Corporations
and Power
Families have found themselves
hopeless in a struggling economy where unemployment has become all too
familiar. We have a corrupt economic system in which big banks and corporations
have too much power over society. In the book, The Corporation by Joel Bakan, he
describes the perspective of each stakeholder and how they are being affected
by the actions the corporations are taking. Stakeholders are those that can or
are being affected by the decisions the corporations make. Consumers are being
affected in a positive way because they get affordable products, which help
them because of their economic status. Corporations are affecting workers in a
positive and negative way because they are provided with jobs but they are
getting their human rights taken away. Lastly, the shareholders, who are those
who own stock in corporations, are being affected positively and negatively
because they are making profit but losing money at the same time. Even though corporations are providing jobs in
developing countries and making products that are affordable, they exploit
people and dehumanize them. In order for this problem to stop, we as consumers
need to come together to become aware of corporations who exploit workers. If
we as consumers come together to try to change how corporations work, we can
start by changing who we are as consumers.
Consumers are the ones who give easy
profit to the corporations. Corporations give the impression that they are
being righteous to the people they are providing labor for. The consumers, when
they purchase a product they have the connotation that it’s a positive deed
that the corporations are doing by providing sweat shops which is labor to
those in poor countries. Also, another reason that we as consumers do not
complain about corporations is because we get affordable prices. In the book,
The Corporation, Bakan claims, “ … these people would make great neighbors. .
. when you meet with them in person
their quite decent…” page 70. The shareholders are great people that are still
working even when they are off the clock. For example, they can live next to
you and be a great neighbor but aside from being a great neighbor they are
using the strategy of stealth marketing, a new technique that corporation use
to persuade the consumer to buy a product, to persuade you in to buy the
product, and then just there they have benefited from you. They will use
anything that is under the reach of their power to sell their products and
increase the company’s profit.
However, corporations are affecting
workers in a positive way because they are providing them with jobs. As
corporations grow larger and larger jobs are being created for many people. As
Friedman, from The Corporation, would say, “ …corporate externalities have
“enormous effects on the world at large”… though they can be positive—jobs are
being created and useful products developed by corporations in pursuit of their
self-interest…” (61). Friedman is saying that corporations provide jobs for
those whom are searching for labor. Not precisely the shareholders but those in
developing countries who are willing to work with harsh working conditions, as
long as they get paid so they can survive day by day.
We
as consumers take the affordable products for granted and do not realize that
as we buy more and more of those products the workers in sweatshops are getting
over worked. Unlike the consumers, workers have the option to either take the
working conditions the sweatshop has for them or they can starve and not have
labor. “ Sweatshop workers do not generally choose to work in order to gain
some extra disposable income for luxuries, or simply to take pleasure in the
activity of working,” Matt Zwolinski claimed that workers are willing to take
those conditions as long as they have a job. They have the choice to not work
in those conditions, yet they take the opportunity that those who direct Sweatshops
give them because they feel that with labor they will be freed. Reality is that
with working at the sweatshops, you are working under their conditions and you
have no other option to accept the job, because of the scarcity of jobs.
Even though corporations provide labor to
those in need, they are being affected negatively as well because they are
being exploited, dehumanized and getting their human rights taken away.
Corporations provide a reasonable amount of jobs for the people in the society,
but those jobs do not have fair labor standards. Kernaghan, the director of the
National Labor Committee, an organization with a mandate to stop American
corporations from using sweat-shop labor, went deep in to the investigation and
found out that United States and Europe corporations use sweatshop labor and
exploit people, mainly teen girls in to working for them. They have the
opportunity to work, but the pay is so low that they wont be able to survive
with 8 cents and hour. “A time was allotted for each task, with units of ten thousandth’s
of a second used for the breakdown. With all the units added together, the
calculations demanded that each shirt take a maximum of 6.6 minutes to
make—which translates into 8 cents’ worth of labor for a shirt Nike sells in
the United States for $22.99” (Bakan 66). He provides us with the information
that young girls are being provided with jobs but they are being taken
advantage of. There should be laws and regulations in those sweatshops that we
don’t know about. The government needs to get the control that he needs in
order to make regulations for those in sweatshops to have fair labor standards
because they are being exploited, beaten and even getting fired if they seem to
be worn out because they aren’t as productive as the new ones coming in. The
workers are being seen and used as tools, due to the fact that if they don’t
work as fast or productive as they want, they fire them and get a “new” group
people. By new group of people I mean a new group of workers who are ready to
work, despite the working conditions. The workers are usually employed until
the age of 25, that’s because they get worn out by that age due to 12-hour day
shift, no breaks and low wages which they can afford to live day by day.
Those who own stocks, shareholders, will
do anything they can do to serve the bottom line, which is increasing profit for
the corporation at the end of the day. One example is the one where
corporations take jobs to other countries because it’s easier for them to
exploit others who are willing to sacrifice to work. In the article, A Search
for Standards to Monitor Labor Conditions Worldwide by S Prakash Sethi, noted
how corporations use poor countries and make use their cheap and abundant
labor. Sethi wrote, “They prefer operating in those countries where local laws
covering worker organizations do not exist or are poorly enforced” (Sathi 280).
Corporations prefer to operate in other countries where laws are not enforced
and they can exploit others to work. Corporations have the connotation that
consumers will not find out about these exploitations because we are ignorant.
We only shop because of their branding, they brainwash us with all these brands
that we “need” in order to fit in or be like everyone else. When money is benefiting corporations they do
not care who they are hurting. Take the example of the General Motors, GM, they
dangerously positioned the fuel tank to save costs on the car. Patricia
Anderson, who owned a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu car at the time, was in a car
collision. A car slammed into the back of her car. She sued the company for the
explosion of the car because they are putting people in danger. It seemed that
they had put profit above public safety.
In conclusion, I believe that we as
consumers need to become aware about how corporations really operate. Their
only objective is to increase their benefits and meet the bottom line, which is
profit. We as consumers can put a stop to this problem by developing awareness
by questioning what we buy. There’s times were we don’t need certain things and
we just buy them because of the brands. We are brainwashed by the certain
brands that we “need” in order to be luxurious and they make it seem like we
need those products, yet we don’t. we need to start shopping at local places
where we know where they do not contribute to sweatshops, we may not completely
stop this issue, but we will start spreading awareness to others. It could be
possible for sweatshops to get fair labor standards. At the end of the day, workers
are affected because they are being dehumanized by corporations privatizing
their human rights. We as consumers take our products as something we need,
however its just the advertising and the branding that corporations have that
makes us think that way. Lastly, the shareholders are affected positively and
negatively because they are exploiting others, which means they are not paying
much for getting their products done. Bakan asserted,“…they are institutions
which have really only one mission, and that is to increase shareholder
value”(35). Going back to the GM example, they have to pay the price for them
putting others in danger just because they want to increase their profit.
Finally, I believe that we as shareholders should come together with other
people to make a change in the corporate power, we govern our selves, and those
in developing countries have the right to have fair labor standards and
continue to have their human rights.
Works
cited
Sethi, Prakah S.
"A SEARCH FOR STANDARDS TO MONITOR LABOR CONDITIONS WORLDWIDE."
(n.d.): n. pag. Web. 06 June 2012.
<http://http://library.foothill.edu:2048/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=20836359&site=eds-live>.
Bakan, Joel. The
Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. New York: Free,
2004. Print.
