How many times have you ever looked at a clothing tag or turned over a product and seen "MADE IN CHINA" stamped onto it? Thirty-six percent of Chinese exports are imported into the United States. That added up to 337,789.8 million dollars of goods imported into the US from China in 2008 alone (source). In this article, a family tries to go a week without using a single product that was made in China. In the end they are very unsuccessful, because they didn't even realize so many kitchen items they use on a regular basis were made in China, such as Ziplock bags and Kleenex. When we studied The Jungle, we learned that labor regulations were created to control the terrible working conditions in Packing town. Because of laws such as minimum wage, labor in the United States has become much more costly, causing industrial labor to move overseas. China is the most prominent example of this. Products can be made there for significantly less than they can be made in the United States. However, this labor is cheaper because American companies such as Nike and Walmart "systematically violate the most fundamental human and worker rights, while paying below subsistence wages" (source). The factories moved overseas, and so have the poor labor conditions and sub-par wages. in a Walmart factory that makes handbags in China, "1,000 workers were being held under conditions of indentured servitude, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with only one day off a month, while earning an average of 3 cents an hour" (source). Is it worth causing lives of poverty for Chinese laborers so that we may live a life of affluence in the US, filled with Chinese made material goods?
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Where has all the labor gone?
How many times have you ever looked at a clothing tag or turned over a product and seen "MADE IN CHINA" stamped onto it? Thirty-six percent of Chinese exports are imported into the United States. That added up to 337,789.8 million dollars of goods imported into the US from China in 2008 alone (source). In this article, a family tries to go a week without using a single product that was made in China. In the end they are very unsuccessful, because they didn't even realize so many kitchen items they use on a regular basis were made in China, such as Ziplock bags and Kleenex. When we studied The Jungle, we learned that labor regulations were created to control the terrible working conditions in Packing town. Because of laws such as minimum wage, labor in the United States has become much more costly, causing industrial labor to move overseas. China is the most prominent example of this. Products can be made there for significantly less than they can be made in the United States. However, this labor is cheaper because American companies such as Nike and Walmart "systematically violate the most fundamental human and worker rights, while paying below subsistence wages" (source). The factories moved overseas, and so have the poor labor conditions and sub-par wages. in a Walmart factory that makes handbags in China, "1,000 workers were being held under conditions of indentured servitude, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with only one day off a month, while earning an average of 3 cents an hour" (source). Is it worth causing lives of poverty for Chinese laborers so that we may live a life of affluence in the US, filled with Chinese made material goods?
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It's easy to go through your daily life and not even think about all the people who influenced everything you do. This is a really good example of how these people are disregarded, because even if you try to go without certain products, there are so many products pay a toll on not only people, but the earth as well.
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