Businesses, sweatshops and exploitation of countries and their citizens. Shell & Nigeria; Apple and Foxconn; Fast Fashion and Rana Plaza Disaster

Many facets of the material lifestyles of average citizens of the developed nations relate to the trade relations between those countries and the developing countries mostly in Asia and Africa. Similarly, many multinational organisations whose ownership is in developed nations have targeted the resources in the developing countries which include the various factors of production such as raw materials and human capital in order to maximise on production and profits. Globalisation of production has seen various large organizations seek to locate their production processes in around the globe in order to exploit advantage of the different quality and cost of these factors of production. The expansion by these multinationals has been enabled by the policies of the host countries which have encouraged increased foreign investments and this have seen organisations such as Shell and Apple establish their operations in such countries unhindered.

However, this onset of globalisation and market unification whose expansion has been quite continues has resulted to various negative aspects that relates to workers exploitation and the environmental degradation. This paper aims at studying  the cases of shell company in Nigeria , Apple and Foxconn , Fast Fashion and Rana Plaza Disaster .Issues have arisen that relate to the working conditions, wages and sweetshops that have resulted to controversies especially in the past decades. Question have been asked about the viability of the organisations maximising profits at the expense of reasonable wages for workers and environmental care and the use sweetshop for their production activities. Exploitation of workers means paying very low wages while violating the norms and standards that have been put in place to govern their employment.  Sweatshop connotes factories that have authoritative overseers who are unreasonable, unhealthy and dangerous psychological and physical   working environment and a factory that uses child labour. For the purpose of business, sweatshops are lucrative because they benefit from low-wage labour readily available in developing countries and thus reduce the production cost substantially.

Foxconn is a good illustration of the negative effects and controversies that can result from foreign direct investment. It is a scenario where the issue of human dignity violation can be proved contrary to the universal human rights as declared by the united Nation. The declaration recognizes the intrinsic human dignity and the equal rights afforded to all people as the basis of peace, freedom and justice for the entire human family (United Nations, 2015).   Since the China’s economy has been driven by FDI almost completely, its growth has by far surpassed neighbouring countries in East Asia, but which has also seen a widening social inequality and labour. While this has led to China receiving a balance of trade, the capitalist businesses are profiting only the rich in the society. FDI has made China to lose sovereignty since a lot of private organisations like Foxconn have major control over the major firms. In Foxconn, workers have to work for long hours, low wages, lack social link and have their privacy threatened. Many of the factories’ workers are exposed to high temperatures due to poor ventilation in summer periods with the rooms for assembly lines reaching a high of 95degress Fahrenheit. Concentration of aluminium dust and poor ventilation caused an explosion that lead to the death of two workers and more than seventy were injured. Moreover, workers are not allowed to socialise with one another and doing so will lead to may withdrawal of bonus. In the electronic industry, surveys have shown that various factories have failed to sign labour contracts with employees or the contracts that had been signed were later withheld from workers who claimed their wages and benefits (Josephs, 2013).  A case in example is Apple factories. There have been many accusations of these factories exploiting Chinese workers and this has resulted to suicide cases in the factories. There have been a case of seven young workers committing suicide in the Foxconn factory which shows the result of restrictive and regimented work practices which represent a model that sacrifices human dignity for the purpose of development. Investigations done by various NGOs have revealed that most of the workers who produce iPads and iPhones are subjected to exploitation and lead a very dismal life. However, a joint workforce of about 500,000 provide labour that can contribute to around $6 billion profit (Josephs, 2013). This doesn’t mean that the workers’ wages will be revised in accordance with profit increase. This scenario shows a case where profit is prioritised over human dignity.

In the case of Fast Fashion, a garment manufacturing firm can be used to analyse Rawlings theory of social justice and fairness. Due to the need to provide a wider variety of clothing to the customers, there has been a steady increase in off-shore manufacturing of garments. The sluggish European and U.S economies have resulted to consumers in those markets reducing the percentage of the expenditure on apparel, and this has forced the manufactures to seek locations that can offer plenty of cheap labour. Fast Fashions put up its manufacturing operations in Bangladesh, that provide a lot of low cost workers and where laws and restriction on labour are strict. Such factors resulted to a race to have establishment of factories for manufacturing low –cost garments which then set the stage for various deadly accidents. Though the establishment of manufacturing factories such as Fast Fashion has made Bangladesh to be the second in the exportation of cloths worldwide, concerns have risen over unconducive working environments, violation of safety and unacceptable building standards that have seen buildings falling anyhow. Such is the case of Rana Plaza garment-factory collapse. Cracks deep and severe enough to warrant raising the alarm had been observed in the building, but the managers of the factory assured the workers the following morning that the building was bound to be standing for the next 100 years, and thus should proceed inside for work failure to which they would lose their pay, something workers in this economy would not afford doing (Henniker, 2014). What is witnessed here is a conflict between the need to meet the financial goals under pressure while at the same time the issue of ethics in the process of maximising profits at the cost of human dignity.

