Global Business Relies on Workers on Developing Countries - Coursework Example

Running Header: Global Business Relies on Workers on Developing Countries: Until These Workers are Adequately Protected by Government Regulation and have ‘Decent Work’ Inequity will continue to be a Worldwide Problem Student’s Name Course Title Lecturer Date Introduction Over the previous decade, the world trade has expanded significantly. Global trade had by 2007 reached over 60 per cent of the global GDP, contrasted to below 30% in the mid-80s. It is evident that increase in this global trade has played a significant role in job creation and economic growth (Bacchetta et al., 2009, p.9). Nevertheless, the strong global economic growth has not, up to now, resulted to a matching improvement in living standards and working conditions for many. There has been a decline in absolute poverty as a result to recent years’ economic dynamism, private companies’ efforts, migrant workers as well as their settlements, and the international development community. However, in many cases, conditions of labour market and the employment growth quality have not improved at the same rate. Job creation in many developing nations has taken place mainly in the formal economy, where about 60% of employees get income chances. Nevertheless, the informal economy is typified by lower incomes, less job security, fewer chances to take part in training and formal education programmes, and lack of access to a number of social benefits. This means the absence of main decent work opportunities ingredients (Bacchetta et al., 2009, p.9). This paper focuses on determining how global business has created inequality among developing nation workers and the need for the government intervention to control their actions in these regions. Workers Inequity in Global Business in the Developing Nations Globalization has highly benefited many people in the world. It has highly been associated with enhancement of social and economic status of individuals in different parts of the world. However, the tenacious vulnerabilities in the labour market have prevented growing nations from benefiting fully from the globalization dynamics. Most global businesses venturing in developing nations are subjecting their employees into abusive labour conditions that subject workers to low life quality. There have been reports of suicides and abusive labour conditions at the Foxconn, Taiwanese Company, which is the largest world electronics maker consumer and the U.S. based contract manufacturer of Apple Inc., electronic firm (Donaghey et al., 2013, p. 229). Similar cases have been reported in Apple companies in China where workers protested over abusive conditions of working and labour rights violations. This is a situation that is observed among a number of international companies located globally. Famous brands such as Coca-Cola, and Nike companies have also been reported to employ excessively low-priced labour and child labour in South East Asia. This is mainly due to the fact that the region does not have tighter regulations and enforcement as those employed in Europe and USA. Coca-Cola has been accused of workers intimidation across the globe, where they are even said to hire paramilitaries to kill or intimidate union leaders (Shah, 2006, p.1). Cases of workers discrimination and mistreatment have been far wide spread in developing countries. Other cases have been reported in apparel industry in East Asian factories where sweat shop-like conditions were employed. Other involved companies included clothing traders H&M, Addidas, Levi Strauss, Walt Disney, and Levi Strauss. Harsh work condition has also been reported in Chinese based multinational companies based in China (Shah, 2006, p.1). There is a clear indication that although globalization has resulted to the borders opening for expansion of trade, the same does not apply for people. Flexibility introduction though effective for business, it can hurt employees as pointed out by the international labour organization (IFC.org, 2006, p.5). Globalization has come hand in hand with work informalization under the neoliberal globalization concept. This has destroyed the regulatory framework and damaged the employment relationship standards, which define the trade unionism role in the developed world. Atypical or non-standard work which includes temporary and part-time work now accounts for the biggest share of employment in the developed nations (Webster et al., 2016, p. 204). This trend is being transferred to the developing nations, where new global businesses are established. Most globalized nations focus on growth and profit maximization. They thus consider developing their manufacturing companies in developing nations due to lower cost of land and availability of cheap labour. Their establishment in developing nation give them an opportunity to reduce their cost of production and hence in maximizing the profits. To maintain their high earnings, these companies have transferred the informal kind of employment in developing nations by maximizing on the employment of part-time jobs, and casual or temporal employment. This limits workers personal benefits to the companies and also limits the enforcement of the governmental labour laws to these companies. This also eliminates the possibility of employees to be involved in any trade union and thus, their rights are hardly protected. As a result, the global businesses have managed to impose their unfair rules and regulations to their employees without governmental