Goods need to be produced in order for us to have items such as cell phones, medical devices, electronics of all sorts, clothes, furniture, and so on and so forth. Those that are entrepreneurs typically have a mindset in which they conscientiously look at all sorts of alternatives on how things are presently being created, in a manner in which they are often able through proper aforethought and planning to increase efficiency, as well as to lower costs; of which, one of those costs that they are particularly concern about is the full cost of labor, which takes into account, the benefits and accouterments normally associated with such.
All of this thinking and planning, certainly makes sense from a competitive as well as a profitability standpoint, and those that thereupon look upon this world as getting ever smaller, in which they see that certain goods are typically able to be manufactured overseas at a subset of what those very same goods would so cost domestically, have to take that into consideration, even at the direct consequence of the subsequent reduction of domestic labor and its corresponding logistics, so of.
The problem, becomes though, that when such work is directly engaged in overseas, or more typically, subcontracted out to an institution that specializes in such, is whether or not, the people so engaged in this work, as well as the environment, are exploited by those so contracting for that labor. Of course, the easy answer to that is that this is a two-way street in which, because each party seemingly voluntarily agrees to the terms so of, that there isn’t any particular thing, which therefore would be considered to be, untoward. But that, however, is simplifying it way too much, because environmental damage, whether so done domestically or overseas, is damage to the environment, of the same planet, that all live upon. So too, the outright exploitation of those that have literally no power to demand much of anything in regards to wages, the terms thereof, and the conditions so of, is fundamentally and ethically wrong.
Those that subcontract out work overseas, whether they are some of the biggest and most powerful multinational corporations, or even very modest organizations, have an innate responsibility to own up to the fact that they need to be good stewards of what has so been contracted or subcontracted, which includes the labor conditions, the wages so paid, as well as the environment and how it is treated; and while in fairness, lower cost countries should not make the same real wages as those working in western nations, they should at a minimum, receive a “living wage”; along with appropriate overtime pay, and other typical benefits that any worker in any state, so deserves and has a right to.
To a very large extent, there never has been so much exploitation on a global scale then is so seen today, of which, this is the prevailing reason, why income and wealth has become ever more extreme and ever more concentrated into fewer and fewer hands; because those that have the power to demand this or that, or else such will be contracted or subcontracted somewhere else, are essentially forcing these weaker nations and those that live within them, to undercut one another, of which the biggest loser, is whoever is holding the shortest end of the stick, which pretty much is the voiceless overseas laborer.
What we have in actuality is global labor exploitation, writ large, which should not be celebrated, but rather needs to be seriously amended or just plain stopped.