Separation of Humanity and Globalized Business

• To ensure fulfillment of its Charter and Declaration of Human Rights the United Nations should commission the required inspection of labor practices in industry throughout all businesses and markets of member states.

• To remedy an epidemic of free markets and contribute peace and the power of democracy to the world by consumer awareness of human rights compliance through required product labeling.

• The UN should form a Labor Inspection Board, representing exploited emerging nations, offering inspection to the entire UN through independent, individual, non-profit companies drawn together in a trust relationship.

• The board should manage the participation and transparency of all companies, promoting their generation independent of any corporation. It should provide an international hotline for the report of abuses; manage a secure controlled access database for validation of the required certificate authority, and to make use of all associated data for research, reports, and public good.

Human rights are violated every day in today’s global industry. It is a widespread dilemma that people in need are taken advantage of for labor, denied their fundamental rights, put in dangerous working conditions, for hours too long, and wages too little to care for their young. Even millions of children suffer these conditions and an existence unworthy of human dignity. The benefit of potentially higher wages for sweatshop employees, of lower priced goods for consumers, and of lowest possible costs to multi-national corporations; are all together illegitimate when the cost is the peace and dignity of families. Let’s require corporations, consumers, and all member states and market places of the UN to offer inspection of human labor practices.

In emerging nations where such treatment goes unchecked corporations tap into injustice as a natural resource.  Doing business with guilty suppliers bears a direct weight of responsibility for the exploitation of those in desperation.  The fact that workers agree to poor conditions when facing poverty does not indicate a functioning free market agreement has occurred.  Exploitative practices often stem from the fact that one or more of the boundary conditions for a free market have not held, or are in some way circumvented.  Without free market conditions the ethical premise upon which pro-sweatshop arguments rest are false.

Where a comprehensive legal system is established, corporations positioned for domestic business would treat contractors as independent without presenting a gross problem.  Those conducting global business are seldom held liable for the systems of mistreatment they enable and support.  Human treatment shapes society and we shape people’s lives by the gravity of foreign investment in a relative vacuum.  The presence of a corporation in emerging nations should be a source of human progress not decline.  Multinational corporations are capable of voluntarily respecting the basic rights of workers while remaining economically competitive.

Where we would never allow such abuse against ourselves, families, or countrymen it is our obligation to extend our hearts and Constitution to the world.  Despite justification by various arguments there are fundamental objections to certain labor practices which do not depend on cost-benefit calculations. Concern for human dignity simply rules some practices out.  We have to protect our neighbors in order to look out for ourselves.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) declares a common standard of achievement for every nation, organization, and individual: who must keep human rights constantly in mind, and strive by teaching and education to promote their respect, and by progressive measures, national and international, secure their universal and effective observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Humanities’ inherent rights, often shrugged off as a supplier’s responsibility, should be ensured at the expense of corporations or consumers paying for the certification of labor practices.  There may not be any one solution which is best, but to do nothing is a far worse approach.  To have competitive companies undergo inspection at their own expense is a reasonable approach to a very serious problem.

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