Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [127]
Maitland argues that workers voluntarily accept these working conditions. But surely this is because they are desperate and don’t have better alternatives. Aristotle distinguishes between the purely voluntary action and the mixed action:
Something of the sort happens also with regard to the throwing of goods overboard in a storm; for in the abstract no one throws goods away voluntarily, but on condition of its securing the safety of himself and his crew any sensible man does so. Such actions, then, are mixed, but are more like voluntary actions; for they are worthy of choice at the time when they are done, and the end of an action is relative to the occasion. . . . Such actions, therefore, are voluntary, but in the abstract perhaps involuntary; for no one would choose any such act in itself.18
Aristotle makes clear that some actions are done voluntarily in the sense that one selects the course of action out of the available alternatives but that none of the alternatives are genuinely worthy of choice. Isn’t Maitland banking on confusing these two concepts? After all, if a tyrant threatened to kill my family if I did not perform some action, I would “voluntarily” opt to perform the action. But we would call this a situation of coercion (as would Aristotle), not freedom. In the present case, a company decides to outsource labor to a foreign factory, and the workers voluntarily choose to work there. But they’re not being given a better choice! True, this isn’t coercion in the sense we just saw, since the tyrant causes the limited alternatives to be such as they are. In the case of sweatshops, some given company is not usually responsible for the poverty and corruption in some other country (at least directly), but they are often seeking workers in a desperate climate. Taking advantage of this is not some moral act of social responsibility. Imagine if Poor Sneelock had no other choice but to work for McGurk or let his ailing family slowly starve to death. Could we honestly say he voluntarily wrestled that Grizzly-Ghastly?
Maitland’s caution about the unintended consequences of humanitarian intervention should give us pause. But using the difficulty of addressing a situation as a justification for the practice is morally suspect. If a company contracts work out to a foreign factory, that company takes on the responsibility to ensure a sustainable living wage and decent working conditions for those workers. Otherwise, the company has decided to become involved in such a way as to take advantage of the disadvantage of others. Outsourcing labor while maintaining a sustainable living wage will quite often still be cost cutting for the company, but it won’t place profit maximization above treating its employees abroad with respect and dignity.
While it would be a mistake to naïvely believe that pointing out moral responsibilities is sufficient to solve the situation, justifying inaction is a recipe for the sometimes detestable status quo. While the solutions are surely complex and less than ideal, the idea that it is justifiable to place workers under harsh conditions for the sake of profit and cheaper prices for the consumer should be scrutinized. We should ask ourselves if we are not being something like McGurk, letting our vision of a thriving business blind us to the condition of the laborers whose work realizes the vision and secures our standard of living.
So far we have briefly examined the ideas that a company ought to respect its consumers and employees. Both are important stakeholders in a company. While the list of potential stakeholders is quite long, we have time to extend our consideration out just a bit to include one more, the environment within which we all must work and live.
The Sustainable Balance between the
Green of a Dollar and