[keeler]

You've missed my point. I'm not saying that putting it in terms of cost and productivity isn't virtually unassailable. I'm saying that it's ridiculous that this experiment was necessary to convince management that ensuring the basic welfare of its workforce would improve that productivity.

Just as it's obvious that productivity isn't maximized if workers aren't permitted to sleep or eat lunch (and we don't really need studies to know that), so it should be obvious that productivity isn't maximized when working conditions include stifling heat with no air circulation while you're at risk of maiming yourself at a sewing machine. This is a sweat shop we are talking about.

I've explicitly couched my comments in terms of worker productivity, so I'm not exactly talking about ethics. But ethics is certainly the subtext here, because I think it's obvious that humans perform and live better when they're treated the way they ought to be treated, with their basic needs being met.

Commonsense ethical rules aren't arbitrary; it isn't a coincidence that people fare badly, and perform poorly, when they are treated badly and are made to work and live in squalor.

[ido]

I would go on a limb an say you have never been to India?

I'll let someone else play hobby-anthropologist as to the reasons why, but complete disregard to the plights of the poor is rampant among the middle and higher class Indians.

[exergy]

I'll take the armchair anthropologist bait. It's rampant because there are so many of us.

If you see a homeless man rotting away, your heart goes out to him. If you see ten thousand of them, then...meh. Human empathy is finite unfortunately, and available in vanishing quantities among the Indian rich. The Indian rich are vile in a way that cannot be adequately described in words. Those of us who've made it outside India and are living abroad often like to discuss the vast differences in the value of life in the west vs east, and also the much higher dignity of labour.