Resistance Is Needed to End Corporate Toxic Zones

[polly7]

Sunday, 21 June 2015 00:00
By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview

Corporations slither through lax regulations and take advantage of poor people around the world and people of color to create zones of toxicity and exploitation. Truthout recently interviewed Erik Loomis about how corporations, in the end, create catastrophe.

Mark Karlin: How does subcontracting allow corporations to claim that they are not engaged in the exploitation of workers and the share of corporate responsibility for global warming?

Erik Loomis: The system of subcontracting allows corporations to shield themselves from responsibility for the labor and environmental consequences of production. Walmart, Gap, Target and other apparel corporations lead the way in protecting themselves from responsibility through contracting production out to suppliers. These companies do not own the factories that produce their clothing. They simply sign contracts with contractors, dictating the amount they will pay for the product. It is up to the contractor to then make sure the clothing is produced for the right price. This incentivizes the contractor subcontracting to sweatshops, pushing workers to the point of exhaustion, paying them low wages and spending no money on pollution controls. The western companies can then say they have no responsibility for these conditions because they don't care what happens inside those factories so long as the goods come in at the right price. This absolves them of legal responsibility even though they set the terms of contract with their suppliers. The system produces high profits on the backs of the workers as well as nearby residents who have to deal with the pollution of these factories.

It is part of a larger strategy corporations take to push responsibility off to others while in fact dictating wages and costs of production. A cousin of subcontracting is the franchising model that fast food companies use, where McDonald's can effectively ensure that wages remain low while saying that the franchisees control these matters.

What has globalization added to making the destructive action of corporations appear, per your book's title, "out of sight"?

Globalization allows corporations to move around the globe, finding people with very little power who have a limited ability to resist exploitation. When companies produced goods in the United States, American consumers could stand up and fight against the corporate exploitation of people and the land. When 146 workers died at the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City in 1911, middle-class people rallied behind reforms to fire safety, building safety and working conditions. They saw workers die making their clothing, and they fought for change. But if the factory is in Bangladesh, Honduras or Cambodia, no American consumers are seeing these horrible conditions or breathing in the air pollution or watching the rivers run red or green.

When corporations move production out of our sight to nations they can dominate and control, it protects corporations from the consumer activism that forced the reforms that created the middle class in the US during the 20th century and the relatively clean environment most Americans enjoy today.

~snip~

Your last chapter is called "The Way Forward." What are some of your suggestions for resistance against corporate exploitation, toxic policies and catastrophes?

First, we need to fight to defeat the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This trade agreement between 12 nations around the Pacific basin would make the current system of global labor exploitation even worse. It would create courts called the Investor State Dispute Settlement that would allow companies to sue states that enact regulations that limit their "expected future profits." That meant that if the US created laws mandating better working conditions in factories that made products for our markets abroad, corporations could theoretically sue the nation for doing so. That's not an idle threat either. Already, early versions of these extra-judicial courts are doing awful things. Philip Morris is going after Uruguay for creating new tobacco regulations while a French company has sued Egypt for raising its national minimum wage. The TPP in this form would only make lives worse for the world's workers because it grants corporations even more power to dictate policy to governments..........

Full article: http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/31454-resistance-is-needed-to-end-corporate-toxic-zones

[Rex]

1. Detroit is a good example of corporate toxicity.

Destroying a once manufacturing powerhouse now reduced to selling off artwork to keep the lights on.

[polly7]

2. Yes.

It makes me sad to hear how badly Detroit is doing. I remember in school, when we had to learn the name of every state and major city in the U.S., what they were famous for, etc., how Detroit was always the easiest to remember because of its manufacturing.

It's a shame.