Somehow not feeling the wishlist anymore

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Tue Dec 20, 2011 5:50 pm

http://tformers.com/transformers-holida ... /news.html

Just in time for Xmas... the complaints about Hasbro's working conditions. And they are bad. I always knew it was bad, but they seem even worse than the samples in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF8jUDzz ... r_embedded

Bedbugs. Rats. Ugh. I feel sick when I look at the Masterpiece Grimlock on my desk.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 12:17 am

Update: The thread talking about this has been completely wiped from the IDW board.

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 4:49 pm

Scum. Hasbro, and, apparently, whomever is in charge of the IDW boards. How much rug sweeping can one do?

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:12 pm

I just sent the link and a synopsis of what's going on to Rich at Bleeding Cool... he's gone with stuff I've mentioned in the past... so hopefully we can get some eyeballs to look at this.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:32 pm

Good stuff.

It's fair to say that most Americans don't think about conditions in Chinese factories, or that if we do, it's not a day-to-day concern because the machine is so big. But seriously, they don't have to revolutionize the corrupt system over there just to get rid of ******* bedbugs, insane overtime, and ****** food.

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 5:46 pm

Don't, for your sanity, read the thread about this at TFW2005. "As long as I get my toys!" is the watchword over there.

How 'bout some human decency? Jesus.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 6:03 pm

Of course, we are native Pacific Northwesterners. Bunch of hippies! All with the hating on slave labor and stuff.

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 6:19 pm

Hey! We don't live in PORTLAND or anything!

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Wed Dec 21, 2011 6:29 pm

There- done and done. Lotsa people will see this now- desipte Hasbro or IDW's wishes.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Thu Dec 22, 2011 12:00 am

Gives a whole new meaning to "their war, our world."

So the question the wife has asked is... does she return the Xmas presents for me? Because, despite the awareness that it is part of a corrupt system, it's out of the system now... ****. I can't look at my TFs.

Update on Bleeding Cool: Hasbro has responded.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/21/ ... ers-china/

Now, Hasbro DOES require a code of conduct and standards from their factories, but like most companies using the Chinese labor, they also impose unrealistic demands and low wages that combine to create ridiculous amounts of overtime.

The blame lies either with the factory manager, who hid the horrible conditions, or Hasbro's inspectors, who overlooked stuff in order to keep production going.

DJ_Convoy · Post by **DJ_Convoy** » Thu Dec 22, 2011 12:02 am

Well... I don't know if that serves any pupose. If you feel super strongly about it... Toys for Tots is always an option...

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:03 pm

WOO! Go deregulation and free markets!

Go Hasbro, those excellent JOB CREATORS!

Imagine, if we abolish health and safety legislation, child labour laws, and workers' rights, how successful companies like this could be in the west!

And how much more revenue it would bring to the economies of tax havens!

.....
...........
.................

Optimus Prime's motto comes to mind.
And a corporation is *not* a sentient being.

Post by **Kaylee** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:30 pm

Sunyavadin +1

Hot Shot · Post by **Hot Shot** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 12:52 pm

Sunyavadin +2

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Mon Jan 09, 2012 4:26 pm

Power to the Sunya!

Scraplet · Post by **Scraplet** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 12:32 am

Sunyavadin wrote:WOO! Go deregulation and free markets!

Go Hasbro, those excellent JOB CREATORS!

An economic counter-argument, which I find reasonably persuasive, and is far more eloquent that I could hope to manage!

http://youtu.be/O2sW2wt3nLU

My less eloquent bit:
If you want to get away from being a starving subsistence farmer, then there are certain steps your economy is going to have to go through. First step is to convince those with capital to give it to you. China is pretty good at that at the moment, and the people, overall, are benefiting.

The developing world would benefit from a 'free market' if one existed. Instead, they have to deal with all the exploitative, protectionist, and post-colonial BS that we impose on them every time they try to get an industry. But its OK, as long as they make our s**t for us cheap isn't it?

Regulation is used to abuse as well as to protect. Do you think the EU and US agricultural policy would leave any room for 'fair trade' chocolate and coffee if those were important cash crops within our economies? Brazil had a thriving Ethanol industry until the US killed it at the stroke of a pen to subsidise their own biofuel programme/farmers.

The Chinese won't be making your Transformers in 20 years, because the economy will grow and the people expect more. Maybe then, Hasbro would like to move to central Africa. They could do with this investment. Relatively well-paid work in a sweat shop, or the threat of starvation and disease during the next famine. I know which I'd choose.

That's no to say that Hasbro shouldn't feel an obligation to improve their worker lot if it is possible to do so. That, however, is likely to reflect how much you pay for a TF. A fair trade TF will cost more. And if you don't buy it (because of the cost) everybody looses.

Just my two cents

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 12:53 am

Very good points all around, Scraplet, but a bit of a "two wrongs make a right," innit?

The point being: Hasbro can solve this very easily if they are willing to, essentially, spend some money. Step 1 is to get rid of rats and bedbugs, yes, but step 2 is not to make such high orders that the workers are forced to work tons of overtime. This is the essential conundrum: the jobs are ****** manufacturing jobs, but they don't have to be THIS ******, and we who benefit in the First World don't have to patronize establishments that encourage this kind of thing.

