I was in Taiwan visiting my family. A close friend of mine is a vice-president in his family’s company. After work one day I met up with my friend, and he brought along one of his business associates from the mainland.
We made the initial small talk and then I proceeded to ask the business associate about his corporation’s practices. He told me his company was heavily vertically integrated. Where the discussion became slightly heated is when he told me about the factory his corporation’s products were manufactured in. In fact, he didn’t even use the term “factory,” he referred to it as “the sweat shop.”
That’s really what it was. He described the conditions to me as unfortunate but necessary to even be considered as a competitor in the market.
I thought surely this is not practiced in America. When I got back to the states I did some digging around. I pulled an article, which I’ve saved to this day, about Nike Corp and their “sweat shops.”
Just like this pig iron Nike did not directly own the factory but contracted out with a manager in China who did. The article described how the factory only hired young females to work. The young women had to pay rent to the factory to have a place to stay in the dormitory, and pay checks were rarely given.
I’m from Austin. I grew up only knowing the “mom and pop” and was raised by the city to know that the Devil and Wal-Mart were the same thing.
If all of our corporations in America were to pull out and spend the dollars to be ethical, would our economy tank? I ask myself, “Are we to in to even consider getting out? Even if we wanted to?”
Maybe this be the first step. Corporate America will be Corporate America, but we are the individuals working in the matrix of it. Maybe we take the responsibility to look at a company’s business practices and say “yay” or “nay” if they give us a job offer.
We say no to the companies that do not practice business ethics all the way down and be vocal about it. We create a different business cultural climate where people want to do the right thing.
Even in the case of the Dallas Cowboys. Do the people deserve to know? One of my public relations profs said, “Unless you are asked to do something illegal, suck it up and do your job as a pr practitioner.” What can you comfortably go to sleep to at the end of the night?
We made the initial small talk and then I proceeded to ask the business associate about his corporation’s practices. He told me his company was heavily vertically integrated. Where the discussion became slightly heated is when he told me about the factory his corporation’s products were manufactured in. In fact, he didn’t even use the term “factory,” he referred to it as “the sweat shop.”
That’s really what it was. He described the conditions to me as unfortunate but necessary to even be considered as a competitor in the market.
I thought surely this is not practiced in America. When I got back to the states I did some digging around. I pulled an article, which I’ve saved to this day, about Nike Corp and their “sweat shops.”
Just like this pig iron Nike did not directly own the factory but contracted out with a manager in China who did. The article described how the factory only hired young females to work. The young women had to pay rent to the factory to have a place to stay in the dormitory, and pay checks were rarely given.
I’m from Austin. I grew up only knowing the “mom and pop” and was raised by the city to know that the Devil and Wal-Mart were the same thing.
If all of our corporations in America were to pull out and spend the dollars to be ethical, would our economy tank? I ask myself, “Are we to in to even consider getting out? Even if we wanted to?”
Maybe this be the first step. Corporate America will be Corporate America, but we are the individuals working in the matrix of it. Maybe we take the responsibility to look at a company’s business practices and say “yay” or “nay” if they give us a job offer.
We say no to the companies that do not practice business ethics all the way down and be vocal about it. We create a different business cultural climate where people want to do the right thing.
Even in the case of the Dallas Cowboys. Do the people deserve to know? One of my public relations profs said, “Unless you are asked to do something illegal, suck it up and do your job as a pr practitioner.” What can you comfortably go to sleep to at the end of the night?
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