economic and political theory should never be separated from history. capitalism never fought for higher wages and better working conditions, people did, and the struggle continues worldwide as corporations exploit anyone with no choice but to obey them.
And yet it’s only in places where capitalism thrives and private property is respected that you get higher real wages and better working conditions.
1. “Capitalism” didn’t improve anything, people did. Mass starvation and death due to horrific working conditions drove labor movements and protests. Please take a history course and stop spouting that nonsense about “capitalism” doing anything. Capitalism is an economic system controlled by the actions of people living under it.
2. Corporations don’t respect better wages, working conditions, or the wellbeing of others. They instead do stuff like…
Following the company’s disclosure, the investigation leading to this prosecution developed evidence that for over six years – from sometime in 1997 through Feb. 4, 2004 – Chiquita paid money to the AUC in two regions of the Republic of Colombia where Chiquita had banana-producing operations: Urabá and Santa Marta. Chiquita made these payments through its wholly-owned Colombian subsidiary known as “Banadex.” By 2003, Banadex was Chiquita’s most profitable operation. Chiquita, through Banadex, paid the AUC nearly every month. In total, Chiquita made over 100 payments to the AUC amounting to over $1.7 million.Chiquita began paying the AUC following a meeting in 1997 between the then-leader of the AUC, Carlos Castaño, and a senior executive of Banadex. Castaño implied that failure to make the payments could result in physical harm to Banadex personnel and property. No later than September 2000, Chiquita’s senior executives knew that the corporation was paying the AUC and that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization led by Carlos Castaño. Chiquita’s payments to the AUC were reviewed and approved by senior executives of the corporation, including high-ranking officers, directors and employees.
Chiquita Continued to Pay the AUC After the AUC Was Designated as an FTO
The U.S. government designated the AUC as an FTO on Sept. 10, 2001, and that designation was well-publicized in the American public media. The AUC’s designation was even more widely reported in the public media in Colombia, where Chiquita had its substantial banana-producing operations. Chiquita also had specific information about the AUC’s designation as an FTO through an Internet-based, password-protected subscription service that Chiquita paid money to receive. Nevertheless, from Sept. 10, 2001 through Feb. 4, 2004, Chiquita made 50 payments to the AUC totaling over $825,000.
Chiquita Continued To Pay the AUC Against the Advice of Outside Counsel
On Feb. 20, 2003, a Chiquita employee told a senior Chiquita officer that he had discovered that the AUC had been designated by the U.S. government as an FTO. Shortly thereafter, these Chiquita officials spoke with attorneys in the District of Columbia office of a national law firm (“outside counsel”) about Chiquita’s ongoing payments to the AUC. Beginning on Feb. 21, 2003, outside counsel emphatically advised Chiquita that the payments were illegal under United States law and that Chiquita should immediately stop paying the AUC directly or indirectly.
Last time a reporter tried to penetrate Apple’s veil of secrecy, security guards employed by their parts supplier, Foxconn, beat up the reporters involved. But questions had to be answered in the wake of the suicide/potential murder of a Foxconn employee which occurred after the employee lost an iPhone prototype. Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly was determined to find out the true story, and sent a reporter in undercover, posing as a new employee. Given the fact that Foxconn’s Shenzen plant that builds Apple’s iPads, iPods, and iPhones has 400,000 employees, that part wasn’t too hard. What was hard, was for the reporter to endure the plant’s reportedly hellish working conditions for 28 days. So far in the last four and a half months seven workers from the plant have committed suicide, and at least 9 have attempted suicide. According to reporter Liu Zhi Yi who infiltrated the plant, the likely reason why was that they felt taking their own life was the only option to escape the hellish working conditions of the plant. According to Liu, the plant makes employees work around the clock, only pausing briefly to eat or sleep. Most of the time the employees are standing, seldom able to sit down and rest their weary legs. This is perfectly legal, as employees are required to sign a special overtime document that override Chinese workplace laws and essentially allows the employer to demand whatever hours they want from you, without additional compensation.
Foxconn, which manufactures gadgets for the likes of Apple, Sony, Nintendo and HP, among many others, has had a grim history of suicides at its factories. A suicide cluster in 2010 saw 18 workers throw themselves from the tops of the company’s buildings, with 14 deaths.
In the aftermath of the suicides, Foxconn installed safety nets in some of its factories and hired counsellors to help its workers.
The latest protest began on January 2 after managers decided to move around 600 workers to a new production line, making computer cases for Acer, a Taiwanese computer company.
“We were put to work without any training, and paid piecemeal,” said one of the protesting workers, who asked not to be named. “The assembly line ran very fast and after just one morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really choked with dust and no one could bear it,” he said.
The collapse of Rana Plaza, an eight-story building housing several textile factories, a bank, and some shops in an industrial district north of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, on 24th April 2013 killing 1,133 garment workers and wounding 2,500, was one of the worst workplace disasters in recorded history. This disaster, and garment workers’ grief, rage, and demands for justice, stirred feelings of sympathy and solidarity from working people around the world – and a frantic damage-limitation exercise by the giant corporations who rely on Bangladeshi factories for their products yet deny any responsibility for the atrocious wages, living, and working conditions of those who produce all their stuff. Adding to the sense of outrage felt by many is the fact that, the day before, cracks had opened up in the building’s structure and an initial inspection resulted in its evacuation and a recommendation that it remain closed. Next morning a bank and shops on the ground floor obeyed this advice, but thousands of garments workers were ordered back to work on pain of dismissal. When generators illegally installed on the top floor were started up the building collapsed.
The attention of the world was drawn in particular to Bangladesh’s poverty wages – the lowest factory wages of any major exporter in the world, even after a 77 percent pay increase in November 2013; on its death-trap factories – just five months earlier a fire at nearby Tazreen Fashions killed 112 workers, who were trapped behind barred windows and locked doors while working long into the night; on the violent suppression of union rights – union activists are routinely blacklisted, beaten up, and subject to arbitrary arrest; and on the incestuous relations between factory owners, politicians, and police chiefs in Bangladesh – no employer in Bangladesh’s garment industry has ever been convicted of an infringement of health and safety legislation.
Africa is rich – in potential mineral wealth, skilled
workers, booming new businesses and biodiversity.
Its people should thrive, its economies prosper. Yet
many people living in Africa’s 47 countries remain
trapped in poverty, while much of the continent’s
wealth is being extracted by those outside it.
Research for this report calculates the movement of
financial resources into and out of Africa and some
key costs imposed on Africa by the rest of the world.
We find that the countries of Africa are collectively
net creditors to the rest of the world, to the tune
of $41.3 billion in 2015.
1 Thus much more wealth is
leaving the world’s most impoverished continent
than is entering it.
African countries received $161.6 billion African countries receive around $19 billion in aid in
the form of grants but over three times that much
($68 billion) is taken out in capital flight, mainly by
multinational companies deliberately misreporting
the value of their imports or exports to reduce tax. While Africans receive $31 billion in personal
remittances from overseas, multinational
companies operating on the continent repatriate
a similar amount ($32 billion) in profits to their
home countries each year. African governments received $32.8 billion in loans
in 2015 but paid $18 billion in debt interest and
principal payments, with the overall level of debt
rising rapidly. An estimated $29 billion a year is being stolen from
Africa in illegal logging, fishing and the trade in
wildlife/plants.
Let me be clear: The fact that all of this is happening in the 21st century points to inherent problems with the functioning of capitalism. There’s nothing else to it. This is the reality. Capitalism in practice. The cost of labor is minimized to maximize profit.