These two conflicting issues can be addressed in in the theory of social contract and fair play duty. The fair play duty results from the agreement by the members of the society to fair rules or practices that will govern their behaviour. The duty involves adhering to these rules in good faith an obligation whose basis is on social contract. This fair play covers the ethical void left and it is well understood the concepts of how the obligation can bind the society members and fairness definition that provide a method which can be used to individuals religious background to agree on basic principles and practices of behaviour guide (Baxter& Rarick, 1987). Thus in the case of these organisations , the issue is not about obeying the rules and laws in the society , but the exploitation of the void or loopholes left in the application of the laws. This is where ethics comes into play. Rawlings regards social contract to be a living thing which is always changing and allows renegotiation and therefore it’s necessary to determine the fair practices that this product should have. To provide fairness, Rawls came up with a method that can determine fairness that he claimed independent from morals outlined by religions. The independence resulted to a view of ethics that can be used in the industrial world with having to interfere with religious and moral sensibilities and assist in understanding ethics. The society highly regards the struggle to be on top, and people’s imaginations is that they may be multi-millionaires one time. Rejection of exploitative behaviour that is profit driven matters little unless it violates actual regulations (Baxter& Rarick, 1987).

The pursuit for profit gain or financial gain should happen within the laws and rules of the land. The issue of exploitation by the multinational firms extends to the production activities that lead to the degradation of the environment , regardless of the welfare of the community that depend on it resources. The emphasis on these firms should be the alignment of their actions, any pro-action and the performance of their social obligation. The important point is therefore to ensure the reconciliation of the organisation’s economic intention with the expected social orientation. This recognises that the firm should not only be concerned with its economic or legal obligation, but also its ethical obligation. Therefore, firms must come up with social goals and programs, and implement them while considering the ethical matters in their decisions, actions and policies (Schwartz and Carrol, 2011).  Following such a course means that the firms have integrated the interests of the all the stakeholders. A firm that is actively taking care of the natural environment will have achieved part of the ethical expectation and thus the issue of exploitation will no arise. This approach can be elaborated by the case of Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria which has widely been accused of environmental degradation. The kind of environmental degradation the company has caused in Niger Delta has caused a lot of resistance from the surrounding community, considering that this area has been characterized as among the most ecological units that are polluted severely by petroleum. It is estimated that about 1.5 million tons oil has spilled over in this ecosystem (Earth-Rights International, 2009). This is a clear example of an organisation that was reckless in adhering to its ethical obligation or social responsibility, resulting to a lot of suffering for the community that depended on that particular ecosystem. Even after the Nigerian government passed laws on ending flaring, the company continued with the practice choosing rather to pay the fine than cleaning up the operations, which shows lack of moral, ethical code (Earth-Rights International, 2009). Ethical responsibilities involve the measure, expectations that serve as a reflection of what is considered fair and just enough by all stakeholders to protect or respect their moral rights (Schwartz and Carrol, 2011).

In order to solve the issue of exploitation of workers in developing nations by the multinationals, it is important that the same firms to come up with redemptive measures that will ensure that the welfare of workers is observed from within, and regulations that will ensure they have moral and ethical responsibility to stakeholders. To ensure that the rights of the workers are not violated, the company should support the employees to create a Labour Association. This association will ensure fairness in the employment terms and provide a platform for solving dispute between the firms and the firms. Firms like shell should include all stakeholders in formulation of policies and agreements that will oblige them to bear the cost of environmental degradation. To eliminate any issue relating to child labour, the government should enact legislations that will force the firms to abandon the practice while providing earning opportunities for all children. The implication of these measures include workers future prosperity after work restrictions become reasonable and satisfaction of workers translate better performance of the firms and the economy.

References

Baxter, G. D., & Rarick, C. A. (1987). Education for the moral development of managers: Kohlberg's stages of moral development Rawls, John.  Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Summer, 1985), pp. 223 -251  

Schwartz M. and Carrol, A. (2011). Carrol CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: A THREE-DOMAIN APPROACH. 6-20

United Nations (2015).Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved from: http://www.un.org/en/udhrbook/pdf/udhr_booklet_en_web.pdf

Josephs, H. (2013) Productions Chains and Workplace Law Violations: The Case of Apple and Foxconn. Syracuse University College of Law. 3-18

Earth-Rights International (2009). Shell’s environmental devastation in Nigeria. Retrieved from: http://ccrjustice.org/sites/default/files/assets/4.6.09%20Environment%20Devastation%20Factsheet.pdf

Henniker, H (2014).The Bangladesh Factory Collapse: A Case for Intervention and Policy Change. Retrieved from: http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/bangladesh-factory-collapse-case-intervention-policy-change