Patrick Leigh-Pemberton: Cheap labour on the rumour mill

During a conversation with a friend over the weekend, I was made aware of a rumour. A good rumour; one that fit perfectly into my idea of certain St. Andrews students. Since it pandered to my prejudices, I barely gave it a moment’s thought, but settled into a small bit of righteous judgement. Shall I tell you the story ? Yes. Yes I shall.

Picture the scene: a management tutorial. No, no, wait. Calm down. Don’t scream like that, you’re only imagining it. No one has forced you to attend a management tutorial; it is just in your mind. Okay, breathe deep and we’ll carry on. One budding young ubercorp, tie pattern shimmering and suit a glimmering, runs his hand through his brylcreemed hair and says that he would make use of cheap unethical labour in a poorly regulated area of the developing world if he ran a manufacturing company. Cue gasps and disgust. A bunch of harem-pant wearing crusties flail him across the face with their dreadlocks. He is pilloried by his tutor and classmates, and moral indignation really sets in.

I don’t know if it was anything like this, but yes, someone at St. Andrews genuinely said this (rumour has it, so they probably didn’t). Everyone else was shocked. Quite rightly you say. And so do I. But what right do you or I have to make this judgement? What efforts have you or I made to prevent companies taking this option? What efforts have governments made to prevent companies taking this option?

While I realise that the emphasis should be on the industries concerned to not make use of indentured workers (or slaves, or people working in conditions that breach their human rights), I struggle to see why a heartless being such as a corporation would do this. When there are so many layers of management, and so many other people to lay the blame on, how difficult would it be for even a conscientious person to say: “it isn’t up to me, and it saves us money”?

Probably not that difficult. Especially when a lot of companies, such as H & M, willingly admit that it is impossible to be in full control of the situation (dependent as they are upon their suppliers). And it’s not like we’ve come to expect moral leadership from these institutions. So this young ubercorp was just making a practical decision to cut costs in the way that so many others have cut costs before him, and in the future will do the same. We have no right to judge him just because of this.

No right, that is, unless you have made every effort in your life to encourage these companies not to make these cost-cutting decisions. The simplest way to do this is not to buy from them. Do you really need 3 t-shirts for £6? And if you do, have you considered the amount of suffering that paying this little for clothing might be causing thousands of miles away? Honestly, does anyone need 3 t-shirts for £6?

We should change our ways, and not worry about wearing the same outfit twice. Why should it be an issue that a piece of clothing is seen twice in a week? If it is made well-enough, surely the pleasure of wearing it far outweighs the pressure of other, less sensible, people’s judgement. And yes, I realise that the student body of St Andrews isn’t representative of the majority of consumers, so why should you or I bother? The answer: if the University-educated (with their respective levels of affluence) are not going to make the effort, who on Earth will? If you don’t think that your actions can make a difference then I can only suggest, as the internet so often does, that you “wake up, sheeple”.