Telstra re-stocks shelves with phones from alleged sweatshop Aussie telecoms giant Telstra has decided to start selling equipment made by controversial Chinese manufacturer VTech again, barely a week after suspending sales in the wake of a report detailing serious labour and human rights violations. The report, from not-for-profit the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, …
That's the conditions over there, so a company complains and stops manufacture, the vast majority of the plants have similar conditions. The only way it'll stop is if we move production out of china, and that won't happen because comapnies care more about their bottom dollar than they do about people.
It's the same as actual sweatshops in india, you close one down and another two will open to take the lost business, you can't stop it so long as companies see this as the best way to turn a profit.
No one apart from a few activists really care about where or who makes their shiney toys, same as most school kids have never seen chicken except in neat plastic packaging.
Do you really want to pay £800 or £200 for your new must-chav shiney toy?
No matter where in the world you go, the black economies thrive, check out how many clothing manufacturers are alive in Hackney since minimum wage was introduced.
The "savings" you are talking about are total bollocks. We got by just fine when we made our own stuff in the first world, companies made profits, people brought stuff, companies want everyone to think that if we forced them to manufacture products in the first world everything would triple in price.
It wouldn't. That's bollocks.
There might be some extra costs, but the thing companies worry about isn't that, they are worried about it cutting into PROFITS. They would be making 50-60% on a gadget rather then 500-600%.
Perhaps what is needed is a federally mandated law stating that each advertisement must come with images of the factory producing the item, taken by a 3rd party...
I bet that would get people to sit up and think before buying the latest iFail. Very few people actually think about what goes into getting their shiny, shoving it in their faces would change a lot of minds.
"Given that the Fair Labor Association’s initial investigation into conditions at Foxconn factories took four times as long to complete, sceptics would be justified in thinking Telstra’s decision is primarily commercially motivated."
I'm not disputing the general theme of the article, but how big is Vtech compared to Foxconn? I suspect that Foxconn is at the very least four times bigger.
So what's the difference? ALL manufacturers act the same when there are no laws/regulations/unions to protect the laborer.
This is why there needs to be international tarrifs that tax the crap out of ANY manufacturer that offshores existing jobs, uses sweatshop labor practices, etc.
I don't begrudge anyone a "reasonable" profit margin, but 500 to 600% borders on Larceny. Making that kind of margin while using sweatshop labor practices should result in the death penalty.
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