Its not a matter of willing, its do this or starve. That's not choice.
And anyone profiting off putting workers through conditions like those should be prosecuted for manslaughter ... I don't care if its corrupt Bangladesh officials or stock traders on Wall Street.
It gets really old listening to the wealthy complain about how greedy workers are, slamming underpaid workers as not being responsible when their full time wages don't even cover the basics of food, shelter and medicine, yet the same wealthy people deny all responsibility for profits they make circumventing basic human rights, labor and environmental laws by exporting production to places like China and Bengladesh that have little or no regulations nor enforcement.
Shame on you, Brad. Not that its unexpected from you ... but still, shame on you. Your right to profit does not come at the expense of others' basic human rights.
Shame on me for what? For believing that people have the right to choose their own destinies without the interference of pampered wealthy foreigners telling them what they should and shouldn't do? Or perhaps I should be ashamed for not accepting that some arbitrarily chosen group is blamed for a particular tragedy?
I don't think workers are "greedy". That's not a term I'd use anyway. What is "greedy" anyway? What I do know is that given the choice of buying two shoes that are identical in every way except price and where it is made, virtually every person will choose based on price and not where it's made. It's a fact of life.
Every time someone buys a product made in China, they have outsourced. I'm not judging people for doing that. But it strikes me as hypocritical for people to complain about outsourcing when odds are, they do the same thing every day.
Everyone posting in this thread is "wealthy". Trying to single out whether you're in the top 0.1% of the human race or merely the top 0.5% of the human race strikes me as ridiculous.
The best way to solve these problems is to either make a conscious choice not to buy products from companies that are involved in the poor treatment of employees or vote for politicians that will try to encourage other countries to pass laws to protect their workers.
However, it is important to remember that the US and Europe and Canada went through this same phase as well. The 1850s through the 1940s saw the same kinds of things routinely. Moreover, we still have this kind of thing happening in the United States regularly -- it just doesn't get reported because it occurs out in rural America in our agribusinesses.
As a business person, what I can do is try to hire the best people I can, pay them competitive wages and try to make sure they're treated well. Unless you've done more, then spare me your "shame on you" rhetoric.
