Last night I heard Gordon T Smith speak at Emmanuel Baptist on what basically boiled down to being a Godly Business person. A lot of it had to do with the fact that doing business can be a noble and Godly calling so long as one maintains their Christian values. Part of it was that every ones business/economic practices are directly tied to their attitude toward justice. Buying things at a fair price was given as a good example of this. For example, Wal-mart cannot sell the things they do at the price they do and pay their workers and the producers of their products a fair price. But I have a problem with that. While I agree that Wal-mart and similar corporations mistreat and underpay their workers, when one is dealing with some of these third world countries what is a fair wage and is it really their employers that are exploiting them? Many of these people would be able to thrive on the wages they get if the cost of living around them did not instantly rise to surpass this new wealth and push them down back into poverty. While I accept that cost of living will inherently rise with a growing economy, often the raise in these economies is due to exploitation by businesses from outside the country. So what are we to do? If corporations are unable to make the sociopathic profit they are legally required to make for their shareholders they will leave these areas to find a new source of cheap labour. Then these people will have an inflated economy with no jobs.
I agree we should insist people are paid a fair wage, but we must also accept that many of these economies will exploit their people regardless of whether they are paid a dollar a day or 5 dollars an hour. I suppose I've come to a bit of a crisis in my own mind; if I don't buy cheap products I don't support the mistreatment of those workers, but those workers also risk not getting the dollar a day they need to help their families survive if the business they work for are not supported. I don't want to help people exploit others but I also don't want to leave people without jobs or economies without them having something to replace that income.
2 comments:
Gord Smith taught one of my theology classes back when I was in Bible School.
Is it our social responsiblity to:
a) ensure third-world labourers keep their jobs by supporting the mega corp's that employ them, and thereby perpetuating the sociopathic system, or
b) to support businesses that stock their shelves through fair-trade inventory that still comes from third-world entrepeneurers?
I know "The Corporation" deals with this from the Nike perspective, but I forget many of the details.
Actually your Nike comment has added, for me, another side. Say I have two shoes to choose from, one a pair oc Nikes and the other a knock off brand at less than half the price. I'll accept that the knock off's are probably not as well made but.. how am I to gauge which workers were better paid and better treated. Nike has atrocious employment records and an enormous profit margin, so it is quite possible that the employees that made the incredibly cheap shoes were actually paid and treated better.
I would agree that fair trade is the best option, but so often people choose fair trade and yet have no solution to the problems facing those left in the "corp's" factories. Also, fair trade has become a bit like "low fat" or "sugar free". It doesn't really mean much unless you know the organization or have seen evidence to back up the claim.
Post a Comment