SOC100 Lecture 4- labour markets and tech

Reasons for high suicide rates in apple sweatshops

1) No Community

➢72 work hours a week (12hrs per day, 6 days per week), 1 day off, no friends/family

connection. No sense of work community.

2) No Hope

➢ Jobs not temporary.

➢ Not building skills, no opportunity for advancement, never can afford to own/rent

their own place or even live with their family.

➢ There is no better tomorrow, no happily ever after, factory jobs are often the best

job options for these workers (hence the long lines to be hired).

3) Alienation

Alienation

estrangement from human’s essential nature. (base of every person is a desire to use their creative potential. I.e. to engage in work that allows us to think, be creative, and to take pride in the products of our labor)

Special economic zones

a designated area of a country that is in many ways declared to

be symbolically ‘outside’ of the country in that regular laws, customs, duties, taxes, regulations, tariffs or other policies do not apply within that specific zone.

International labour organizations

a branch of the United Nations that works to “set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all [people]

Maquiladoras

An assembly plant in Mexico, especially one along the border between the United States and Mexico, to which foreign materials and parts are shipped and from which the finished product is returned to the original market), which are 90% owned by US companies and employ half a million workers.

Globalization’s main changes to global inequality

1. Well documented and publicized violations of human rights and international labor standards (as well as domestic labor standards) around the world, which results in the immense suffering of manufacturing and other workers.

2. Growing power and wealth of Multi-National Corporations making them some of the most powerful organizations in the world today.

Power

the ability to achieve one’s goals when others are trying to prevent them from being realized.

GDP

measures the value of economic activity within a country. Strictly defined, GDP is the sum of the market values, or prices, of all final goods and services produced in an economy during a period of time.” (Brittanica, 2022). In other words, GDP refers to the market value of everything a country produces.

Globalization

the process of creating networks of connections among actors at intra- or multi-continental distances, mediatedthrough a variety of flows including people, information and ideas, capital, and goods. Globalization is a process that erodes national boundaries, integrates national economies, cultures, technologies and governance, and produces complex relations of mutual interdependence

Colonization

the action of appropriating a place or domain for one's own use.

Economic globalization

Trade in goods, trade in services, diversity of trade partnerships (i.e. # of countries traded with), foreign direct investment, international debt, international reserves, international income payments.

Social globalization

International Telephone calls (incoming and outgoing), international money transfers, international tourism, international students, immigration, emigration, international patents, internet bandwidth on international content, International trademarks, Ikeas stores, McDonalds stores.

Political globalization

Embassies, UN Peacekeeping Missions, International NGO’s present.

Bretton woods conference

Established fixed exchange rates pegged to the U.S. dollar

Uruguay rounds

Drastically cut average tariffs on industrial. , in order to help the global economy grow, there was a major shift in government approaches to international trade with free-market principles being adopted to a much greater extent.

Multi-national corporations

corporations that have their home base in one country and branches, affiliates, or operations in other countries.

Ways we rely on the economy

Jobs, pensions, maintaining home value

Free Market/Laissez-faire economics

an unregulated system of economic exchange, in which taxes, quality controls, quotas, tariffs, and other forms of centralized economic interventions by government either do not exist or are minimal

Supply and demand

the law which states that the more something is in demand and the lower it is in supply the more expensive it will be, and vice versa (i.e., the less something is in demand and more it is in supply, the cheaper it will be).

Progressive tax rates

rates where the more one makes in income, the more tax they pay

Proportional or Flat Tax Rates

system where everyone pays the same tax rate regardless of income

Free trade agreement

A pact between two or more countries that makes it easier to trade goods across national boundaries.

Non-tariff barriers

a way to restrict trade using trade barriers in a form other than a tariff. Examples include quotas, embargoes, sanctions, and levies

Quota

a government-imposed trade restriction that limits the number or monetary value of goods that a country can import or export during a particular period

Embargo

An official ban on trade or other commercial activity with a particular country, usually created as a result of unfavorable political or economic circumstances between nations. It is designed to isolate a country and create difficulties for its governing body, forcing it to act on the issue that led to the embargo. Usually takes the form of a complete banning of imports and/or exports from a country.

Sanction

laws passed to partially restrict or abolish trade with certain countries.

Levies

the legal means by which a taxing authority or a bank can seize property for the payment of a debt

Bourgeoisie

those that owned the means of production (like businesses and factories).

Proletariat

those that must sell their labor in order to sustain themselves.

Surplus value

the workers produced more value in terms of the products they made, then they were paid in wages.

Labour union

an organization formed by workers in a particular trade, industry, or company for the purpose of improving pay, benefits, and working conditions.

Race to the bottom

workers must offer their labour for cheaper, to work for longer hours, and/or to work under worse conditions in order to secure employment versus a corporation being located elsewhere.

Job exportation/offshoring

the relocation of jobs to other countries where products can be produced for cheaper.

Sweatshops

Work environments characterized by less than minimum wage pay, excessively long work hours, unsafe or inhumane working conditions, abusive treatment of workers by employers, and/or the lack of worker organizations aimed to negotiate better working conditions (i.e. unions).