Michael Clemens released a groundbreaking (pun intended) new CGD working paper today titled The Effect of Foreign Labor on Native Employment: A Job-Specific Approach and Application to North Carolina Farms. Too busy to wade through the research methodology?
The recent collapse of a factory building in Bangladesh that killed hundreds of people making clothing for export has shined a harsh spotlight on the lack of worker protection in such low-income developing countries. But my guest on this week’s show, CGD senior fellow Kimberly Elliott, says that the disaster is unusual only in its magnitude.
Yet another Bangladesh garment factory tragedy is making headlines. Last November more than 100 workers died in the Tazreen factory fire, some of them because factory managers blocked doors and told them to ignore the fire alarms going off.
Earlier today, the US Trade Representative issued a call for comments on a petition to withdraw, suspend, or reduce Bangladesh’s benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) over its failure to improve labor rights. There is no question that working conditions in Bangladesh’s garment factories are abysmal and that efforts to organize workers to protect themselves are suppressed.
Having analyzed the debate over globalization and labor standards for some years now, I was not in the least surprised by the recent revelations about dangerous and unfair labor practices at Apple’s supplier factories in China. Like many other brand-name companies, Apple has a code of conduct for its suppliers and it responded to the allegations of abuses by stepping up audits of factories in its supply chain. But does this really do anything to fundamentally change the conditions in the factories?
Richard B. Freeman from Harvard University and NBER Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics gave a presentation on the expanding global workforce on November 8.