Recently I came across two fairly generic kitchen items in Asda, which looked pretty much identical and had the exact same price tag. I was therefore faced with the difficult decision of which to buy (fortunately I wasn't shopping with someone else), which I'm sure you'll appreciate required a lot of thought in order to ensure I got the Right One.
Firstly, as price wasn't going to help me, I tried to evaluate the two based on quality, but after much turning, poking and licking, I really couldn't tell the two apart, so I had to look a bit more in depth. The barcodes both had pretty nice prime factors, and made pretty patterns - each beautiful in their own way but neither really stood out above the other.
One final difference I noted, however, was the little mark on the bottom saying 'Made in...'. Item A was made in Taiwan, whereas Item B was made (fairly bizarrely) in Helsinki. Now, if the European item had been made in France, or 'Belgium' then I could happily have discarded it, but I've got no real issue with Finland, so racism couldn't help out here.
Initially then, I was going to go with the moral standpoint, not supporting the probable awful conditions of work those poor labourers in Taiwan, and the evil companies running those sweatshops. But...hey, if I don't buy Item A, then instead of getting paid four pence, these workers are only going to get paid three pence. Can I really do that to them?
Eventually, the decision was made very easy for me when I considered the following set of facts:
Goods made in EU - high price for labour
Goods made in Taiwan etc - low price for labour
Therefore, if same price, one of the following must be true:
Lower profits for the EU company (lol)
or
Lower quality materials/ingredients for the EU company
So, support slave labour. You'll be helping out the poorest families in the world, and getting yourself better quality goods at the same time.
Tuesday, 4 September 2007
Support slave labour
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This would be the same flawed logic that tells me to buy Coca Cola by the lorry load when it's reduced in price so that I help make sure that their profits go down - which will suddenly make them a responsible and caring company!
Doubtless, there's an equally convincing argument for me to buy Nestle goods?
Sounds good, and I can't work out the flaw in the logic - but I still would have bought the one from Helsinki - less air miles, etc!
Hey hey, don't just throw in companies with a bad ethical name to pretend my logic is flawed. My logic is perfectly fine, as you acknowledge :)
As to the other points - think how frequently things are shipped here from Taiwan - I'm sure the route is much less costly. They probably do use planes from Helsinki, whereas from Taiwan it's a nice slow, cheap boat.
There is a range of products that came from Madagascar currently being retailed at the fourth largest department store in the UK. Actually, there is nothing wrong with the products themselves as they were manufactured to the highest possible standard by a small and old cottage factory that provides a cushion against the darkness of hunger and starvation to 250 extremely poor families in Antananarivo.We have all heard about buyers squeezing suppliers on price but what follows must be the jewel on the crown. The products were ordered and taken possession of last year by a London-based buyer, and todate the factory has not been paid a single penny despite the fact that this buyer is being begged on a daily basis.
lucknits@blueline.mg
That's pretty awful. I'd be happy to raise some awareness of this - could you point me to some accredited sources that reference this incident?
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