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Ray Anne's avatar

You. Are. So. Smart. This article was illuminating. And totally made sense

Maybe if I keep reading, I'll be smarter too.

Thanks.

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Democracy Awareness Project's avatar

I had a job launching new products to our local factory. We couldn’t sell our products to China because of national security issues. One day our CEO asks us to help move the manufacturing to Malaysia.

Most of our best engineers started their careers on the factory line and advanced to design positions. We all thought it was a terribly short sighted decision because where would we develop the next generation of engineers.

Our CEO said we needed to move manufacturing offshore to stay competitive. I reminded him that our main competitor in Germany didn’t offshore their products and their employees had a high standard of living so maybe we didn’t have need to offshore after all.

He told us that the shareholders expected higher returns and we had to move the factory.

I mentioned that our German competitor had workers on the board of directors and were ok sacrificing some profits for the good of the community. I asked if I could organize a union on our electronic bulletin board to discuss the issue with coworkers. Since they allowed bowling leagues and other employee groups to use the bulletin board, this seemed like a reasonable request. As reasonable as asking employees to move their factory overseas.

You can guess the rest of the story. But the moral is that companies will violate labor laws if it is profitable.

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