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

"forced labor"

[tekrat]

Which is what, a euphemism for "slavery" ?
Isn't that the GOAL of Capitalism??

Re:"forced labor"

[TwoEyedJack]

Isn't that the GOAL of Capitalism??

Only if you ask a Republican.

Republicans freed the slaves.

Re:"forced labor"

[knightghost]

Here they called it "salary". Work 80 hours and get paid for 40.

Re:"forced labor"

[JMJimmy]

"one in three were working under conditions of forced labor."

Those stats are amazing! 3 in 5 graduates work in forced labour conditions in Canada/US. They just call them internships.

One person I know, 2 degrees, 1 professional certificate, 2 years of internships. Coming up on a decade of paying for training, working for free, and finding no one will hire because they can just exploit the next slave.

Re:"forced labor"

[TWX]

Slaves really weren't that expensive, that was why the South in the United States was literally the wealthiest society in the world right up before the civil war. A slave owner didn't provide food, shelter, or clothing. At most they provided raw materials for clothing and shelter and a small patch of land for the slaves to sleep on, and made the slaves grow their own food, make their own clothes, and build their own shelter. The only slaves that got the clothing/shelter/food treatment were the house slaves that directly interacted with the slaveowning family and their guests, and compared to the slaves that served as common labourers that number was incredibly small.

Plus, as human beings, slaves were just as inclined to sex as anyone else, and since anyone born to a slave was also a slave, it meant a continuous supply of new slaves for those plantations large enough to have multiple generations of slaves on one property, and probably gave them a surplus to sell. That's how the United States could continue to have slavery for decades after the last slave was imported from Africa, they just bred them or encouraged them to breed themselves like livestock.

This current phenomenon is indentured servitude, with the added indignity of paying for the privilege in advance.

Re:"forced labor"

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Republicans of today aren't the same as the Republicans of the 1860s, right? When it comes to the oldest Republicans still alive and in power today, they're still 6 or 7 generations removed from the Republicans of those days. Political parties can undergo massive changes within just a single generation. When you're talking 6 to 10 generations difference, the policies sure as fuck aren't the same!

Re:"forced labor"

[TWX]

Yes, Republicans freed the slaves. And sometime between the two President Roosevelts, Bizarro-United States happened and the parties effectively switched platforms. One can even point to the election of Woodrow Wilson as the biggest turning point, when Wilson as a Democrat took on the same Populist Progressive platforms as his third-party opponent in Thodore Roosevelt, leaving Republican incumbent William Howard Taft as the most conservative of the candidates in that election. Over the next several elections Republicans became increasingly convervative and interested in promoting big business, while Democrats increasingly cited the plights of individuals and how big business was bad for them as laborers, and less and less in favor of states' rights. By the time FDR died the bulk of the transformation was complete, only leaving womens' issues and civil rights to settle through the next few decades.

Re:"forced labor"

[ComputersKai]

You do realize that Republicans of today aren't the same as the Republicans of the 1860s, right? When it comes to the oldest Republicans still alive and in power today, they're still 6 or 7 generations removed from the Republicans of those days. Political parties can undergo massive changes within just a single generation. When you're talking 6 to 10 generations difference, the policies sure as fuck aren't the same!

Exactly. The Republicans you speak of are from the Civil War era, and the policies of that time are quite different from those today; it's a similar case with the Democrats, who also happened to be have different policies from nowadays during that era.

Even then (on a different note), the Thirteenth Amendment was the statute that actually freed the slaves.

Re:"forced labor"

[mrchaotica]

Slaves really weren't that expensive, that was why the South in the United States was literally the wealthiest society in the world right up before the civil war

Well, that and the fact that slaves probably didn't count in the "per capita" part of "GDP per capita."

Re:"forced labor"

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that the GOAL of Capitalism??

No, maximizing profit is the goal of a capitalist. An immoral capitalist has no problem with it if it maximizes profit. Now before you get your panties in a bunch, remember that any other immoral idealogue will also tend to have no problem with it if it maximizes their objectives. Thus, while communism in theory doesn't espouse slavery; in practice those who profess communism will send you to a "re-education" camp or "assign you to a dangerous project that's vital for the advancement of the workers". These will be no better than any form of slavery resulting from the desire to maximize profit. Perhaps they will be worse.

