Use of Forced Labor "Systemic" In Malaysian IT Manufacturing

itwbennett (1594911) writes "The use of forced labor is so prevalent in the Malaysian electronics manufacturing industry that there is hardly a major brand name that isn't touched by the illegal practice, according to a report funded by the U.S. Department of Labor and undertaken by Verité, a nonprofit organization focused on labor issues. The two-year study surveyed more than 500 migrant workers at around 200 companies in Malaysia's IT manufacturing sector and found one in three were working under conditions of forced labor."

Comments

Re:"forced labor"

[timeOday]

Well, slaves actually did have substantial market value. Piketty has an interesting section on this in "Capital". Quoting from it :

What one finds is that the total market value of slaves represented nearly a year and a half of US national income in the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, which is roughly equal to the total value of farmland...

In practice, in the antebellum United States, the market price of a slave was typically on the order of ten to twelve years of an equivalent free worker's wages... In 1860, the average price of a male slave of prime working age was roughly $2,000, whereas the average wage of a free farm laborer was on the order of $200.

For reference, the US National Income in 2012 was $15.7 trillion, i.e. a few percent less than the GDP. 150% of that is about equal to the total value of all residential real estate in the US.