Forced Labor in Malaysia's Electronics Industry

There will always be capital willing to exploit labor to the fullest extent that it can. But as the poor of the world continue to rise and the global oversupply of labor diminishes, will labor gain enough leverage to end the abuses?

Does anyone else remember being taught in Econ 101 about globalization and comparative advantage and how great it is? Either the educators didn't know this would happen or it was a campaign to sell the public on the idea. Or maybe it was just bad teaching. I wonder which one it was.

Off the coast of Thailand, in international waters, hijacked migrants from Myanmar and Cambodia are conscripted to slave labor aboard fishing trawlers to produce the raw materials required by the multi-billion dollar American canned cat food market. Even massive public support for a boycott would fail to put a dent in the trade. Similar scenarios are playing out among Bangladeshi textile workers, Chilean copper miners, Madagascar vanilla harvesters, and on and on. And that doesn&#x27;t even consider the global daily traffic in sexual exploitation.<p>Blockchain and DLT actually begins to look like a viable solution to tracing supply chains to their origin transparently and contractually.

Is this perhaps the natural &#x2F; granted horrific progression to developing? It&#x27;s not like the existing first world nations just skipped the exploitative or their own gilded age phases.<p>Has anyone made the jump developing without going through such an phase?<p>I&#x27;m not trying to justify it, just wondering.

In any given country,labor laws and human rights are addressed by that country&#x27;s people and government. This is a local issue. The article makes it clear that multinationals are not directly part of the problem but their supply chain vendors are.<p>What is the expectation here? Should a company headquartered in a different country enforce it&#x27;s views on labor,hiring practices and human rights on local vendors? With what rights? That is an absurdly arrogant way of viewing the problem. If the local govermnet cares more about economic prosperity than decent treatment of humans then they have every right to do so,it&#x27;s their country and their people. I don&#x27;t like it but I have no right to tell someone else how to run their country. It would have been the same way if the tables were turned. Western standards can&#x27;t be enforced without western prosperity.<p>I think,just maybe,western individuals don&#x27;t apperciate enough just how much western rights and liberties depend on a stable prosperous economy.<p>In my opinion,the best way to solve this is by aiding the local economy,by giving more work and business to the local vendors&#x2F;supply chain. The more they prosper,the easier it is for the local working class to demand and get better treatment. There is change and there is sustainable change. Isn&#x27;t China a good example of how working conditiond have somewhat improved over the past 10years or so?

Unless you can afford to retire now. We are all in varying degrees subjected to Forced Labor. We&#x27;ve made many advances in making everything efficient and more abundant. Yet we still work to the death.

Is there a way to determine which products use slavery and to what extent?<p>Edit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knowthechain.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;knowthechain.org</a> might work. Don&#x27;t drink Monster.

There are significant policy failings here that need to be addressed, but assuming that will take a long time or is disincentivized from occurring at all, are there technology solutions that can be built to help these people? At the very beginning of the pipeline, before people emigrate from their home country to find work, do these people yet have access to basic smartphones&#x2F;internet, or are they simply too poor? What about text messaging? How can information be gotten to people about the actual conditions before they leave, and even more importantly, how can collective information about the good and bad players be made available? In developed countries we have everything from Yelp to Glassdoor and beyond, but what do these underprivileged people use? Are they purely reliant on word of mouth?

Perhaps this may be realistically solved through increased automation: no dirty jobs for humans. I visited an Industrial Automation exhibition in Shenzhen last week which was held in conjunction with a Machine Vision exhibition. The number of systems and components available was substantial and the field seems prepared for an explosion: prices for precision gear are low and dropping, young people have increased access to legoesque mechatronic toys, and software knowledge is becoming pervasive.

I don&#x27;t really like how sensationalistic this is, there are way more problems than just forced labor going into manufacturing. Energy used by manufacturing, local waste and pollution that goes unchecked, rampant corruption in factory owners, monopolistic control of the factories, ports, transit of goods, export, shipping, etc.<p>We&#x27;re a LONG way from freely competitive market and open, transparent regulation would do WONDERS for it.

This article highlights one reason why I had huge issues with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (&quot;TPP&quot;) agreement and more specifically Malaysia&#x27;s inclusion in the regional partnership. Pro-trade supporters would argue that the US is &quot;great and can out-compete&quot; any country. I would argue that the US workers can not compete with international free labor.

These articles sadden me. As a resident of a developed country with a decent salary I am definitely the beneficiary of the exploitave practices that keep manufactureed goods as cheap as possible. It is sickening to think that my dollars flow to the people and companies that make these practices possible. It doesn’t seem necessary, and is the result of callousness and greed. Whatever your views on capitalism and market forces, the practices that make this kind of exploitation of fellow humans possible are simply not necessary or worth it to save a couple of bucks. Does anyone know what individuals can do to combat this type of thing or have further reading to recommend?

Foreign domestic workers (maids) are often treated poorly in Malaysia.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.malaysiandigest.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;723621-malaysia-can-do-more-to-protect-foreign-maids.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.malaysiandigest.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;723621-malaysia-can-...</a>

If people could migrate freely around the world to seek work, economists crudely estimate that world GDP would roughly double, and that most of this enormous windfall would go to the poorest people on Earth. There is literally a hundred trillion dollar bill on the sidewalk for bringing together third-world labor and first-world legal systems, capital, and service demand.<p>Instead the first world does its best to wall itself off from economic migrants, because the right fears that migration will threaten their culture and the left fears that migration will threaten the welfare state.<p>As with any prohibition, the economic opportunity gets colonized by criminals. People seeking a better life will be taken advantage of and some of them will even wind up worse off than they started. But the root problem isn&#x27;t the criminals, and it isn&#x27;t customers who want cheap electronics. It&#x27;s the prohibition of migration.

Oh its Malaysia apartheid with a brown face (originally thought they meant china) I seriously looked at a full ride expat job there but after doing some research decided not to.<p>I ended up feeling sorry for Singapore&#x27;s dictator and the BBC world service report on ethnic rioting that had the line &quot;several dead bodies lying in the street&quot;.<p>Also id have had to cut my hair - I have a pony tail

Just a reminder that the US prison labor industry is billion dollar enterprise paying 90 cents per hour - against the constitution, but no-one seems to care.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;16&#x2F;prison-labour-is-a-billion-dollar-industry-with-uncertain-returns-for-inmates" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;united-states&#x2F;2017&#x2F;03&#x2F;16&#x2F;prison-la...</a>