interference, particularly in the developing nations where enhancement of labour laws are considered weak (Webster et al., 2016, p.204). As a result, these companies have not significantly changed the life of their employees to better. On the contrary, they have subjected them to unnecessary stress, which has led to suicides and open protests in various cases in different parts of the world as stated above. Inequalities in the present system of global trading have heavily hurt developing countries. According to Kunnanatt (2013, p. 44) it is believed by many critics that the process has subjugated individuals in the developing nations resulting to massive disruptions in the cultural and socio-economic fabric of the societies. It also claimed to have created more harm compared to advantages it has brought in the region. The current data for instance demonstrate that most nations in Africa have failed to participate and share globalization benefits. Globalization has hardly hit these nations as they are afflicted, possibly for domestic reasons, with poor infrastructure and policies, corrupt governmental operations, and weak institutions. This can highly be demonstrated by the globalization impact on the labour market and its negative contribution to workers socio-economic life. Some of the negative effects created include poor wages associated with long working hours thus, reducing resting, leisure and family time, while making very little significance to workers financial status. These businesses play a great role in reducing the quality of life of their employees in the developing nations (Goldberg & Pavcnik, 2007, p. 71). Globalization is associated with various changes which include the economic benefits of a country and modernization among others. Most researchers have classified the benefits of globalization based on poverty and wages. Although, the level of poverty and wages are necessary indicator of the effect of economic globalization, they are not enough. The equality question still remains. It is essential to focus on the equity that globalization brings, not just due to fairness, but also due to the fact that inequality tends to causes increase in a number of vices in the society. In this case, inequity would result to increase in psychological conditions, drug abuse, anxiety and other forms of insecurity. Increased in inequality also result to decline in life expectancy and trust in the civil society. It also hinders economic growth via its impacts on political and social institutions. Moreover, it significantly reduces indicators of life satisfaction and happiness (Haase, 2012, p.44). In this regard, something ought to be done to reduce or completely eliminate the level of workers inequity in developing countries as a result of globalization. Need for Government Regulations on Global Labour Market to Enhance Equity Based on the above discussion, it is evident that globalization has played a great role in creating employees inequality in the developing nations. The multinational companies which major on manufacturing have capitalized on informal form of employment where workers have little bases to negotiate for their welfare. In this regard, majority of workers have been operating in abusive working conditions in developing nation. Most multinational companies in the developing nations have not managed to maintain their operation ethics that govern them in their home countries. As a result, workers in developing nations have been experiencing little or no benefits compared to other companies’ employees in the developed nations (Drebes, 2014, p. 1260.) To ensure that this capitalist conduct does not threaten the mankind and the society, substantive controls requires to be employed upon the global business behaviours, when they venture into developing nations or as a worldwide standard to treat all employees. This implies that legal and economically sound regulated controls require to be instituted both between and in counties in order to maintain dynamic balance between the private initiatives entrepreneurial priorities and the society wellbeing. According to Kunnanatt (2013, p.55), the extensively use Keynesian form of state interventions across various nations even today adds testimony to the requirement for carefully strategized state regulation of action of entrepreneurial in societies. Some of the above stated forms of workers discrimination are highly against human rights. There is a clear indication that human rights employment needs to be enforced with extensibility of globalization. However, this process is facing a number of challenges. There is continuous encroachment and violation on basic human dignity, despite of the continuous advancement of international actors and standards for human rights protection. This according to Drebes (2014, p. 1260) may be caused by development of new means and ways of human rights negotiation, with increase in its actors and standards. Another major cause of failure in the employment of human rights in global arena is that human rights norms varies at regional, international and domestic levels in their interpretation, introduction, implementation and definition. Thus, there is no specific standard to enforce human rights globally. In this regard, worldwide global development can be said to be responsible for disenfranchisement and exploitation of abuses of human rights. However, every state has a responsibility of imposing human rights at its level or government level. In this regard, the local government should consider