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Switch to: References
Citations of:
Sweatshops, exploitation, and moral responsibility
Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (4):605–619 (2007)
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The article presents a novel normative model of shared responsibility for remedying unjust labor conditions and protecting workers’ rights in global supply chains. While existing literature on labor governance in the globalized economy tends to focus on empirical and conceptual investigations, the article contributes to the emerging scholarship by proposing moral justifications for labor governance schemes that go beyond voluntary private regulations and include public enforcement mechanisms. Drawing on normative theories of justice and on empirical-legal research, our Labor Model of (...) |
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In a recent article in this journal, David Faraci argues that the value of fairness can plausibly be appealed to in order to vindicate the view that consensual, mutually beneficial employment relationships can be wrongfully exploitative, even if employers have no obligation to hire or otherwise benefit those who are badly off enough to be vulnerable to wage exploitation. In this commentary, I argue that several values provide potentially strong grounds for thinking that it is at least sometimes better, morally (...) |
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It is widely thought that firms that employ workers in “sweatshop” conditions wrongfully exploit those workers. This claim has been challenged by those who argue that because companies are not obligated to hire their workers in the first place, employing them cannot be wrong so long as they voluntarily accept their jobs and genuinely benefit from them. In this article, I argue that we can maintain that at least many sweatshop employees are wrongfully exploited, while accepting the plausible claim at (...) |
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In On Trade Justice, Risse and Wollner defend an account of trade justice on which the central requirement, applying to both states and firms, is a requirement of non-exploitation. On their view, trade exploitation consists in ‘power-induced failure of reciprocity’, which generates an unfair distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with trade relationships. In this paper, I argue that while there are many appealing features of Risse and Wollner’s account, their discussion does not articulate and develop the unified picture (...) |
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Research Articles Matt Zwolinski, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article. |
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Economic theory teaches that it is in every country’s interest to trade. Trade is a voluntary activity among consenting parties. On this view, considerations of justice have little bearing on trade, and political philosophers concerned with global justice should stay largely silent on trade. According to a very different view that has recently gained prominence, international trade can only occur before the background of an international market reliance practice shaped by states. Trade is a shared activity among states, and all (...) |
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Is it morally permissible for financially privileged tourists to visit places for the purpose of experiencing where poor people live, work, and play? Tourism associated with this question is commonly referred to as ?poverty tourism?. While some poverty tourism is plausibly ethical, other practices will be more controversial. The purpose of this essay is to address mutually beneficial cases of poverty tourism and advance the following positions. First, even mutually beneficial transactions between tourists and residents in poverty tourism always run (...) |
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This paper reviews the recent literature on exploitation. It distinguishes between three main species of exploitation theory: teleology-based accounts, respect-based accounts, and freedom-based accounts. It then addresses the implications of each. |
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Whether an action is morally right depends upon the alternative acts available to the agent. Actualists hold that what an agent would actually do determines her moral obligations. Possibilists hold that what an agent could possibly do determines her moral obligations. Both views face compelling criticisms. Despite the fact that actualist and possibilist assumptions are at the heart of seminal arguments in business ethics, there has been no explicit discussion of actualism and possibilism in the business ethics literature. This paper (...) |
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In this review, I survey theoretical accounts of exploitation in business, chiefly through the example of low wage or sweatshop labor. This labor is associated with wages that fall below a living wage standard and include long working hours. Labor of this kind is often described as self-evidently exploitative and immoral (Van Natta 1995). But for those who defend sweatshop labor as the first rung on a ladder toward greater economic development, the charge that sweatshop labor is self-evidently exploitative fails (...) |
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During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop behavior, and to point (...) |
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This article addresses the problem of filling in a missing component of David Miller's non-cosmopolitan theory of global justice, as elaborated in his recent National responsibility and global justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Miller originally included non-exploitation as one of the norms of global justice, but he does not provide a theory of exploitation in his recent book. This article is a preliminary attempt to suggest how Miller might fill in this gap. This article identifies the problems Miller faces (...) |
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Some libertarians argue that informed consent alone makes transactions in the labour market morally justified. In contrast, some of their critics claim that such an act of consent is no guarantee against coercion. To know whether agreements are voluntary, we need to assess the quality of the offers or the prevailing background conditions. ISCT theorists argue that it is imperative to take social norms into account when evaluating the labour market. We present a novel framework for moral assessment in the (...) |
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Mutually beneficial exchanges in markets can be exploitative because one party takes advantage of an underlying injustice. For instance, employers of sweatshop workers are often accused of exploiting the desperate conditions of their employees, although the latter accept the terms of their employment voluntarily. A weakness of this account of exploitation is its tendency for over-inclusiveness. Certainly, given the prevalence of global and domestic socioeconomic inequalities, not all exchanges that take place against background injustices should be considered exploitative. This paper (...) |
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This article examines the “Choice Argument” for sweatshops, i.e., the claim that it is morally wrong or impermissible for third parties to interfere with the choice of sweatshop workers to work in sweatshops. The Choice Argument seeks, in other words, to shift the burden of proof onto those who wish to regulate sweatshop labor. It does so by forcing critics of sweatshops to specify the conditions under which it is morally permissible to interfere with sweatshop workers’ choice. My aim in (...) |
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Most philosophical examinations of the concept of exploitation center on analyzing two-party interactions between individuals. Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner introduce an account of exploitation that seeks to transcend this ‘individualist paradigm’ in three ways: Through exploitation of and by agential groups, of or by non-agential groups and by social structures. In this paper, I argue that while the concepts of non-individual and structural exploitation do offer each their way of transcending or revising the individualist paradigm, the most ambitious and (...) |
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Many believe that employment can be wrongfully exploitative, even if it is consensual and mutually beneficial. At the same time, it may seem third parties should not do anything to preclude or eliminate such arrangements, given these same considerations of consent and benefit. I argue that there are perfectly sensible, intuitive ethical positions that vindicate this ‘Reasonable View’. The view requires such defense because the literature often suggests that there is no theoretical space for it. I respond to arguments for (...) |
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