> he saw a foreigner whom he believed to be one of the Amazon staff going through his desk drawer and checking the pockets of his uniform on his chair.
So an US Amazon employee helped to get this guy and their Familie tortured for two years so that Foxconn could keep using little school children to manufacture Alexa’s working 100h per week?
Yikes.
And apparently all of this happened after Amazon had to punish Foxconn for using illegal workers, yet the leaked Foxconn internal documents suggest that the amount of illegal worker conditions had to increase to cover up for the punishment.
The US should just ban importing any good from countries using child workers, period. It should not be up to Amazon to “slap” their producers on the wrist, but rather the government should impose absurdly high fines on US companies that don’t report this, to ban goods from those countries.
In which world is it right to force school children to “work 36+ hours of overtime” to manufacture an Amazon Echo? This whole story is just completely ridiculous.
Are you for, or against child prostitution? Because we have very good examples of exactly what happens when child labor and sweatshop-like labor conditions are either outlawed or boycotted, and the answer invariably is that the workers working in those places of their own free volition are harmed. [1]
The fact of the matter is that the only way to improve these people's conditions is to give them more and better options, not remove more of what little agency they have.
A perfect example of how the world is so complex it’s very difficult to know what to do, at the citizen level. It’s like we need leaders we can trust to do the right thing after looking at the appropriate research. However, our faith in those leaders is at an all-time low.
> In 1993 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have banned imports from countries employing children. In response, that fall Bangladeshi garment companies let go approximately 50,000 children. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, "It is widely thought that most of them have found employment in other garment factories, in smaller, unregistered subcontracting garment workshops, or in other sectors."2 That makes the introduction of the bill seem simply ineffective. The Department of Labor is sugarcoating the situation. Paul Krugman summarizes what happened more bluntly: "The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution."3
And footnote 3 cites the Paul Krugman Op-Ed[1] and a UNICEF report that 404s. Looking at Wayback[2] I think it linked to the 1997 State of the World’s Children[3] report. The Krugman Op-Ed makes the same Oxfam claim with no further citation. But the UNICEF report does say:
> The Harkin Bill, which was introduced into the US Congress in 1992 with the laudable aim of prohibition the import of products made by children under 15, is a case in point. As of September 1996, the Bill has yet to find its way onto the statute books. But the mere threat of such a measure panicked the garment industry of Bangladesh, 60 per cent of whose products - some $900 million - were exported to the US in 1994. Child workers, most of them girls, were summarily dismissed from the garment factories. A study sponsored by international organizations took the unusual step of tracing some of these children to see what happened to them after their dismissal. Some were found working in more hazardous situations, in unsafe work-shops where they were paid less, or in prostitution.
I’m unable to find the Oxfam study I assume both Krugman and UNICEF are referring to but I do think it’s of note that UNICEF writes “some” children worked in prostitution, while Krugman writes “a significant number”.
Regardless, for all the fear-mongering CATO neglects to mention two key pieces of information about the bill: (1) it never became a law and (2) it’s introduction did ultimately have a positive impact. Continuing from the UNICEF report:
> This, then, was a classic case of good motives gone wrong. However, not all was lost. A ground-breaking agreement was reached to protect the affected children (Panel 12).
For some reason the report currently on UNICEF’s website is incomplete and doesn’t contain panel 12 but the report is available in full here[4] and panel 12 is on page 60. It describes an agreement between UNICEF, the International Labor Organization, and Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers providing for:
> • the removal of all under-age workers — those below 14 — within a period of four months;
> • no further hiring of under-age children;
> • the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend;
> • the offer of the children’s jobs to qualified adult family members.
The panel concludes with “The jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of the Memorandum of Understanding...” which prompted me to search the outcome of this agreement. I found an ILO follow-up report[5] where I (finally!) got some actual data beyond “some” and “a significant number” being forced into prostitution. I’d encourage you to go read the whole of Section 7.1 Hazardous Work yourself but here’s the relevant part:
> The vast majority of children reported that retrenchment has an adverse impact on them, six per cent said that they were forced into hazardous work20, such as brick chipping, pushing carts and rickshaw pulling. Of...
No. These kids were schooled but pressed into working at the factory, they didn't drop out. They don't do it for the money, and it is possible that neither them nor their families receive any compensation. The alternative would have been doing homework at home or playing, not the kinds of "jobs" that you've mentioned, at least not in this particular case.
Such a practice is/was actually quite common in (ex)communist countries specially for seasonal work when regular workers weren't enough, like during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, and was also organized by the teachers. Shocking for us but culturally acceptable out there.
This is just a modern version, a stopgap for labour shortage, that happened to make it to the papers only because a western company was involved.
I was a fan of Bookshop (because of their mission) until I noticed they aren’t politically neutral. For example they ran a campaign to get their customers to fund sending copies of the 1619 project, a widely debunked book by extremist Nikole Hannah-Jones, to schools across the US. It’s hard for me to trust such a platform will sell books of all political persuasions in the future and I don’t want to lend them more power because of it. Not that Amazon is better - they have also begun practicing book bans and cave to employee activism regularly. I just wish there was someone with a neutral book store.
There are acceptable degrees of neutrality though.
If a bookseller refused to sell 1619 because they deemed it false and harmful I'd consider doing business with the bookseller even though I don't care for the premise of the book. Or if they sent "Protocols of Elders of Zion" free of charge and unsolicited to schools I'd also not want to do business with them.
Booksellers, like the internet, should probably stick to being a dumb pipe within the confines of what is legal.
