I was reading an article in the San Jose Mercury News about how Chinese workers are getting poisoned by the goods that they are making for customers in the US. In the last couple of days the California State Attorney General decided to sue companies like Mattel and Toys ‘R Us for selling tainted toys in the US. I agree with the AG about the suit, but don’t see it solving the problem.
I even heard that Japan sends inspectors to China to check goods before they leave China, and substandard goods don’t make it into Japan. But that is still not enough.
I don’t want to be responsible for workers in China falling sick so that my kids can have toys and I can have sneakers. I think the way to deal with this is to have all goods that are manfuactured in China (or any other country) manufactured with the same (or better) standards as well as worker safety regulations that are applied to workers in the US.
This will lead to a number of things. First, employers will have to pay better wages and benefits to workers in China, which will level the playing field for workers in the US. It seems sort of backwards that the US should loose manufacturing jobs in part because we care about the health of workers in the US.
Second, hopefully we’ll feel less guilt about what US consumer goods are doing to the workers in countries like China.
Finally, maybe increasing the level of worker safety will reduce the amount of bad products that get into the US.
That is exactly what the large and growing CSR-social compliance teams of many, many responsible brands do: they go into factories in China, assess where practises are not up to international standard, and the best brands then help the factories and workers get access to training, consulting and coaching in why and how to improve to those standards. And yes, in some cases (not all) this does cause prices to rise in the very short term. See CSR/CR reports or website sections for GAP, Nike, Timberland, Columbia, Marks & Spencer, etc and many hundreds more western brands.