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solo_ar
28th November 2003, 04:46
me and 2 guys recently did our big assignment with a presentation for my political science class in college. It was on how to stop the abuse of Sweatshops by multinationals. we blew the class, and teacher away. we got our mark back today, 97%. anyone want to read it? i will post the first page here to read, if you want the rest i will post it. we beleive this theory would work.

"..The failure of any nation to adopt humane conditions of labour is an obstacle in the way of other nations which desire to improve the conditions in their own countries. These words were written in the International Labour Organizations (ILO) constitution in its inception, in 1919. The intent of the organization was to adopt international standards to cope with the problem of labour conditions involving injustice, hardship and privation." But in its 84 years, never has it seen the labour conditions third world countries face today. The debate rages as to whether globalization in the twentieth century is specifically and solely responsible for the effects on those societies. The impact of multinational corporations, however, cannot be denied. Financially insatiable CEOs and the marketing firms that work in complete synergy with them have one common goal: Maximizing profits. What often gets lost, or completely ignored, is the affect on human life those profits have. The impoverished employees who produce the goods are left to live without the most basic necessities any human being should have, all in the name of profit and greed. International competition is at an all time high, and the living conditions continue to worsen as multination companies try to reduce, and keep reducing the cost of human labour, viewing it more as an unavoidable nuisance rather than the fabric of their company. While many activist groups monitor and report the grievances of these companies, there is no solution to the problem anywhere in sight. Proposed boycotts of companies such as The Gap, or Nike, to name some of the more notable offenders, are quite ineffective. What the boycotts do however, is touch on a possible solution. It is virtually impossible, if not literally, to convince an entire country to all agree not to purchase one companys product, but, what if the product was not available to purchase in the first place? The job flight stories that have affected the Levis employees in San Francisco, or any other manufacturing plant in North America, would never be repeated. Companies would never lay off employees in favour of plants where they can pay employees practically nothing. Never again would human life be degraded in order to produce more advertising. Our bill proposal is to ban the import of products that are not produced in accordance with set out guidelines that will be set out in the content of the bill section of this proposal.

(*
28th November 2003, 04:58
How long is it? Post the rest, it will be a good reference for other writing on the same subject.
Multinational corporations have played a huge role in the devastation of the third world, but governments are just as guilty.

solo_ar
28th November 2003, 05:07
Originally posted by (*@Nov 28 2003, 05:58 AM
How long is it? Post the rest, it will be a good reference for other writing on the same subject.
Multinational corporations have played a huge role in the devastation of the third world, but governments are just as guilty.
its 8 pages. but our presentation was phenomenal. we had pics of sweatshops, a music video showing sweatshops by a band called "at the drive-in", my fav band. we were supposed to go up for 20 minutes. i swear to god we were in front of the lecture hall for over an hour dealing with questions from the audience.
to clarify, the whole point of the assignment was to develop new legislation for Canada. Our bill was that Canada would not import any products that were produced in "sweatshops". of course we defined what sweatshops would be under a set of guidlines governed in association with the ILO. if nike abused workers right's, Canada would not sell any Nike products, costing them hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. We went on to outline if every UN country eventually followed Canada's lead it would force the companies to comply, thus stopping virtually all sweatshop abuse.

UnionofSovietSocialistRepublics
28th November 2003, 11:41
ah thats interesting and well written. Post the rest of it when you get the chance, i would be very interested to read it.
p.s. welcome to che-lives comrade solo_ar!