Sweat shops and ethics......

I guess that it will only be a short time before the ‘ethics’ bandwagon starts to roll, calling (or shrieking) for a ban on imports from ‘sweat shops’ in South and South East Asia, and a boycott of Primark and other shops selling cheap Asian goods. This will be fully supported by the Guardianistas and other professional bleeding hearts.

 

In ‘Global Warming and Other Bollocks’, Stanley Feldman describes how some years ago in Guatemala City he watched a group of desperate women and teenagers scavenging in a garbage dump looking for something saleable or usable.

 

They had been employed in a ‘sweatshop’ producing shirts and tops for a Korean firm.

 

The ‘ethical trading’ busybodies raised a stink and the Government was forced to close the factory.

 

I recall that some years ago, Nike was pressured into cancelling orders to an Asian sweatshop, which duly went out of business throwing its workers on the scrap-heap with little prospect of ever working again.

 

Asia is a huge producer of cheap goods for the Western market, which of course is an important factor in maintaining our own standards of living – clothing, footwear, electronics, footballs, even (from Pakistan) cricket bats and bagpipes.

 

To Western eyes these ‘sweatshops’ might seem like a replay of the worst excesses of Victorian Britain, but they exist in impoverished areas. Without them, the local populations would have little prospect of lifting themselves out of the most abject poverty.

 

Working conditions may well be appalling by our standards, especially when workers as young as 10 or 11 are employed. But what must be taken into account is that these children may be the only bread-winners in the family.

 

When we apply Western standards of morality to Eastern societies we are also applying Western standards of arrogance.