Multinational corporations and sweatshops Essay

Multinational corporations and sweatshops - Essay Example In addition, they expect the suppliers in developing countries to produce quality products within a short time or precise delivery schedule (Maitland 120). This is a trend that has been observed with nearly all multinational corporations across the globe. Indeed, in recent years these companies have forgotten about manufacturing; instead, their focus is on marketing and product designing. The labor and human rights activists have criticized this contracting arrangement. They have argued that these corporations are exploiting workers and thereby promote international sweatshops. The critics have cited a number of areas of exploitation which makes them believe that the corporations contribute to difficult and dangerous environment for workers. For example, they have pointed out that the sweatshop workers work for very long hours but with minimal pay, albeit well defined laws on minimum wage and overtime pay. Moreover, the sweatshop workers might violate the child labor laws which are h ighly defined and outlined. On some occasions, sweatshops may promote hazardous situations and materials. In addition, in a sweatshop setup, the employer can choose to abuse the employees without easy ways for employees’ protection.These have prompted arguments on whether corporations have minimum obligations, at most merely complying with the host country laws, or further have negative obligations to respect human rights and finally, whether they should have positive obligations to promote just background institutions. However, based on the critics discussed above, I can argue that the disagreement concerning the social responsibilities of the multinational corporations should not continue. Instead, the multinational corporations should have positive obligations to promote just backgrounds. Body Multinational companies must promote just backgrounds and ensure that their international workers enjoy a favorable work environment. They must also play major roles in ensuring that human rights activists are heard and that their international corporations also enjoy their human rights. Therefore, the multinational corporations should identify contracting practices that, if implemented, will prevent the repressive regimes that make working difficult. To start off, these corporations must ensure that the current labor standards are satisfactory to the workers and that their rights to join the labor force are fostered. These ideals cannot be achieved if the corporations continue with their current contracting practices. For instance, Kathie Lee Gifford’s clothing line cannot continue using 13 and 14 year old children to work for 20 hours a day in their factories (Maitland 120). According to Charles Kernaghnan who worked with the National Labor Coalition, these contracting practices by Kathie Lee Gilford’s company promoted child labor violations in Honduras, yet there are established child labor laws and standards. Kernigan found out that the same c ontracting practices are found nearly in every developing country. He further explained that the same child and labor abuse in Honduras is widespread in Central America and Africa. To improve these contracting practices, labor and human rights activists have identified that all multinational corporations have a public image that they always want to protect. For this reason, Monshipouri found that they have