It would be a nightmare.

Even if the owner/family/directors felt confident enough to issue shares to employees (and some do) can you imagine the diversity of opinion at the next board meeting, and would there be a table big enough ?

And from the other end of the spectrum, if there is no financial need to do so at the moment why would an owner/director want to open up the books for browsing for any old Joe Bloggs on the shopfloor with ten shares to have a pick through and then spend the next 12 months griping about the MD's take home pay ?

I went to school with him. Did you too?

IIRC the employees have a "staff council" which is used to filter suggestions up to a Board of Directors - who are then responsible for having the final say on decisions that impact the business.

The only recourse staff have as "shareholders" is through an AGM, as they would in any other business.

But it works rather well, don't you think, Andy? And all the staff get a share in the annual 'dividend'.

But does it work well purely because of is "partners" policy or because it has been a well-managed business with a unique brand that appeals to a particular market? I think the latter on balance.

If I wanted to show someone an example of a loaded argument this would be a great candidate. You say that your opinion could ONLY be invalidated if it were determined that a [isuccessful business[/i in which seemingly contented employees have a say in its [isuccessful running[/i is so [uONLY[/u because the employees have a say as opposed to one or more of infinite other possibilities (products, service, stupid luck etc.)

You set impossible demands and then congratulate yourself because no one can meet them.

Trust me. You won't melt like ice cream under a hot sun if you can bring yourself to admit the business is successful at least in some teensy weensy part because of the system.

What a load of tosh!

The point I was making was that because Jonelle is organised in a way that suits her mindset she holds it out as a model and thus tries to imply its successful because of its staffing arrangements. Whilst that will play a part, is it really likely to be the full story? In other words, I was rather more politely than you making essentially the same point.

WHERE did mintball claim it is the only reason?

Staff inclusion is not the sole reason for JLP's success but it cannot be ignored as a significant contributory factor. They regularly score highly in polls of: customer satisfaction, supplier satisfaction and staff satisfaction, when compared to their publicly-quoted competition.

Strange too that heavily unionised industries in Germany & France also perform well, could the involvement of worker representation at board level also have something to do with that success?

An old (and some may say tired and outdated) motto is:

Tell me and I may hear
Show me and I may see
Involve me and I WILL understand

I just don't see the big mystery here. I mean, how do you rationalise purchasing goods you suspect were derived from the exploitation of Third World labour on exploitation wages, or - closer to home - contributing to the demise of solid local/domestic businesses (which may serve a number of valuable purposes) by choosing cheaper foreign suppliers (which may not) - even though the difference in price is easily within your budget to cover etc?

She didn't. just like I explicitly did not say otherwise. Didn't stop you going off on one though, did it!?

I think Germans score well, like John Lewis (apart from their flooring / carpeting section) score well because they do the job properly. They charge relatively highly so can afford to pay suppliers a little extra. To operate in this fashion you need to know your particular market well and cater for it. Not all businesses can fulfil the same niches. Some how to go lower end (where most "consumers" are). These sort of businesses survive largely on price and probably can't afford the knobs and whistles of extra costs without their customers suffering.

The last time I bought new clothing, apart from socks & underwear, was a Crombie suit from Army & Navy Stores, nearly eight years ago. My wardrobe is now supplied through various charity shops and car boot sales and consists of top-end European (mainly British), manufactured suits, shirts and shoes. Although it's difficult to determine the provenance on the raw cotton used for the shirts, I'm more confident that the end product has a far greater ethical content than anything on the rack in most British supermarkets or fashion chains. I can't imagine sweat-shop conditions persisting in a Swiss cotton mill or Swedish factory (where my Eton shirts come from), or a Northampton shoe & boot maker, or a Savile Row tailor.

Proper little Dandy aren't we!

Yes and it is even more satisfying knowing I paid £3 for a £120 shirt and even better when I have a number of £3k+ suits & coats that cost around £10 each

Actually, no. Per WikiP's 'definition' you may be obsessed with appearance and your leisure activities, but "refined language", I think not!

I think it far more likely that JLP's competition are reliant on institutional shareholders, who tend not to take anything like a long-term view and are only interested in quick, high returns. So the businesses have to look to source the cheapest raw materials and labour available. Most supermarket prices, apart from supplier-funded BOGOFs, can be matched or beaten in any high street, usually with locally sourced provisions.

