The role of Multi National Corporations
...certain precautions are taken to ensure none of the female workers will become unable to work. For example, in Guatemala, a designated supervisor would be in charge of inspecting all the female workers to determine whether or not they are pregnant. To do so, he would routinely punch each of the female workers in the stomach to unravel the pregnant women judging by their reaction. Violent abuse to young women workers decreases their self-esteem, not to mention the damage it does to their health and dignity making them vulnerable against the control, they will even go as far as forcing women workers to physically showing factory doctors that they are menstruating in order to get a leave of absence. This humiliation and degradation of women is not necessary which only proves that there are no limits to the foul treatment of these people. In some instances, women and children are abducted only to be sold to sweatshops to become slaves. Many of the children are exploited to such pain and torture only because it so happens that they were born in an underdeveloped country. Being born in that particular part of the world, showed them a future with limited possibilities. It is tragic to know that for most of those in the third world will most likely suffer the same fate as their predecessors. It is also quite discouraging to say that children who are born in less developed countries will most likely live a life of hard labour with little to no possibilities of seeing a brighter future. Multi National Enterprises do not help the situation neither, but only make it worse. Taken the fact that developed countries receive larger distributions of income than less developed countries, displays the advantage one have over the other. Literally, one American dollar can get more in Fung 3 countries like Guatemala than in American where companies have to pay higher wages to their workers in comparison with Guatemala where they can get away with paying lower wages than in the U.S. With that in mind, why would Multi National Enterprises even bother paying American workers high wages when the same worker in Guatemala will work for less than half the money. Multi National Enterprises are generally building more sweatshops in less developed countries to lower costs by not having to pay such high wages and still maintain the same level of production. Unfortunately, even though Multi National Enterprises are providing more jobs in the third world, workers are still suffering from starvation as well as mal – nutrition. The wages that these companies are paying to their workers are barely enough to support them, not even to mention their families: Although minimum wage laws were met, rates of pay were so low that unreasonable amounts of overtime were necessary to attain a living wage. For example, workweeks of 70 hours and over were common (Arnold 28). Such conditions forces workers to become slaves to the industries because they must continue to work long hours in order to survive. In other words, this is a paradox being that workers are being treated as slaves and tortured in working under such terrible conditions of sweatshops, but on the contrary, if they do not work they die of starvation, due to the lack of income. Either way, people in less developed countries have no choice, but to work in order to feed their families. Such poor working conditions can be solved by these Multi National Enterprises, but referring back to their original goal, anything that will not generate more capital is not of their main concern. For example, in some of the Chinese factories in China, “workers were given only a small ration of water with which to serve all their needs (washing, cooking, cleaning)” (28). This unsanitary treatment of the Chinese workers was done all due to the fact that the company did not want to invest money for more water to give to their workers. By not wanting to invest money, the company denied the workers’ right to attain clean drinking water that they so desperately needed since their wages were no even substantially enough for them to buy it themselves. Regardless of how hard they work, they will always stay within the “$1 (US)-a-day poverty line”. This Fung 4 locks them up into the hands of Multi National Enterprises, ensuring these companies the security of possessing steady third world labour since none of the workers can afford to quit and stop working. The shocking truth behind the purpose of all these hideous acts of violence, torture and cruelty is money. It is truly the one thing that has the power to rule over everything because it is understood all over the world as the universal language of power. So what is the price of a human life? Well, in third world countries like Guatemala, the price is merely $1 a day which is not even enough money to buy a meal. It proves the value of human life means nothing to Multi National Enterprises where their main focus is to make profits. However, in order for them to achieve their goal, Multi National Enterprises violate nearly every human right and labour laws to lower expenses in their company which ultimately generates more capital. They would hire a second party contractor to manage and organize the sweatshops where order comes in the form of violence and torture. Workers are no longer the Multi National Enterprises concern because the one in charge is now the contractor who mainly concerns about the level of production and not the well-being of the workers. Often times, workers would be c...