"Cogs in a system"

Writing in Toronto's Globe & Mail, Paul Knox invites you to take a look at a recent Oxfam report.

Titled Trading Away Our Rights, it depicts the savagely competitive world of global manufacturing and food production, and traces its effect on workers and farmers. It shows that the blessings of unprecedented choice many Canadians currently enjoy in fresh produce and stylish fashions come at a price.

In China, Honduras, Bangladesh, Chile, Kenya, Cambodia or Colombia, the pattern is the same: long hours, pay below minimum wage, increased health risks, intimidation and harassment for the legions who produce these goods. Often they are migrant workers. Increasingly they are women. All of them -- not only workers, but plant owners and middlemen -- are cogs in a system that is largely beyond regulation or control.

Dominated by a few giants -- Wal-Mart is a name that comes up repeatedly -- the global manufacturing industry aims to turn on a dime to find the cheapest possible way of filling orders. Elementary rights such as the freedom to associate, reasonable hours and safe working conditions often go by the board. Even companies that have ethical production standards violate them, sometimes unwittingly, as suppliers cut under-the-table deals with subcontractors to lower costs or satisfy just-in-time demand.

Nothing extraordinary here. Just a par-for-the-course report on the logic of the neoliberal order.

The current orientation of global trade does a great job creating economies of scale; it just does a lousy job creating a just, liveable world for billions around the world.