business ethics in-class activity week 5
Cooper2021
5-3.pptxBusiness Ethics Summer 2022 (1) Week 5, Lecture 3
Chaeyoung Paek
In today’s class…
Contrary to Ian Maitland, Denis Arnold and Laura Hartman argue for the necessity to regulate sweatshops, based on the value of human rights.
There will be one in-class activity at the end of the class.
Argument for sweatshops
Denis Arnold and Laura Hartman point out that there’s a utilitarian intuition behind the argument for creating & maintaining sweatshops.
For instance, Maitland argues that paying higher wages for sweatshop workers (which, by definition, would make sweatshops disappear) may decrease workers’ utility (or happiness).
Arnold and Hartman argue that this utilitarian assumption cannot be maintained when we consider how basic human rights may be violated under improper labor conditions.
Cf. Preference Utilitarianism
We’ll see one argument for sweatshops that Arnold & Hartman reconstruct in their article: the utilitarian argument for sweatshops.
It is based on the main thesis of Preference Utilitarianism, which is a special kind of Utilitarianism.
Preference Utilitarianism:
An agent ought to do X if and only if X maximizes the degree to which X achieves whatever is desired or preferred.
(ex) Experience Machine + Desire fulfillment
Argument for sweatshops
The utilitarian argument for sweatshops
P1. We have a moral obligation to perform actions that best enhance the preference satisfaction of the most people possible.
P2. Creating and maintaining sweatshops best enhances the preference satisfaction of those affected by sweatshops (sweatshop employees, via higher wages than they would otherwise receive; consumers, via lower prices for sweatshop goods; and MNCs and their shareholders, through lower labor costs).
C. Therefore, as many sweatshops as possible should be created and maintained.
Against the utilitarian argument
Arnold and Hartman reject the utilitarian argument for two reasons:
Proper understanding of basic human rights provides a better foundation for evaluating the ethical legitimacy of sweatshops.
Creating & maintaining sweatshops with regulations can yield better results than doing so without any restriction.
By (1), they reject (P1); by (2), they reject (P2).
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
Q. What are human rights?
Human rights are moral rights that apply to all persons.
(ex) The right to life/freedom from slavery
When X is basic human right, all people have moral obligation to refrain from interfering with X.
(ex) The right to life + Murder
Some of the basic human rights include freedom and subsistence.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
The right to freedom = the right to control one’s own behavior with knowledge of the relevant circumstances and without undue external pressure.
(ex) What to do after you get your bachelor’s degree
The right to freedom includes other, more specific rights, such as the right to physical security, the right to freedom of belief and expression, and the right to freedom of association.
(ex) The right to adequate housing/The right to freedom of religion
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
The right to subsistence = the right to minimal economic security that allows one to secure food, clothing, housing, transportation and access to basic, preventative health care, as well as clean air and water.
The right to subsistence is the right to minimal conditions for a person to be able to act autonomously.
In this sense, subsistence is necessary for freedom; without subsistence, you cannot secure freedom.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
If the rights to freedom and subsistence are basic human rights, then it is morally impermissible not to refrain from interfering with these rights.
Therefore, MNCs who manage sweatshops have moral obligations not to interfere with the workers’ rights to freedom and subsistence.
Arnold & Hartman suggest that they can carry out this duty by protecting the basic labor rights that are universally accepted.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
Some of the basic labor rights include…
Just and favourable working conditions, including a limit to the number of hours a human should have to work each day and a healthy working environment;
Minimum age and working conditions for child labour;
Non-discrimination requirements regarding the relative amount that a worker should be paid and the right to equal pay for equal work;
Freedom from forced labor;
Free association, including the right to organize and to bargain collectively in contract negotiations.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
Arnold and Hartman claims that the right to be paid a living wage should be one of the basic labor rights.
As Maitland points out, it is difficult to pin down what amount of money would be the right living wage in each society.
