Enabling supply chain exploitation

Such keenness to increase revenues can also enable serious exploitation of workers

Maximising low-priced exports, and attracting large corporations to increase their profits by outsourcing production processes, are considered economically sound steps for developing countries to improve their lot. However, such keenness to increase revenues of cash-strapped developing countries can also enable serious exploitation of workers across the developing world. It is unfortunate that many developing countries themselves are so desperate to earn foreign exchange that they themselves neglect, and often even directly undermine, the rights of their own workers.

There are several examples from the real world which show how countries in the developing world continue undermining worker rights. Consider, for instance, the case of a group of Burmese migrants being reported in the international press recently, who were charged with defamation after complaining of labour abuses in Thailand’s multimillion-pound poultry export industry. Human rights workers have rightly been arguing that entertaining criminal court proceedings against such poor workers is an attempt to silence criticism and protect corporate interests. Thailand, one of the world’s biggest chicken exporters, earlier became infamous for its troubled seafood industry, where practices akin to modern-day slavery have also been reported. Now its poultry industry, which is geared towards exporting around 40% of its broiler poultry meat to Europe, has also seen persistent allegations of workers abuse, debt bondage, high recruitment fees, exhausting working hours and dismal pays.

Thailand, of course, is not the only country where workers are being ill-treated, despite the significant incomes being earned through them. The Cambodian government has been breaking up garment worker demands for better wages using brutal force, leading to several deaths over the past few years.

Pakistan’s record in terms of safeguarding the interests of its workers is no better. Much of the abuse of poor workers in our informal sector is conveniently ignored, be it the plight of poor farmers breaking their backs to earn export revenue though cotton exports, or the hazardous conditions within which people toil away in informal workshops. I remember visiting many ill-equipped one or two roomed workshops in Sialkot where young and old workers were busy grinding, filing and polishing surgical instruments meant for export, unprotected against the metal dust circulating all around them, for measly remunerations. The tragic fire which ravaged a textile factory complex in Baldia Town in Karachi back in 2012, killing almost 300 workers trapped behind locked doors, also comes to mind, and provides a stark illustration of the lack of adequate labour inspections and safety standards.

Even when multinationals directly employ workers in the developing world, the situation for these workers are not necessarily better, especially if they are not working directly in offshore production facilities or franchised entities. It is particularly easy for multinationals to feign ignorance or shrug off responsibility by passing on the blame to third party contractors, which is what Apple did when Foxconn workers were exposed to hazardous working conditions and low pays, driving many to commit suicide a few years ago.

It is due to the exploitation of poor workers that consumers in the West enjoy cheap products, and their own governments can keep the wheels of their economies lubricated enough to prevent a grinding halt. Such workers deserve more respect and better employment conditions. Rhetoric alone will not suffice. Besides national governments, powerful entities like the World Trade Organisation must also do more to address this lingering problem, instead of continuing to assume that the invisible hand of competition via open trade can eventually produce better outcomes for all. The persistent inequality plaguing our world clearly demonstrates that the evidently exploitative nature of global supply chains will not autocorrect.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2017.

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