[AnimalMuppet]

The thing is, for those workers in "poor" countries, this is a step up. My wife can tell you what two months' work for $300 meant to subsistence farmers in Guatemala. They were happy to get it.

You may say "Sure, they're poor and exploited, but that doesn't make it morally right for us to exploit them just a little less". I agree, up to a point. But insisting on first-world working conditions (including pay) mean that very few of them get hired. This leaves almost all of them poor and exploited, without even the option of "slightly less exploited". Who does that help?

[khrbrt]

The CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers.

What do you think the country would be like today if we hadn't killed the union leaders and installed a dictator friendly towards US business?

[bnjms]

I hate hearing this. I don't even understand how good unions are an inherently anti-conservative thing. I cannot understand why the US would fail to build up countries in its sphere of influence in order to encourage gratitude. A crutch can help you grow and recover or it can hobble you, and everything I've ever heard about our influence in central and south America has suggested we've hobbled them. -- I hope I'm just ignorant and wrong.

[ben509]

Unions aren't inherently anti-conservative, here's an example of a discussion that identifies specific positive aspects of unions.[1]

In particular, that discussion helps us define a "good" union: one that adds value for both the business and the workers it mediates between.

What makes a "bad" union, then? Well, in some industries, organization of labor won't add much value, so there won't be demand for their services. Union leaders will honestly believe they add value (like many organizations that can't acknowledge they're no longer in demand) and will lobby for laws to force unionization against the will of workers and businesses. That will become a bad union; its efforts will center preserving its own existence.

Worse, unions depend on solidarity, so the good unions will have to side with the bad unions if they want to be able to strike effectively.

And then their critics won't percieve any meaningful distinction between good and bad unions.

[1]: https://www.econtalk.org/mitch-weiss-on-the-business-of-broa...

[StanislavPetrov]

> I cannot understand why the US would fail to build up countries in its sphere of influence in order to encourage gratitude.

Because unfortunately its much more profitable to exploit them.

[AnimalMuppet]

In that alternate history, I don't think that the subsistence farmers would be middle class.

That doesn't mean that I think the US was in the right. I don't. But it does not follow that all the problems in Guatemala are our fault.

[khrbrt]

They would be making closer to 3000 every two months instead of 300. It wouldn't be a utopia, but it'd be a lot better than if we hadn't bled Latin America dry for our benefit.

My point is that a factory moving overseas isn't some platonic transaction. There is a history and a context to why labor is so cheap and regulations are so lax.

[AnimalMuppet]

How, in your world, would they be making closer to 3000 every two months?

[Edit: Forming unions doesn't automatically lead to rising wages - or if it does, it may do so at the price of fewer jobs. It isn't automatically going to lead to all the subsistence farmers getting good-paying factory jobs.]

> There is a history and a context to why labor is so cheap and regulations are so lax.

In Latin America, perhaps. In China? Korea, back in the day? Vietnam?

[jacobolus]

For one thing there wouldn’t have been a decades-long civil war leading up to a genocidal military dictator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War

> CIA under Eisenhower overthrew the government of Guatemala when trade unionists were elected on the promise of eight hour workdays and better conditions for field workers.

This isn’t quite the whole story. A significant proportion of Guatemalan land was owned by the United Fruit Company (whose leadership/ownership included significant overlap with Eisenhower’s administration†), but the company was not using the land. The Guatemalan government wanted to buy the unused land back from the company at the price they declared it to be worth on their tax forms. The company went to the US government and whined that their private property was being expropriated.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_900

† “John Foster Dulles, who represented United Fruit while he was a law partner at Sullivan & Cromwell – he negotiated that crucial United Fruit deal with Guatemalan officials in the 1930s – was Secretary of State under Eisenhower; his brother Allen, who did legal work for the company and sat on its board of directors, was head of the CIA under Eisenhower; Henry Cabot Lodge, who was America's ambassador to the UN, was a large owner of United Fruit stock; Ed Whitman, the United Fruit PR man, was married to Ann Whitman, Dwight Eisenhower's personal secretary.”

[elliekelly]

It's one thing to pay a lower wage for the same work - especially when the cost of living varies considerably. But I don't really think there's anything that justifies inhumane or unsafe working conditions.

[claudiawerner]

I think it's worth questioning whether "a step up" is preferable to possible forward-thinking alternatives - the belief in free-market capitalism has, as I see it, created this dilemma in the first place, to the point where the only two options are to exploit more or exploit less. I'd say this totalizing logic actually hinders progress, similar to being stuck in a local maximum.

[pessimizer]

> The thing is, for those workers in "poor" countries, this is a step up.

Not if the companies can help it. Just because they're in a low labor cost country doesn't mean that they want to pay any more than the minimum they can there - they're not looking to give a step up, they're looking for the minimum cost to attract a sufficient workforce.

Everybody always talks about these jobs as if they are necessarily great jobs. They may be great, maybe if the company has some sort of local political arrangement that would stay favorable if the jobs stay good, maybe if the management is simply bad and is accidentally paying more than the prevailing rate. But, on the other hand, these jobs are often with awful subcontractors who pay bargain basement wages even for the area, cut safety corners, demand unpaid overtime, and have any potential union leaders killed.