Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This paper argues that sweatshop workers’ choices to accept the conditions of their employment are morally significant, both as an exercise of their autonomy and as an expression of their preferences. This fact establishes a moral claim against interference in the conditions of sweatshop labor by third parties such as governments or consumer boycott groups. It should also lead us to doubt those who call for MNEs to voluntarily improve working conditions, at least when their arguments are based on the claim that workers have a moral right to such improvement. These conclusions are defended against three objections: 1) that sweatshop workers’ consent to the conditions of their labor is not fully voluntary, 2) that sweatshops’ offer of additional labor options is part of an overall package that actually harms workers, 3) that even if sweatshop labor benefits workers, it is nevertheless wrongfully exploitative.

The Just Price: Three Insights from the Salamanca School

“…3 All I need to establish for my present purposes is that charging a price to which a buyer freely agrees may still be ethically objectionable. As I think that the brief discussion in the text is sufficient for this limited purpose, I do not pause to discuss the existing, and very interesting, literature on exploitation: Arnold (2003), Mayer (2007), Meyers (2004), Sample (2003), Wertheimer (1996), and Zwolinski (2007Zwolinski ( , 2008.…”

Barriers Against Globalizing Corporate Ethics: An Analysis of Legal Disputes on Implementing U.S. Codes of Ethics in Germany

“…As a consequence, there is some evidence that suppliers' compliance with codes of conduct imposed by multinational enterprises is partly limited (EngelsZandén, 2007;Locke et al, 2007;Yu, 2008). Moreover, there has been some debate whether or not such imposed standards are indeed the best way to support economic improvements in less developed countries (e.g., Zwolinski, 2007). Nonetheless, many multinationals have hardly a choice to omit such standards.…”

Human Rights, Transnational Corporations and Embedded Liberalism: What Chance Consensus?

“…Arnold and Hartman, 2006), Zwolinski (2007) has demonstrated that the adoption of moral principles that would render it morally illegitimate to pay people less than a 'living wage', or that would render it morally illegitimate to employ people in 'sweatshop' conditions, would likely result in profit motivated companies refraining from investing in those places that arguably need it most.…”