Every management team knows the pain of having to work around labour standards that they feel are archaic; after all, why codify that the employees may only work so many hours?  The supervisors want to go home, too.  Or why waste government time to ensure that every safety vest in a factory is the proper yellow?  The employees aren’t trying to get themselves killed, and it’s bad for management, as well.

Image courtesy of Flickr user extranoise.

The reason is because the only way we’ve become an advanced society is by instituting standards along the way, and organised labour was—and still can be—a driving force for those standards.  The reason we don’t have human hands turn up in hamburger meat.  The reason that 12- and 14-hour shifts are no longer the norm at factories.  The reason that children aren’t lining up at age 12 to begin collecting a day’s wage.  Every one of these was brought about by standards pushed for by organised labour. 

Think it can’t happen—especially in societies that have advanced into the modern era?

Take a look at this from the MOD:

"Children's rights campaigners trying to rescue enslaved Nepalese children from a circus in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh were attacked last week by circus employees with guns, machetes and iron rods inside the tent of the Great Roman Circus. The Indian activists, accompanied by Nepalese activists and the parents of some of the enslaved children, were chased away by circus managers and hired thugs who warned them not to return to the circus again."

Corporations are, of course, in the business of making money—but it’s important to remember when confronted by safety and health standards, even the ones that feel frivolous, that those are the yardsticks by which good and bad corporate citizens are measured.  Act accordingly. 

By Pinke.biz writer Ben Ray. Check out his blog at What's Required.

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