labor

New York Times‘ columnist Nicholas Kristof also writes a blog, On the Ground, where he often responds to reader feedback and posts additional material that doesn’t make it into print. I often learn more from these items than the published essays.

Like Saturday’s note on this column about misguided efforts to close down sweatshops in Africa. (Since a subscription is now required to read it, I’ll post the gist of it here:)

Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops, demanding that companies set up factories in Africa. If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program.

[snip]

We in the West mostly despise sweatshops as exploiters of the poor, while the poor themselves tend to see sweatshops as opportunities.

On a street here in the capital of Namibia, in the southwestern corner of Africa, I spoke to a group of young men who were trying to get hired as day laborers on construction sites.

“I come here every day,” said Naftal Shaanika, a 20-year-old. “I actually find work only about once a week.”

Mr. Shaanika and the other young men noted that the construction jobs were dangerous and arduous, and that they would vastly prefer steady jobs in, yes, sweatshops. Sure, sweatshop work is tedious, grueling and sometimes dangerous. But over all, sewing clothes is considerably less dangerous or arduous — or sweaty — than most alternatives in poor countries.

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Update: The U.S. and South Korea failed to reach an agreement on Kaesong products in discussions on Monday. The issue has been tabled until next month. Negotiations on the other issues–including car and pharmaceutical imports–are continuing this week.

Andrew Leonard at How the World Works has an interesting post up about friction between the U.S. and South Korea over the products produced at Kaesong Industrial Park.

The U.S. position is that Kaesong products are North Korean, and thus should be excluded from preferential access to U.S. markets. Anything else would undermine U.S. attempts to restrict North Korean access to foreign currency. (As a side benefit, intransigence on the issue covers the U.S. flank against U.S. labor unions that will complain that South Korean capital is exploiting cheap labor to gain an unfair trade advantage. But it will take some chutzpah for U.S. trade negotiators to argue that the South Koreans should be condemned for such a practice when that has been one of the core operating principles for U.S. manufacturers for many decades.)

Leonard points out that the U.S. position ignores the role that the South Korean goverment hopes Kaesong will play in “engaging” North Korea and opening up possibilities for future investment. However, he also notes that the North Korean workers at Kaesong give new meaning to the term “slave labor.”

Not only will North Korean workers be paid a mere $57.50 per month — just 3 percent of the prevailing wage down south — but that money goes directly to the state, which then reimburses the workers. No one really knows how much the workers end up getting, and you sure won’t find out by asking them directly. Press reports say there is no socializing between workers and management, and very little opportunity for the North Koreans to do anything but, uh, work.

The question, as Leonard sees it, is whether the exploitation of these workers will be worth it in the long run.

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