Scraplet · Post by **Scraplet** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:51 am

bumblemusprime wrote:Very good points all around, Scraplet, but a bit of a "two wrongs make a right," innit?

No, I don't think so. I wish them better conditions. I can wish this, and if I boycott their products, they may simply have no job. Back to the paddy field and subsistence. Or I can support their jobs by buying the products, and next year, perhaps, Mattel open a factory next door to compete. Lets say Mattel has better working conditions. If Hasbro want to keep their staff they better improve quickly.

UK example. I live in a pretty decent cottage built in 1890 to house coal miners and their families. This was luxury in 1890 for a manual worker in England. The job was horrible / dangerous, but the economic pressure meant the mine owner had to attract workers (either from other collieries or farmworkers), so improved the workers conditions. Other mines had to compete, and built similar facilities. Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire are scattered with such housing estates, built by the private sector for their workers. Eventually, the housing was build BEFORE the mine was sunk! This was reflected in the price of coal, so the consumer -via the market- was forced to pay for the economic improvement of people. These industries pulled people out of poverty and subsistence. Had the first mines been FORCED to build this social housing, then it simply may not have happened, because the cost removes the incentive of the capitalist, who wants to make money. The history is there; if you want an industrialised economy, these are the steps. Remove the capitalist (eg hasbro's) incentive, and you risk them removing the ladder.

Attempting to regulate on foreign working conditions will just become another barrier to the developing world - another reason they can't trade in 'our' market, while we protect our own.

I want a society that looks after people, and I want that for the world. However, look at the debt crisis. You have to actually make stuff and build up capital in order to help people. I've lost all faith in government and socialism to solve poverty. History shows only one way that's worked so far, and that was in the relatively free market of the industrial revolution.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 4:46 pm

Good points all around, but I'm skeptical of any application of capitalist economics to a socialist country. There can be but ONE union in China, by the government's ruling, and it's a stooge union. Hasbro is so monolithic that it's hard to imagine another company threatening them, and the secrecy around their manufacturing has made it so that reports like this are rare.

China operates on manufacturing, but they seem to have solved the whole problem of "the worker's revolt" with the very thing you have identified as the problem--socialism.

Post by **Kaylee** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 8:55 am

I sincerely don't recognise why it's such a polar choice:

Either they work like something out of a Dickensian novel
OR
They are back to the 7th century working in rice paddies

Why can't they work in a factory, just with slightly better conditions?

Just as Spencer suggested if Hasbro demand conditions improve then they will. Hasbro (like Apple, IBM, Panasonic et al) are such huge contracts that if they demanded all workers wear Goofy hats and sing the Mickey Mouseketeer theme tune over lunch it would surely happen.

Shanti418 · Post by **Shanti418** » Thu Feb 09, 2012 6:55 pm

This:

Scraplet wrote:No, I don't think so. I wish them better conditions. I can wish this, and if I boycott their products, they may simply have no job. Back to the paddy field and subsistence. Or I can support their jobs by buying the products, and next year, perhaps, Mattel open a factory next door to compete. Lets say Mattel has better working conditions. If Hasbro want to keep their staff they better improve quickly.

Combined with this:

Karl wrote:Just as Spencer suggested if Hasbro demand conditions improve then they will. Hasbro (like Apple, IBM, Panasonic et al) are such huge contracts that if they demanded all workers wear Goofy hats and sing the Mickey Mouseketeer theme tune over lunch it would surely happen.

Raises an important blind spot thus far in Scrap's well-conceived argument. As mentioned in the original TFW story, these toys are produced by Jet Fair factories, which simply has a contract with Hasbro. So there's no direct line between sales and production. The factory that Mattell opens next door will similarly be run by a third party, and if they want to compete for Hasbro's business, the onus will be on them to offer more production for less money and that's that. Hasbro can demand that conditions improve, but given that the biggest market for TF toys is probably parents who want the cheapest toy possible, this isn't going to happen. Furthermore, that would cause them create and enforce regulation above and beyond what the Chinese government deems necessary.

I'm with Scrap's overall analysis, though: the dispersal of free market capitalism globally, slowed by Western protectionist policies yet advanced by the economic policies of the World Bank/IMF in developing or 3rd world nations, will cause the cheap, exploitative jobs to circulate around the globe as the standard of living rises in different countries (although given the billions of Chinese, I think the focus there will continue for a while). So you stamp out exploitative work (through policy or a rising standard of living) in Mexico, you find your proletariots in Guatemala. Right around the time this finally sifts out over the entire world, we'll have insane amounts of productivity with very little labor, the labor that is still exploited will be existing in a world with much more intense international social connections, and we'll get a Marxist revolution of the underclass against the upper class, and then after that, we're all set for the beginning of a Starfleet-like utopia. Open and shut case I tell you! :P

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Sat Feb 18, 2012 2:21 pm

The environmental deregulation and subsequent waste in China, as a result of this manufacturing, might just kill us all first.

But yes, wise words, Shants Pants.