Newspaper Article Review: Workers making clothes for Australian fashion firms can’t make ends meet: study
The article is mainly about how workers in Vietnam and Bangladesh-based Australian fashion companies have continued to exploit the labor for to an extent that 90% of workers in the firms are unable to meet their daily needs and medication. According to the article, the individuals who are affected by the labor exploitation practices of the Australian Fashion farms mainly include poor Bangladeshi and Vietnamese women working in factories. Thus, regardless of working shifts that run to nearly over 12 hours a day, the workers are only paid $0.39 AUD per hour and are not offered any kind of insurance cover or pension. Moreover, one of the reasons given for such exploitations and failure by the Australian firms to offer a living wage to the workers regards the view that, in spite of the commitments made by the major players in the industry towards payment of living wages, the progress aimed at enhancing conditions within Australia’s supply chain has been very slow.
In relating the article to Marxism, it can be observed that Karl Marx maintained that, in case the richer minority owned the factories, farmland and the production means required by the poor majority to utilize so as to earn a living, then the wealthy are prone to increase their wealth through payment of poverty-level wages to the majority employees working for them. Such labor exploitations are prone to affect a number of societies. Thus, according to the article, the richer Australians are owners of the production factories that are located in Vietnam and Australia, and have used their positions as owners of the production means to exploit the poor Bangladeshi and Vietnamese laborers. To attain their objective of increasing their wealth, the Australian fashion firms tend to pay low wages ($0.39 AUD) to the workers even as they earn immense profits from products produced by the workers. This, therefore, is an indication of how labor exploitation occurs in relation to Marx observation on labor exploitation.
Though a number of economists will perceive government interference as negative to the economy and the investments made by the Australian firms, in the case of Australian Fashion Firms operating in Bangladesh and Vietnam, there is a need for government intervention. Thus, given the low wages paid by the firms to the workers, they (employees) are unable to meet all their basic needs including food and healthcare, this, in turn, tends to have a negative effect on the government as they have to make use of the limited resources to cater for the needs of such workers. Moreover, the payment of lower wages to the workers also imply that the government will get less amount of taxes as the workers spending power is diminished. In this case, the most appropriate intervention would be setting of the standard wage rates for factory workers so as to prevent the ongoing exploitation. Still, to ensure that the exploitations do not occur, there is a need for the Bangladeshi and Vietnamese governments to make sure that laws are enacted to make sure that the foreign firms do not exploit local labor through payment of poverty level wages. Further, the government should also ensure that women working in the Australian Fashion firms are accorded better working conditions, better remuneration and other benefits. In this regard, such interventions will protect the Vietnamese and Bangladeshi workers from further exploitation by foreign companies.