[url=http://jobcentreplus.jobhits.co.uk/TESCO-NIGHT-SHIFT-id-BSD-27442Here's the difference between Tesco & JLP[/url

Night shift: Job Seeker's Allowance + expenses?

HTF can JobCentrePlus be advertising slave labour like this?

I don't. If I had specific reason to suspect this in a specific case then I wouldn't. OTOH such is the sheer weight of numbers of goods which are now manufactured abroad, that you could spend your waking day researching the specific origin and labour conditions of the source of every product you may be interested in, still only get through a small percentage, and still be little the wiser since companies that pay "exploitation wages" wouldn't tend to publicise this. You'd be relying - in such cases as there seemed to be information - often on information of debatable origin and so with a very low confidence in its accuracy.

You'd also be relying on some random person's definition of "exploitation" and you'd be assuming rather rashly that by not buying product X, on the basis of a [isuspicion[/i that it [imight[/i be produced by workers who, if I looked into it and made a specific assessment, might be paid less than I may think they should be, I could somehow make a positive difference, as opposed to making one small step to making these workers' lives worse (on the basis that I suspect if sales go down, exploitative producers are more likely to force their workers to take even lower wages, so they can drop the price even further, and regenerate demand).

And I'd be assuming that working in an exploited job was not preferrable, from the perspective of the worker who may be exploited in your terms, to no job at all, often in places where that means starvation rather than any dole.

So no, if I had convincing reason to think particular goods were the product of gross exploitation such as child labour, I personally wouldn't buy. But on levels below blatant and gross exploitation which is well known and information can be relied upon, I'm not sure that I can set myself up as a world's moral authority on the degree to which producers may or may not exploit their workforce.


Closer to home I tend to choose wherever possible to buy locally produced goods, and then British produced goods, on nothing more than the vague notion that locally produced goods benefit the local community i.e. where I live (so clearly discriminatory but hey) and tend to have a lower carbon footprint; and that by buying British it's a tiny step in improving the economy of the country in which I happen to live (as there are enough people out of work here already). But by doing so, aren't I restricting the demand for imported goods, and thus putting the squeeze on foreign workers and putting at risk such jobs as they have?

In general, is it better for 10,000 UK consumers to buy Prodkt X from Country Y, even though it's made by the villagers of village Z working for £1 a day; or if we all decline to buy Prodkt X, thus directly putting everyone in village Z out of work, have we done good, or bad?

Which circuitous route takes me back to the point I was trying to make. If village Z was the place in Indonesia where that binman worked, and if my posh house was on his round, then (whatever the residents association going rate was) I personally would slip the man whatever was the decent going rate for the work he did for me. I would try to convince the association, and other residents, to do the same. Hard situation but ATEOTD only his government can ultimately put the situation of him and others like him right, and I'd rather that situation than him being out of any job at all. So the difference being that I would KNOW (not vaguely suspect) that he was being exploited, and wouldn't be prepared to exploit him myself.

But should I refuse to ever buy anything made in Indonesia, now that I know how dreadfully they let their binmen, and people who live in rubbish tips, be exploited? Perhaps the government should impose an "Exploitation Kitemark" - but who would set the bar and who would judge?

Would you agree that in general terms the millions of pounds-worth of money spent in trade with, in particular, third world countries, is a good thing rather than a bad thing for their populations? I'd love to be able to drill down and verify and insist that each and every retailer or manufacturer within those countries who gets a slice pays their workers fairly and does not exploit them but I recognise that personally I cannot actually do this.


I hesitate to say this, and its all very relative; compared with binmen in Indonesia we're all millionaires, but the fact is that times over here are by our standards pretty firkin hard and I'd guess the huge majority of budgets are pretty firkin tight.

I was going to say you can't blame me for failing to realise your network connection between words and their meaning has been severed.

But then I remembered it's you we're talking about.

You don't need to spend half your life investigating the origin of products. There are a variety of well-researched web sites (links to which I can provide if you need them) that go into exhaustive detail about the working conditions under various corporations. Many send undercover investigators and/or publish video footage (often smuggled out at great risk).

Given the facts that much of the global clothing industry has been carved up among a small group of multi-nationals and people tend to stay loyal to a select group of retailers it's possible to answer the various moral questions posed by one's wardrobe reasonably quickly. But even if it did take a lot of time - wouldn't it be worth it? I mean, how much of your time do you think this extremely serious question is worth? An hour? A day? A week?

Take Nike for instance - a clothing manufacturer that many people buy from. There's enough easily accessible evidence to prove its workers are exploited to the point of starvation in many countries. If THAT doesn't put you off buying I don't know what will.

