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HP, Dell, and IBM Agree to Manufacturing Code of Conduct
JustOK writes "Yahoo! reports that IBM, Dell and HP have agreed to a code of conduct for not only workers, but the environment as well. An HP exec's statement is that the company is only responding to the company's 'globalizing in many parts of the world'." The joint press release is available, as is the code of conduct (pdf).
What will they think of next? I guess that the dollar isn't worth as much as it once was, as it seems to take more of 'em to buy out these corp's ethics.
Smoke that Enron!
And they'll be clobbered by the scumbags who undercut them on price by sh!tting on the rest of the world for a buck.
(Ok, I'm a bit down right now, because I was just looking for a jersey on eBay and see they sell tonnes of knockoffs straight out of SE Asia.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Something tells me that their 'envirnomental' protections they are agreeing to would get them thrown into prison if used in Europe or America.
By definition a prodigy is someone who is exceptionally young to do what he or she is capable of doing. For example, Mozart was a child prodigy, not because he could write amazing music, but because he was an exceptional pianist. (Which later helped him write music). So I'd say that a prodigy programmer would have to be younger than 13. At least.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
As opposed to globalizing in just one part of the world?
"we are globalizing in many parts of the world." == we are shopping jobs to those areas where our cost is the least and will enable us to maximize profit. Typical pump-up shareholder stuff, typical another worker in a higher paying region loses a job.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
A generic code of conduct for all of the plants operated by a company (i.e. the same treatment, rights and possibly adjusted pay) is a very positive and heartening ideal. Treating workers in a foreign country the same as the workers in the company's home country (assuming the latter treatment is better) is, without hyperbole, one of the most important steps towards a fair world without resentment, and in which we can have a happy conscience. Imagine a clean electronics factory in a neighborhood that is otherwise strewn with rubble and terrorized by drug smugglers. It's hard to give a bad impression of the United States when their companies begin lifting people so substantially (and fairly) out of crippling poverty and other hardships.
I paint a pretty idyllic picture, and the reality wouldn't be perfect, but I imagine it would be better than our current situation, and as a side effect it would create a (possibly artificial) quasi-level playing field, so you wouldn't see jobs bittersweetly given (outsourced) to people in other countries just because their standard of living is so low.
Now, we just need to make this law.
Regarding your point about LOW wages in the software services business (which you call the IT Boom in Bangalore), most of the profits for companies shipping work to other countries comes *not* from paying low wages, BUT because of the *low* Cost of Living in these countries. For example, (according to the same program you saw) the cost of living in India is 1/5th (0.2x) that in the US. This means that you can pay employees 1/5th of the wage and still keep them happy. There's also the exchange rate factor which comes in, but I've rambled enough.
The Conditions being targetting by this Code of Conduct are not for software programmers (usually White Collar workers) but for workers in the actual silicon chip manufacturing units (usually a Blue Collar job).
I'm tired of people claiming that Software engineers in India/etc work in pathetic conditions, while most of the people I know who work live at a *higher* standard of living than the rest of the population. Just because they get paid 1/5th the equivalent in US Dollars does *not* mean they're working for less. It's just that it costs less to maintain a comfortable lifestyle there.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This is what corporations do when they give Congress an excuse to "deregulate": "police themselves". This agreement has no teeth for violations, as it's just a mutual agreement, public relations. If they standardize their global labor contracts, and commit to these standards in those contracts, with specified consequences for breaking them (contractual or under enforcable local laws), they'll have something. Until then, all they've written is a "get out of jail free" card.
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make install -not war
Where are these companies?
and Yes, MS is into hardware these days. While they may not directly manufacture the devices, they buy them from others. Do they go with the cheapest, od do they buy only from quality companies?
Likewise Sun. How do they act outside of a regulated area?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That'd be nothing more than political misinformation. To give the real picture, you'd have to, along with those wages, also give a detailed break-down of cost-of-living in the area where the lowest-wage job was, and also include statistics about how that low-wage offset what would otherwise be unemployment in that area.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, because IBM, Dell, and HP will all just use convoluted supply and manufacturing chains, and guard their supplier's identities as best they can.
