no, the first post is the usual 5 minute reaction to something that happened. next week it'll be something else. lets not pretend we give a toss, otherwise we wouldn't fill our cars with fuel from those lovely places in the middle east or use mobile phones with that ethically mined coltan.
and then there's apple, [urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jan/25/apple-child-labour-supply[/url, "demonising" children to build pretty computers, but hey, it's their "industry standard" and everyone uses 'em.


absolutely. because no matter how crap the conditions seem to us they're better than what they were doing before, which was mainly starving. in time, things will improve.

But is it exploiting the workforce if the national minimum wage at the time was being applied?

The rice is for both domestic and export - Thailand is pretty much the largest rice exporter in the world.

Western business have some degree of blame, but the fact remains that there is a difference between a living wage and a nationally adopted minimum wage: the same is true in the UK

Paying the national minimum wage means you are 1p the right side of illegality. It has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of exploitation.

I found a book in a charity shop yesterday a large-format paperback that cost me more than the 1968 cover price of 12 shillings and 6 pence (I paid 69p). It's the history of the TUC from 1868 to 1968 and the first part is available to read online [url=http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/tuc-2878-f0.cfmHERE[/url.

I suggest people should read it, British working conditions 150 years ago are very similar to those we pay to make our throwaway items

An increase in the labour cost to produce a t-shirt in Bangladesh has absolutely zero effect on the fixed and variable costs of a UK (or other Western developed nation) retailer.

The TUC has determined that a doubling of the rate paid to Bangladeshi garment workers would add all of 2p to the cost of a t-shirt [url=http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-22201-f0.cfm?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitterLINK[/url. Of course you could argue that the TUC are taking a simplistic view and are not factoring in the applied percentage profit margins at each stage of production, distribution and sale. But I would counter that with: other than "that's the way it's always worked", why should that be the case? There is simply no sensible reason, other than sheer greed, why those workers wages cannot be doubled.