement of peoples between countries is so much more prolific today.

The women ( and men) working in those 'sweat shops' will almost certainly have some idea about how they should be treated, but it will take time to make this happen.

Poirot,

<How can Western ... corporate princip[als] ...ignore the plight of their developing world sisters>>

Heck! we all know that they are robber barons and couldn't give a rats @** about anything other than their profits --you told us that, remember?

<How can Western feminist(S)...ignore the plight of their developing world sisters >>

Very easily, have a look at the Q&A session involving Germain Greer and see how craftily she tippy-toed around offering any criticism of the oppression of women in the Middle East.

But quite apart from all that, what is the solution?

What is YOUR solution, Poirot?

Or, is this another one of those issues where you are going to sit on the verandah and whine (wine?) about everyone else?

There is a process at work here, and it (roughly) goes like this.

We buy stuff. We look for a balance between price and quality. If we can only afford low quality, that's fine. If we can afford high quality, that's fine too.

Incidentally, it doesn't much matter whether we are talking t-shirts or mobile phones, the principle is the same.

Businesspeople (yep, those nasty folk) work on the basis of providing goods and services that meet that demand, in its various manifestations. And at some point, they realize that their customers are not going to buy and Australian-made computer, or an Australian-made shoe, or an Australian-made t-shirt, because we cannot produce the appropriate quality at an appropriate cost.

So those nasty businesspeople get on a plane, and find somewhere that will meet the demand, at the price that will enable them to sell their product in Australia.

Now, here's the catch.

If they demand that those manufacturers meet Australian conditions, salaries, perks etc., nothing will happen. No t-shirts will be produced. The workers will stay on their farms, and not be attracted to the cities by the higher wages (and those dreadful working conditions), and everyone will be happy.

Won't they?

Europe went through this thing called the Industrial Revolution, a couple of hundred years ago. Wouldn't we all be so much better off, if they hadn't built all those dark, satanic mills, and the folk had stayed on their farms instead?

Wouldn't we?