Why? Obfuscation and "plausible deniability". Every time a human rights organization actually manages to figure out what sweatshop is actually making (insert major fashion label here), the label acts all shocked, says "Gosh, we had NO idea, we have POLICIES to PREVENT this sort of thing, we TOLD them we didn't want them to use sweatshop labor, heads will ROLL!" So they simply find another company, in secret of course, and the whole thing repeats all over again.
We need human rights laws, both nationally and on an international level- backed up by hard monetary sanctions scaled so that they make it completely unprofitable, not just a slap on the wrist. The world court should be able to command banks of UN member nations to seize the assets of the company involved so they can't hide behind foreign incorporation (and most major US companies now do- they're incorporated out of a PO box in the islands- also handy for getting out of taxes, and they do that too; current corporate share of tax burden is about 2%; in 1950 it was 50%).
Please help metamoderate.
These companies are trying to self-regulate the industry for these reasons:
1) Look better in the public eyes
2) They hope that if they self-regulate, governments won't regulate them
3) With self-regulaton they can optimize the conditions for large corporations. This will help them to fight off smaller competitors, who can't afford to comply.
What is really missing is a new Consumer's Bill of RIght in Global Economies.
Corporations pushed forward for laws, regulations which opens up free flow of capital, investment, manufacturing, etc.
In the meantime, the very same corporations are trying to keep the old system, in which consumers are forced to act by local rules.
Some examples: Senior Americans are trying to buy drugs from Canada. Drug manufacturers are trying everything to make this illegal, becouse they want to maintain different price structure in different countries. Some drug companies even making threats to establish quota's or even not to sell their products in certain countries.
DVD makers establish "countru codes", with the clear purpose of maintaining different prices in different countries.
It's obviously absurd: if corporations are free to buy, manufacture, invest anywhere in the world, then consumers should have the same right to purchase anything from anywhere in the world, without duties, extra taxes.
I am waiting for the universal Consumer's Bill of Rights, which will make illegal for corporations to prevent custumers to buy globally.
Companies which would not allow consumers to buy globally, should not be allowed to invest, manufacture, etc. globally.
Just Another Random.Idea
"60 hour work weeks except in some circumstances" - it's 6 days a week 10 hours per day
"children 14 and above are considered adults where law permits"
"hazardous waste to be "characterized"
It's littered with zero-accountability phrases like this. The range in which this document can be interpreted is pretty wild.
Sounds like "get out of the jail free" document to me.
As a side note, if their foreign workers aren't even getting this much respect, then I see why everything coming out of third world is so cheap. It's all made by 14 year old kids working 12 hours a day six days a week without any protection, medical insurance, etc.
I've lost any desire to buy anything from HP, IBM or anyone else involved in this crap. Give me "made in the US" label or give me death.
228 years ago, the Continental Congress turned the tables on the government, harnessing it in service of the people, relegating its rights to its natural inferiority to people. Rather than ban the government, they created the most stable and productive government structure since then, possibly ever. We the people allowed the creation of the synthetic "person", the corporation, by ignoring the legal deceptions at its creation in California in the late 1800s, and feeding its growth through the 20th Century for its benefit to those who administer power in our country. But just as it took hundreds of years for English colonists to realize they were Americans, who could no longer suffer the injustice and exploitation of monarchy, after about as long under the corporation, we must rip that power structure out, and replace it with a manageable system that keeps its productivity, enhances it, by subordinating it to human rights. Along the way, we'll reset much of the creeping autocracy that corporations have institutionalized in our government, too. We've got a lot of work to do, but the alternative is all work and no pay.
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make install -not war
And in the meantime, bring our (US) standard of living down...just so we can all reach a low level of equilibrium....?