Arnold and Hartman suggest that MNCs could employ the US government’s method; calculating the cost of a market basket of food needed to meet minimum dietary requirements and then adding the cost of other basic needs.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
A potential objection:
“But the reason why MNCs operate in developing countries is because they have more relaxed laws for labor standards. If MNCs ought to protect the basic labor rights, then they would stop investing in sweatshop factories in developing countries.”
Arnold and Hartman would point out that no act of violating/interfering with basic human rights can be morally permissible, even when it yields a great consequence.
Furthermore, they believe that MNCs can stay profitable without interfering basic labor rights.
Basic human rights & Sweatshops
(ex) Nike’s changes from 1998
After receiving criticism, Nike CEO committed to taking several measures to fix the problems, including increasing minimum age requirements for workers in factories, improving factory health and safety conditions so that they comply with US standards, etc..
Nike also made a structural revision to monitor and remedy the harms of sweatshops; Corporate Responsibility Committee of the Board is responsible to review and report whether Nike aligns with the corporate responsibilities.
Offsetting the cost
Such changes allow MNCs to protect workers’ rights to freedom and subsistence.
But Arnold and Hartman point out that making such changes provide strategic advantages to MNCs as well.
1) Productivity
As workers are paid more wages & are treated better in safer environment, workers become more loyal to their employers.
Managers also report higher employee morale when MNCs take measures to protect the basic labor rights, which improve the quality & the quantity of the products.
Offsetting the cost
2) Reputation
In Market and Opinion Research International (2000), researchers found that 70% of European consumers report that a company’s commitment to social responsibility, including ‘looking after employees’, is important when buying a product or service.
When MNCs treat their workers right, their reputation can actually save MNCs the cost for recruitment and training of new employees too; and they become the employer of choice among the best workers in local labor markets.
Offsetting the cost
3) More earnings
(ex) Pollin et al. (2004):
“The surveys consistently find that most consumers have a strong preference to purchase products made under “good” working conditions as opposed to sweatshop conditions, and are generally willing to pay more to support their preferences. For example, the most recent of these surveys found that on average, consumers said they were willing to pay 28 percent more on a $10 item and 15 percent more on a $100 item in support of their preference for products made under good conditions (including as zeros the 19 percent of consumers who said they were unwilling to pay extra for the assurance; Elliot and Freeman 2000, p. 2).”
Offsetting the cost
Arnold and Hartman conclude that the benefits outweigh the cost for MNCs to protect sweatshop workers’ basic labor rights.
They note that the primary reason why MNCs should pay living wage, provide safer working conditions, etc., should be based on basic human rights; the utilitarian assumption just cannot capture how important human rights are.
So, they reject (P1) of the utilitarian argument for sweatshops.
Offsetting the cost
But they point out that even if we accept the utilitarian assumption, MNCs should protect basic labor rights.
MNCs are better off protecting workers’ basic labor rights!
They also reject (P2) of the utilitarian argument; to satisfy the preferences of more people over all time, it’s better for MNCs to protect their workers’ basic human rights.
Exercise
Click ”5-3 In-class Activity” below the lecture video.
Click “Write Submission”; fill in your answers & click “Submit.”
This should take about 5 minutes, but feel free to take more/less time as needed.
For the next class…
We all agree that it is morally permissible for business owners to choose which service they provide to their customers & to choose not to provide service to certain customers.
But it’s also morally impermissible to discriminate other people for their traits, such as gender, sexual orientation, race, etc..
Which makes the Masterpiece Bakery case a tricky moral conundrum!
For the next class…
Watch the following video: "A Clash of Cake and Faith", NYTimes Video (https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000003302856/a-clash-of-cakeand-faith.html)
Then read the following two articles:
Adam Liptak, “In Narrow Decision, Supreme Court Sides With Baker Who Turned Away Gay Couple”, New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/us/politics/supreme-courtsides-with-baker-who-turned-away-gay-couple.html)
Jim Campbell, "The Supreme Court puts a baker's business—and artistic freedom—on the line", Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-supreme-court-puts-abakers-business--and-artistic-freedom--on-the-line/2017/06/28/c0a4407e-5b8d-11e7-9b7d-14576dc0f39d_story.html)