I'm not taking a pop at you specifically, btw. This stands for everyone - including me. I know I don't pay enough attention but at least now I do try.



It's easy to view some problem outside of its context and think you would make a different choice. I mean, I'm convinced I could never have operated a gas chamber at Auschwitz. But I wasn't born into Hitler's Germany where people were very easily twisted by ideology.

And very laudable work, but just for instance I've seen TV programmes and read about such exposes, often ending with a footnote that "Yes, we put our hands up, that was bad, but now we/they have been found out, we have taken/are taking steps to do A/B/C". So how would I know if the objection remained valid? If an offending supplier had indeed taken steps to improve the position, wouldn't I be being unfair in nonetheless denying them (and thus their workers) my business?


It wouldn't be worth it to me, no. I wouldn't have the amount of time it would take, because it would be (at least) a full time job in itself. Keeping myself reasonably well informed is I think fair do's. On which point...


... I was well informed enough to know that, and wouldn't buy their stuff, but then wouldn't have paid their prices for a pair of bleedin pumps in the first place




I'd say similar about myself.


I'm convinced I, or any of us, would have done the most evil of jobs, though. the more I have learned about it, the more I understand the power of brainwashing, and probably using the right techniques you could get most people to do most things.

Secondly, brainwashing aside, taking the population of the planet as a whole, I am certain you'd find literally millions who would be ready and willing to do (indeed already do) the most unspeakable things to other humans, if they fit a particular category of people that they class as undesirable or have some other problem with. I would love to believe that I personally could never do those sort of things, but now find that frankly naive; the truth is that had I been born and raised in certain different circumstances, I very probably would, and I would reckon the same applies to us all.

Agreed. But additionally, I also suspect that there'd be countless people who would simply keep their heads below the parapet and just try to 'get through it'.

C'mon, is this a [iserious[/i dilemma? I mean, there's more evidence than you could drive through showing that faced with the choice of making (potentially expensive) changes to working conditions or spinning, lying, running a smear campaign against undercover investigators etc. corporations will choose the latter. It's the cheapest, easiest option. And they are very good at it.

The important question here is - [iwho should shoulder the burden of proof when substantiated, well-documented claims of exploitation are made - the employees or the corporation?[/i

I argue the latter. Does this mean I will always be right? Of course not. But if I'm wrong in denying patronage all that suffers is a fraction of a fraction of that corporation's bottom line. But if I choose to carry on buying because the question of serious exploitation hasn't been proved to scientific standards and [iI'm wrong [/iI could well play a role in someone's mistreatment or even death.



I really don't see why it should be a full-time job. Most people tend to buy the bulk of goods from well-established corporations and there is a wealth of easily accessible evidence for and against each of them - if you choose to look.

Of course, it's simply impossible to know everything. But this shouldn't stop us from trying at all.



Not buying from a ruthless corporation such as Nike when there are numerous alternative manufacturers is, I think, a relatively easy decision. But questions of individual morality become far more complex - often revealing the ugly ideological compromises one is willing to make - when you start talking about essential items from highly-uncompetitive markets such as oil or pharmaceuticals.

So, take BP for instance. Here is a corporation that is in dirty right up to its neck. Forget about polluting vast tracts of America's coastline because it failed to provide adequate safety precautions (btw, this [url=http://www.gregpalast.com/bps-secret-deepwater-blowout/wasn't the first blowout a BP rig experienced[/url for precisely the same reasons). As heinous BP deeds go this wouldn't even make the top ten. Ditto Royal Dutch Shell whose war against Ken Saro Wiwa's Ogoni tribe in Nigeria (check out the thousands of affidavits - some from people connected to Shell - claiming it is complicit in mass murder) continues to rage. I couldn't even begin to list the evidence against Monsanto (the developers of Agent Orange, a substance it has never been held accountable for which is still killing people today).

All of the above provide essential goods that are very, very difficult to live without (petrol, plastics, energy, medicines, fertilisers, pesticides etc.) if we want to maintain our standard of living. There is no doubt they are derived by morally indefensible means and yet we turn a blind eye and buy anyway whilst, paradoxically, congratulating ourselves for not buying, say, Nike shoes because their activities are morally indefensible.

[url=http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/news/apple-calls-in-the-inspectors-after-admitting-human-rights-problem-6917188.html?origin=internalSearchHands up those who use an iPhone[/url