Please don't make that a law. I don't mind another country's standard of living rising...but, not at the expense of my own, and certainly not with my own country's corporations actively moving to make this a reality.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
WHY the HELL would you bring the GOVERNMENT into this? What the HELL are you thinking. Name one thing that the Government didn't screw up the moment it stucks its fingers into the pie?
It is THIS kind of thinking that gets people the GWB and JFK (current) elected to office. If the damn government got out of the way and let people actually do stuff, things would be 10 times better.
But NOOOOO. We have to have the government regulate the HELL out of everything to the point that it multiplies the cost of doing anything.
The Government causes more problems than it solves.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
If you took your head out of your ass for a second, you might notice that the big bad government is actually made up of real, live, people actually doing "stuff". The idea that everything the government does is immediately inferior to what corporations do is at best outdated and at worse completely incorrect. For every government fuck up you present as "evidence", I can list 100 corporations that fucked things up worse. The big difference, when the government fucks up, heads roll, when corporations fuck up, the executive directors take their multi-million dollar bonuses and leave the blue collar types to take the hit.
If a candy bar is worth 50 cents to you but costs $7, will you buy it? Of course not--you'll do without. Likewise, if a job is worth $2/hr, but costs $5/hr, it won't be done. The effect of the minimum wage is thus to change that job from a $2/hr job to a $0/hr job.
There are plenty of jobs which can be satisfactorily performed by those who don't need to buy food, water or shelter: we call these people teenagers. Why should a job be done for more money when it can be done for less?
Note that low wages are not actually a problem in the US. My kid brother makes $9/hour working in fast food, for Pete's sake! Employers pay more than the legal minimum wage precisely because jobs are actually worth more than that, and because they realise that they are in competition with other employers for labour (even when I was a kid working in fast food, I made more than minimum wage).
Indeed, what the Congress typically does is wait until the prevailing wage is well above the minimum, and then adjust the minimum to be slightly therebelow. This minimises the economic disruption an actual minimum wage would cause.
Or, to put it differently, if a minimum wage of $7/hr is such a good idea, why not make it $1,000/hr and make everyone rich? Work that out, and you'll understand.
There are really only two ways this can go - either the multinationals will use shell companies to get around it, or lots of people in the very poorest countries will lose their jobs. Either they'll be replaced by machines, or by workers in countries with a better infrastructure. So jobs would move from, say, the poorest areas of Guatemala to slightly-less-poor areas in Eastern Europe, where the wage/infrastructure ratio is a better fit to the agreement.
Also, I'm all for getting rid of child labor, but if the child is feeding his family, who is being helped by throwing him out of work? Child labor laws only make sense in countries that are wealthy enough to give people an alternative to starvation if the child doesn't work (because he's an orphan, or has sick parents, etc).
This is a classic example of applying rich-world-thinking to places it doesn't make sense. These people need jobs - as many as they can get. I'd rather see 1000 people making just enough to feed their families than 500 making twice as much and 500 starving.
If you really want to help people in the third world, the best way is to stop subsidizing the destruction of poor-country economies. A good place to start would be the abolition of farm subsidies in the rich world. Rich world farm subsidies have destroyed the major source of work in the less developed (mostly agrarian) countries. That's what creates the huge pool of jobless workers available for factory jobs. Does it seem reasonable a farmer in California can grow rice (which reqires lots of irrigation in California) and ship it to Asia and undercut a farmer who's making virtually nothing compared to the American farmer?
How about having real free trade, not just free trade when no first-world jobs are in danger? How about cutting some of the reasonable-sounding regulations that exist solely to keep out third-world competition. How about not lending development money to corrupt governments (so they can buy military hardware from the lender) and then saddling the next three generations of the country with a debt-induced inflationary spiral?
If these people had an alternative to sweatshop work, the Nikes of the world would have to compete for their labor. Then you would have a real improvement in the lives of poor people around the world and not just some salve for the conscience of well-meaning people in rich countries.
But, hey, isn't it all about people in the rich world feeling better?
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