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| Authored by: David Mandelzys on Tuesday, April 05 2005 @ 05:40 PM CDT |
Hi Yaacov,
"Competition with Filipinos may hurt our employment rate, but that doesn't make it ethical to deny them the chance for gainful employment."
I did see the :P sign, and I also don't think that the EWB project raises concerns that touch this issue,
but, I don't think that the ethics behind this issue are quite as clear as Ricardian theory would have you believe.
I completely agree with you that forcing developing economies to liberalize in all the sectors which they cannot compete, while protecting ourselves in sectors where they can is unethical. But there is more to it then that.
Free trade without free movement of labour gives multinational for profit orginizations an unfair advantage over workers. This can be true in low skill sweatshop style labour as well as more highly skilled labour such as computer programming. In fact it probably holds true as long as no major investment is needed in stationary capital (although I guess an argument can be made that investment in training would also hold a company down).
The example Cynic raised makes this more clear, she/he talked about multinationals benefiting by giving Filipinos INDIAN jobs, not Canadian jobs (although it would be true if Filipino's were taking Canadian jobs as well).
Indian programmers (and many other Indians) are highly skilled, hardworking and way underpaid.
neo-liberal theories of development say that their employment standards should rise over time. However, if there is an abundance of skilled programmers around the world and free movement for multinationals but not for labour this will not happen. Under free trade agreements multinationals working in mobile industries have a choice of where to set up shop and can play locations off each other in order to get concessions (ie limited employee rights, no unions, low taxes etc.)
In this way what ends up happening is that profits get maximized at the expense of labour rights and other benefits to the country that accepts the jobs (beyond maybe subsistance wages for the companies employees while they're willing to cooperate).
Canada is not immune (depending on how mobile an industry is), and the hard fought labour rights that Canadian workers have earned as well as our governments tax base could be eroded over time (are being eroded).
This is not to the benefit of Filipinos or other people living in developing states but at the expense of all those reliant or competing for these jobs regardless of their country of origin.
Nationalist/protectionist/racist arguments against current free trade seem to be rising in prominence as skilled jobs come under attack, and I agree that the ethics behind many of these arguments are way off( Lou Dobb's show is a good example) , but that doesn't mean that the free trade being argued against is ethical itself.
Internationally planned trade that takes into account development issues, as well as labour rights, corporate tax rates etc, or REAL free trade including free movement of labour could be a good thing (Real free trade might be a little radical). But moving jobs from one country to another just to degrade labour rights as Cynic seemed to be critisicing (with a :P), probably isn't beneficial or ethical (Cynic's statement didn't seem to fall along the nationalist/protections/racist lines, unless maybe he's an Indian ultra-nationalist).
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