integrating human rights rules or guidance to regional or internal labour laws upon which all employers in the country should adhere to. This will assist in resolving the human rights standards conflicts internationally. According to Rashid and Watoo (2015, p. 217), human rights status in developing nations are poor due to poor orders and law. There is un-conducive setting in the developing countries, which characterized with particular complex hurdles and realities in human rights provision in globalization view. They also lack of framework in the human rights implementation. Political immunity and other acquirable forms of immunity, as well as corruption play a major role in the failure of human rights enforcements in developing. As a result, global businesses do find ways to act without much restriction on human rights employment among other labour laws enforcement. It is therefore clear that the current labour inequality can highly be solved by individual government by enforcing their internal labour laws and human rights enactment to all, including global businesses (Baek & Shi, 2016, p.51). Another major issue is the employment of informal neoliberalism form of employment. This is one of the major concepts that globalized companies are employing to enhance inequity among workers. The educated workers which are few in the sector are receiving better treatment under formal employment, while the rest suffer in informal sectors, which are highly unprotected. One of the concepts employed to handle this issue is unionization of informal sector in South Africa (Webster et al., 2016, p. 214). Although this approach demonstrated a number of challenges, it demonstrated the importance of developing a guidance on how informalized should be treated in different sectors. This is an arrangement that can be done locally by the local government. The main purpose would be making their work more decent and reliable, with a certain level of certainty. Global Union can also take part in fighting for the right of the informalized employees, as a way of setting standards on how they are treated and defining their working condition. This would play a major part in reducing employees’ inequity in the world. Conclusion Globalization has introduced a number of changes in the world which include negative and positive ones. In developing nations, globalization has highly enhanced the level of employment. However, this came hand in hand with the enhancement of employees’ inequity. Globalization has propagated labour inequality in the developing nations where informal form of employment is highly embraced. Workers have been subjected to abusive work environment that have subjected many into psychological distress. Various cases of low wages, child labour, long working hours, and job insecurity have been reported in these countries. Informalization makes it hard to enforce the current labour laws in these companies. Poor law enforcement and framework in developing country are too poor to protect human rights among the globalized companies. This has increased the level of inequity in developing nation. The situation can only be resolved by the government and international bodies’ involvement in developing laws to protect workers in informal employment and also in standardization of human rights laws. References Baek, I & Shi, Q, 2016, ‘Impact of economic globalization on income inequity: Developed economies vs emerging economies,’ Global Economy Journal, vol.16, no.1, pp. 49-61. Bacchetta, M., Ernst,E & Bustamante, J. P, 2009, ‘Globalization and informal jobs in developing countries,’ World Trade Organization, [online] Available at < https://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/jobs_devel_countries_e.pdf> [Accessed on April 6 2016]. Donaghey, J., Reinecke, J., Niforou, C & Lawson, B, 2013, ‘From employment relations to consumption relations: Balancing labour governance in global supply chains,’ Human Resource Management, vol. 53, no. 2, pp. 229-252. Drebes, M. J, 2014, ‘Impediments to the implementation of voluntary codes of conduct in product factories of the global south: so much to do, so little done,’ Third World Quarterly, vol.35, no. 7, pp. 1256-1272. Gaur, A, 2015, ‘Impact of globalization on trade and employment,’ International Journal of Multidisciplinary Approach and Studies, vol.2, no.5, pp.110-113. Goldberg, P, K & Pavcnik, N, 2007, ‘Distributional effects of globalization in developing countries,’ Journal of Economic Literature, vol.45, pp. 39-82. P. 21 wages inqualit and job uncertainity. Haase, D, 2012, ‘The wealth (and want) of nations: The impact of economic globalization on the developing world,’ Perspectives of Global Development and Technology, vol.11, pp. 38-49. IFC.org, 2006, ‘Non-discrimination and equal opportunity,’ Good Practice Note, vol.5, pp. 1-23. Kunnanatt, J. T, 2013, Globalization and developing countries: A global participation model. Economics, Management, and Financial Markets, vol.8, no.4, pp. 42-58. Rashid, A & Watoo, M. A, 2015, ‘Challenges and opportunities of globalization for the development of human rights in Pakistan 2010-2014,’ A Research Journal of South Asian Studies, vol.30, no.20, pp. 215-229. Shah, A, 2006, ‘Corporations and worker’s rights,’ Global Issues, [online] Available at < http://www.globalissues.org/article/57/corporations-and-workers-rights> [Accessed on April 6 2016]. Webster, E., Joynt, K & Sefalafala, T, 2016, ‘Infomalization and decent work: Labour’s challenge,’ Progress in Development Studies, vol. 16, no.2, pp. 203-218. Read More