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Global Issues / Citizen Voices Contest
March 2008 Global Issues/Citizen Voices
Contest Winner: Daniel Figueroa
Question: What is the responsibility of American companies and consumers for unsafe working conditions in Chinese factories?
Read the March 2008 winning essays
Read about our winners at News Points
Enter the April 2008 Global Issues/Citizen Voices Contest
Name: Daniel Figueroa (pen name: Daniel Xiao Wang)
Hometown: Punta Gorda, Florida
About him: Daniel is a banker, youth minister, husband, and father of two. His interest in China was sparked during a high school model UN conference, and since then he hasn't stopped studying the language and culture. Read Daniel's full bio.
His winning essay:
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle cramps, convulsions, shock, kidney failure- all in a days work. These are the effects of cadmium exposure according to the US Department of Labor, and Chinese workers making common batteries routinely suffer from it. Just one example of unsafe working conditions is Chinese factories.
A hundred years ago American workers had very few protections and rights. Factory conditions were atrocious and death and disease were common.
Since that time working conditions in America have improved. Simple things that we take for granted today- things like proper ventilation, safety controls on heavy equipment and proper protective gear have made American factories less dangerous to American workers. In addition, the federal government has instituted safety standards and workman's compensation laws to protect workers.
The legacy that America has abandoned has not, however, disappeared. America has transferred this legacy to China. According to Pulitzer Prize award winning reporter Loretta Tofani, Chinese law declares that workers have a legal right to be protected from disease and amputation. This law is rarely enforced, however, as economic expansion is more important that worker's safety.
Many young Chinese workers, typically between the ages of twenty and forty, are dying slow painful deaths. They suffer from disease and amputation resulting from toxins used to create goods in Chinese factories, goods that are then sold to the rest of the world, and especially America.
Conditions in Chinese factories would shock the average American. Poor ventilation; little to no protection from toxic materials; ineffective, if any, protective equipment; amputations are common due to old equipment, lacking safety features.
Chinese workers are paying the price for cheap Chinese goods.
Companies around the world, big and small, import these goods to sell. They may never have contact with the actual manufacturer and therefore are unaware of the worker's working conditions.
The National Labor Committee reports the following about US companies importing from China:
* Huffy bikes are made in China by workers that are paid 25 cents an hour, these workers work from 7AM until 11PM 7 days a week.
* Timberland shoes are made in China by 16 and 17 year old girls who work 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for 22 cents an hour.
* Keds are made in China by girls as young as 16 applying toxic glue with their bare hands,
* RCA TVs are made by young women, as young as 14, working from 7:30AM until 9PM, 7 days a week, for 25 cents an hour. If they make a mistake on the line they are penalized 10 hours pay.
The list of companies goes on, both the National Labor Committee's website (nlcnet.org) and at the Pulitzer Center's website (pulitzercenter.org) report on other companies.
Big businesses try to lower costs by importing from China, from the cheapest source they can find. If these factories were to improve the conditions of the workers, implement tougher safety standards, purchase new and safer machines, the costs would rise. The price of the goods will therefore also rise and buyers will become scarcer.
So, for a Chinese factory to modernize and become a safer working environment would cost the factory money- a great deal of moneyand will cost the factory customers.
Who is to blame for the working conditions in Chinese factories?
The Chinese government has strict safety standards, as strict or nearly as strict as US standards. China has even subscribed to the International Labor Organization's standards for the workplace. The problem is enforcement.
Logistically there just are not enough inspectors to inspect every factory thoroughly enough. And when inspections do occur rampant corruption assures that factories have enough warning to hide the abuses.
Factories blame the cost of doing business. It's all about supply and demand.
Importers blame supply and demand too. If they can get the good cheaper somewhere else they will go there. They don't like the idea of such poor working conditions and amputations, but they also won't pay more than they have to for a product. In the end, money determines where the importers will get their goods.
And buyers, consumers here in America, demand cheap Chinese goods. Pat Goodsell, an American consumer, put it well when she said, "I never though about the Chinese workers who made them, we just want it to work."
Cheap goods that work, American's don't worry about where the goods come from, or the working conditions of the workers who made them.
Do American companies and consumers have a responsibility in addressing the unsafe working conditions in China?
Chinese factories are not likely to progress toward safe working conditions apart from international pressure, particularly American pressure. For the US government to impose sanctions upon China is foolish and completely unlikely.
For the American consumer to stop buying Chinese products is also extremely unlikely, Chinese goods are everywhere. And as long as consumers are buying- and demanding- cheap Chinese goods American companies will continue to import them.
So the vicious cycle continues and as Loretta Tofani stated so well, Chinese workers are paying the real cost for cheap Chinese goods, with their health and their lives.
How can this cycle be stopped?
The Chinese government prohibits labor unions, so the workers cannot unionize. Labor unions helped turn the tables on unsafe conditions in America.
Another story coming out of the National Labor Union website tells of the factory in China that received, from their American importers, facial masks to replace the inadequate safety masks that the employees were using. The Chinese factory was very grateful.
Upon a visit from the American importer to the Chinese factory they saw their masks, still in the box that they were sent in. Turns out that even with the masks provided to them the employees aren't using them.
The problem to stopping this vicious cycle that is taking the lives of so many Chinese workers is a lack of proper education about workplace safety. Don't get me wrong, updating the machinery, better wages and fewer hours would all make a serious impact upon improving working conditions as well.
But what cannot be denied is that despite these working conditions, these people are working of their own volition. Increasing worker's education about safety practices and equipment would be the first step in improving their conditions.
One thing that can be changed is American regulation toward the importation of goods. Last year in both the Senate and the House anti-sweat shop bills were proposed. If American corporations, big and small, were required to monitor safety conditions of where their goods are made these atrocities could be avoided, or at least diminished.
This is not a China problem only, by no means. If Chinese factories tried to improve conditions on their own American corporations would go elsewhere for cheaper goods. So the change needs to happen here, in America.
Thirty-five year old Liu Hongmei, who works on a factory line that handles Cadmium shared, "I feel very scarred. There is no medicine that can eliminate the poison, so I will have to live in pain until I have a painful death. I feel very worried. When will I die? Who will take care of my son?" (Quoted from the Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday October 21st, 2007. http://www.pulitzercenter.org/temp/China_Series.pdf)
For all the Liu Hongmei's in China, and their sons, the change has to start here.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the articles published on the websites of Helium and of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting are those of the authors alone. They do not represent the views or opinions of the Pulitzer Center or its staff.
TOXIC EFFECTS OF BENZENE
OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE
“Regulation of occupational exposures in China,” by Otto Wong. Science Direct, October 2003.
WHAT'S BEING DONE ABOUT IT
