After watching both SAS and Foxconn video regarding their
work environment, we can really distinguish a “good” place to work from “bad”
place. We see the seemingly perfect
workplace in SAS with everything you need nearby and we see the hellhole and
mistreatment of workers in the Foxconn factories. In this scenario, we know what is right and
wrong. However, in certain places where
people are starving and in dire need of money, are things like child labor or
underpayment justifiable?
Let us picture a little child somewhere in a foreign
country. The boy’s family cannot feed
him and his siblings. They live in the
slums. The boy cannot continue his
studies. He can only beg for money in
the streets. Then a corporation opens up
near the area and starts to employ children with these backgrounds, providing
food, money and maybe even education in exchange for 5-hour work days. Who are we to say that this company is
unethical? Aren’t the children getting
what they need? So what if they may be a little underpaid? At least they can
eat. So what if they have to work as
child laborers? At least they can get an education. This is what I don’t get with “Human Rights”
or ethics.
Some of these practices are in fact justifiable in my
opinion. In fact, if you want to protest
something as “unethical”, why not internships?
Most internships or OJTs do not compensate the interns and sometimes
even ask them to work more than 8 hours.
Free labor is technically slavery right? Then isn’t this unethical as
well? It is the media that moves people
to think about what is ethical or unethical.
As long as the media portrays a practice to be bad, then it is probably
bad in our eyes as well.
This why media isn’t always a reliable source to me. If I want to get information on a topic, I
always make sure to get a secondary source as well. I don’t know if my line of thinking is
ethical or not, but logic tells me that if a company helps people, then it is “good”.
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