So. People are immoral jerks, and sometimes they need to be shot... by people who would rather not shoot but know they must, as opposed to people who will shoot you simply because they want a better cut of beef (capitalists), or can't stand the color of your drapes (ideologues of other types).

Re:"forced labor"

[geekoid]

That is the most ridiculous view of those thing I have ever read.
Capitalism, slave, socialism. You got them ALL wrong.

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.

Re:"forced labor"

[mythosaz]

You do realize that Republicans of today aren't the same as the Republicans of the 1860s, right?

I suspect the last republican alive in 1860 died by the mid 1900's, yes.

Re:"forced labor"

[sjames]

By that time there were millions of slaves in the U.S. and as you pointed out, they reproduced and even resulted in a surplus for the larger plantations. There was a lively internal slave trade at that point.

Re:"forced labor"

[craigminah]

No. "Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." - Oxford Dictionary

Re:"forced labor"

[HornWumpus]

Complete bullshit. The south was poor and unindustrialized. If they had been a rich society they might have stood a chance of winning. They never did, even with Lee and _incompetent_ Union leadership they lost.

The fact is slaves are shitty workers. They only work hard enough not to get whipped, and to get that you have to pay someone to hold the whip. Might as well pay them directly.

Slaves built the US is just mythology.

Re: "forced labor"

[Opportunist]

Odd. A good deal of Europe won that war. Well, at least 'til we decided it would be a great idea to copy the idiocy of the US in that matter.

Re:"forced labor"

[Opportunist]

Valuable experience in how to bullshit customers, invent colorful descriptions of events and places she's never seen or experienced and finding visual proof of those aforementioned stories.

Great resume for a political career, everything you need to convince your people to go to war with some country is right there.

If you're paying for a job...

[TWX]

...then it's not really a job.

Doesn't matter if it's 'clean' multilevel marketing, paying a 'headhunter' to market you to local companies in your area, or paying someone to get you to a job somewhere else, if you're paying, then it's not a job.

At least around here, headhunters are paid by the companies that need workers with particular skills. That's a negotiation between the company and the headhunter. Good headhunters actually take the time to talk to prospective workers to determine their skill sets, so that they can develop a reputation of being good matchmakers between companies and workers. Bad ones just send anyone through with keywords that might sort of apply.

Re: If you're paying for a job...

[Catbeller]

Not stupidity. Desperation.

Re:If you're paying for a job...

[TWX]

I actually work in an industry where a subset of coworkers are required to pay for their own enhanced background checks on a regular if infrequent basis, but they pay the state, not the employer. The employer simply mandates that employees provide the results of these tests, as the state requires the employer to do so. If the state didn't require it, the employer probably wouldn't require it either.

It's my experience that employer requirements for certifications are generally for third-party certifications, not internal ones. I've never seen internal ones that required the employee to pay the employer to receive. After all, either the certs are there to prove to the employer that the employee knows what they're doing, or to let the employer advertise that their employees have these industry-respected certifications for marketing purposes. Self-signed employee certifications wouldn't be worth much in most industries.

Plus there may be federal laws that were originally intended to break "company stores" for migrant and low-wage workers that would still apply to internal-purchase things like such certifications. It might actually be illegal for the employer to charge the employee for something that only the employer provides and requires of the employee.

At my work, if one is hourly and goes to internally-provided training, that time is paid at one's regular wage, and even some extra training for salaried staff is compensated for above and beyond one's base salary.

Re:If you're paying for a job...

[the eric conspiracy]

Really this isn't so dissimilar to the racket now being perpetrated by colleges and universities in the US in conjunction with employers looking for cheap skilled labor.

The end result is generation saddled with crushing debt and wages that are failing to keep up with inflation. Assuming they are employed.

Re: If you're paying for a job...

[Catbeller]

You are not them. They've little or no choice. Overpopulation has consequences, one of which is reducing labor to negative cost.

Re:If you're paying for a job...

[jeek]

"It might actually be illegal for the employer to charge the employee for something that only the employer provides and requires of the employee."

When I used to work at Arby's forever ago, they charged me for the shirt I had to wear while working.