It's interesting how people like to position China and the USA as being on opposite poles economically and politically and yet they are able to work so closely hand in hand on issues like this.
After many reports like this: Why would anyone want to work for Amazon?
I say this as a tech worker working for big hated chemical companies but frankly we are heavily watched and controlled. I feel Foxconn (Apple), Amazon etc have multiple times proven to support ugly practices but every developper seems to jump for joy working for them in an age where doing something meaningful and good is also en vogue. Can someone elaborate?
21 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 55.3 ms ] threadthey are part of what's happening. Either as Client dictating prices or as profiter of the cheap work.
Why should one like Amazon care about that? Oh yeah. If course.. THE IMAGE.. no one cares about the storm in a glass of water in 3..2..1..
Yikes.
And apparently all of this happened after Amazon had to punish Foxconn for using illegal workers, yet the leaked Foxconn internal documents suggest that the amount of illegal worker conditions had to increase to cover up for the punishment.
The US should just ban importing any good from countries using child workers, period. It should not be up to Amazon to “slap” their producers on the wrist, but rather the government should impose absurdly high fines on US companies that don’t report this, to ban goods from those countries.
In which world is it right to force school children to “work 36+ hours of overtime” to manufacture an Amazon Echo? This whole story is just completely ridiculous.
The fact of the matter is that the only way to improve these people's conditions is to give them more and better options, not remove more of what little agency they have.
[1]https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/case-agai...
> In 1993 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have banned imports from countries employing children. In response, that fall Bangladeshi garment companies let go approximately 50,000 children. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, "It is widely thought that most of them have found employment in other garment factories, in smaller, unregistered subcontracting garment workshops, or in other sectors."2 That makes the introduction of the bill seem simply ineffective. The Department of Labor is sugarcoating the situation. Paul Krugman summarizes what happened more bluntly: "The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution."3
And footnote 3 cites the Paul Krugman Op-Ed[1] and a UNICEF report that 404s. Looking at Wayback[2] I think it linked to the 1997 State of the World’s Children[3] report. The Krugman Op-Ed makes the same Oxfam claim with no further citation. But the UNICEF report does say:
> The Harkin Bill, which was introduced into the US Congress in 1992 with the laudable aim of prohibition the import of products made by children under 15, is a case in point. As of September 1996, the Bill has yet to find its way onto the statute books. But the mere threat of such a measure panicked the garment industry of Bangladesh, 60 per cent of whose products - some $900 million - were exported to the US in 1994. Child workers, most of them girls, were summarily dismissed from the garment factories. A study sponsored by international organizations took the unusual step of tracing some of these children to see what happened to them after their dismissal. Some were found working in more hazardous situations, in unsafe work-shops where they were paid less, or in prostitution.
I’m unable to find the Oxfam study I assume both Krugman and UNICEF are referring to but I do think it’s of note that UNICEF writes “some” children worked in prostitution, while Krugman writes “a significant number”.
Regardless, for all the fear-mongering CATO neglects to mention two key pieces of information about the bill: (1) it never became a law and (2) it’s introduction did ultimately have a positive impact. Continuing from the UNICEF report:
> This, then, was a classic case of good motives gone wrong. However, not all was lost. A ground-breaking agreement was reached to protect the affected children (Panel 12).
For some reason the report currently on UNICEF’s website is incomplete and doesn’t contain panel 12 but the report is available in full here[4] and panel 12 is on page 60. It describes an agreement between UNICEF, the International Labor Organization, and Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers providing for:
> • the removal of all under-age workers — those below 14 — within a period of four months;
> • no further hiring of under-age children;
> • the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend;
> • the offer of the children’s jobs to qualified adult family members.
The panel concludes with “The jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of the Memorandum of Understanding...” which prompted me to search the outcome of this agreement. I found an ILO follow-up report[5] where I (finally!) got some actual data beyond “some” and “a significant number” being forced into prostitution. I’d encourage you to go read the whole of Section 7.1 Hazardous Work yourself but here’s the relevant part:
> The vast majority of children reported that retrenchment has an adverse impact on them, six per cent said that they were forced into hazardous work20, such as brick chipping, pushing carts and rickshaw pulling. Of...
Such a practice is/was actually quite common in (ex)communist countries specially for seasonal work when regular workers weren't enough, like during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, and was also organized by the teachers. Shocking for us but culturally acceptable out there.
This is just a modern version, a stopgap for labour shortage, that happened to make it to the papers only because a western company was involved.
The parent is clearly illiterate and from their tone, they must be dealing with some serious issues.
So there is no point in responding to this thread, better just let them be.
https://bookshop.org/
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/
Bookshop's mission is "to financially support local, independent bookstores."
BHphotovideo has all sorts of electronics, including computers and phones.
If a bookseller refused to sell 1619 because they deemed it false and harmful I'd consider doing business with the bookseller even though I don't care for the premise of the book. Or if they sent "Protocols of Elders of Zion" free of charge and unsolicited to schools I'd also not want to do business with them.
Booksellers, like the internet, should probably stick to being a dumb pipe within the confines of what is legal.
Your comment itself looks like textbook cancel culture. The extremist you reference is an award winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikole_Hannah-Jones
They’re state capitalist superpowers trying to flex and protect technological supremacy.
I say this as a tech worker working for big hated chemical companies but frankly we are heavily watched and controlled. I feel Foxconn (Apple), Amazon etc have multiple times proven to support ugly practices but every developper seems to jump for joy working for them in an age where doing something meaningful and good is also en vogue. Can someone elaborate?
Publicity may encourage Amazon to take a stand, which is the only hope for the whistleblowers and the kids.