I'm from the Canal Zone. I grew up there. I'm a former American colonist. The bulk of the workforce was Panamanian. Their wages were much lower than American wages. The justification by we Americans was that they were paid better by the Company than they would get in Panama. It's the standard imperial justification and it's wrong.
Panama has done quite well without America and their wages have improved. This isn't universally true but the justification that this is just something that every country must go through is wrong factually and morally. It is immoral for us to profit off of forced labor, unsafe working conditions, and child labor. That our country turns a blind eye is repugnant.
If the choice is between paying someone in another country the same amount you'd pay someone at home and not hiring them at all, the simple fact is, they're not going to be hired at all. The unspoken assumption, of course, is that we can let the whole rest of the world languish in poverty so long as we're sure that every appliance in our electrified houses and every damned faucet for our hot and cold running water was made by American hands in an American factory. That's even a consistent worldview--but you have to acknowledge what you have to give up in order to maintain that consistency. If we have to consistently choose not to interfere with cultures less technologically and economically advanced as our own, that means no interference. That's a hard pill for most people to swallow. What's more imperialistic--contracting with a Chinese company for manufacturing or "rebuilding Haiti" (in our own image, of course).
No one said anything about forced labor. I included it in a list of things that it is immoral to benefit from. In that list of things was child labor; the point of the discussion. Sorry for not making this clearer. I should have left it out.
Corporations aren't building factories in China so that China benefits. They are building the factories so that they benefit. There are lots of reports of forced labor in China, of unsafe working conditions, and of worker exploitation. Our companies are fine with this arrangement because they fall back on the, "But we don't actually hire these workers. We contract this out." It's wrong.
The American public is OK with the arrangement because it means we can buy cheap crap. We don't mind migrant laborers in this country being exploited because we want cheap food.
What we lose sight of is the damage that this does to us and the world. That pollution that the factories produce in China to make cheap shit for us, in the long run, will do a lot of harm to China and the world. It's immoral for us to benefit from this.
What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met. Make companies run the factories instead of hiding behind, "We don't actually hire the workers." The externalities need to be addressed.
"What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met."
That's exactly what Apple does, and that's exactly why you're reading this story about Apple, instead of Asus or Lenovo or any other company--because Apple, unlike almost every other company, does the audits and enforces the standards on their contractors.
After rereading the article and reading the comments on this thread I'm inclined to agree with you as far as it pertains to Apple. The overall point I made applies though. Not necessarily to Apple itself but to behavior of Western companies in general.
Panama has done quite well without America and their wages have improved. This isn't universally true but the justification that this is just something that every country must go through is wrong factually and morally. It is immoral for us to profit off of forced labor, unsafe working conditions, and child labor. That our country turns a blind eye is repugnant.