Shocked, I say! Simply shocked!

[Narcocide]

Lack of regulation and oversight breeds rampant victimization of the labor force?!

Global Economy

[kilfarsnar]

Are these the people I'm told we must compete against in a world economy?

Re:Modern slavery

[Dadoo]

You missed a word: "officially".

A look from the view of ultra-capitalism.

[Kylon99]

Let's play devil's advocate here. Let's think about this assuming we don't care about the mass suffering, slavery and murder of humans, which is kinda bad enough already for us to try to end this practice any way we can. Say we are just bare naked capitalists, only interested in profit, past the point even Adam Smith would find horrific.

This is still bad enough for us to care.

We can't use slavery to produce our products because of laws and non-corruption in our countries, nor can we change our system to allow slavery. It would cost too much. So there is no way we can compete with Malaysia who is allow things, official or not. They are gaining an 'unfair' advantage by resorting to this practice that only they can use.

Therefore, even if you are an inhuman psychopathic capitalist (or at least a long-term high functioning one), you should care about abolishing slavery, since it grants those who do an unfair advantage.

Re:A look from the view of ultra-capitalism.

[skine]

You say that we can't use forced labor, but we can if someone is being punished for a crime, as is stated in the 13th Amendment.

Thus many prisons in the US run for-profit manufacturing businesses, using forced labor.

Re:Some people *do* pay for jobs, and quite rightl

[frank_adrian314159]

OK, let's put it this way - if you don't show up in uniform, you're sent home and don't get invited back to the party. The employer gives you a list of place(s) to buy your uniforms. How you pay for those is up to you. This happened at the first low wage job I had (as an orderly in a nursing home), as a construction worker (you couldn't show up in tennis shoes), and I'm pretty sure that's the case in almost any place in this country where low-wage employees are hired. And it's completely legal. So legal that you're allowed to write those off as a tax deduction. So, yeah, it's not "paying for a job" per se, but it does put a financial burden on people who are just starting one.

A Union

[MrKaos]

So does anyone here believe Malaysian IT needs a union to help them?

Um... huh?

[rsilvergun]

Slaves were very expensive compared to immigrants. With immigrants you could treat them just as bad and when they got weak move on to the next batch. With slaves you had money sunk in. The south also had huge amounts of capital sunk into slaves. If you're selling someone's buying, and that costs money. It's one of the reasons they were so far behind the curve on the industrial revolution...

Not if you're global...

[rsilvergun]

the real capitalists are global. They benefit from us competing with cheaper labor. Marx predicted this but all anyone can remember about him is that a few dictators used his books for rhetoric.

As for Adam Smith, he actually as against this sort of naked capitalism. He wrote at a time of small merchant artisans. He didn't see the industrial revolution coming and if he had probably wouldn't have written the books he did. These days he's like Marx: all anybody remembers about him is what fits in with what they want.

Re:Not if you're global...

[Kylon99]

Yeah, I realized that a bit as soon as I hit submit. I tried. 8)

The article sparked my thoughts of what I heard about the shrimp slave trade from Thailand, for example, and not just necessarily factory workers in Malaysia. Possibly what is going on is this race to the bottom via slave labor, 'forced' labor as the article says, prison labor, dissident labor, etc. In order to compete countries are taking this tack. But I was thinking with the outrage of slavery, maybe it's enough justification going in there with guns and outright killing the slavers. i.e. one country trumping up some reason to invade, hiring mercenaries, etc., etc. Not that I would advocate it as I imagine the situation would only get messier, but this is very similar to how gangs work. I just suspect someone is thinking about 'solving' the problem that way.

For anyone interested, the slave labor trade was reported in June.
http://www.theguardian.com/glo...

Re:Not if you're global...

[meta-monkey]

Same thing with Orwell. I had a conservative friend try to tell me Orwell was a capitalist because he wrote Animal Farm. No, he was a socialist. He wrote Animal Farm as a criticism of Stalinism (totalitarianism with the drapings of communism). Also, as a comment on the self-censorship of English socialists who looked the other way with regards to Stalin's purges and other atrocities because they just really wanted this experiment in communism to work so badly.

Nelson Mandela

[NewYork]

"If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don't care." --Nelson Mandela