“No one is making them stop”: Why corporations outsource catastrophe — and workers pay the price
Labor historian Erik Loomis illuminates the warped economic order that exploits the global poor
SCOTT ERIC KAUFMAN
In his new book, “Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe,” University of Rhode Island history professor Erik Loomis addresses the limitations of understanding labor and environmental policy through a nationalistic perspective in a world in which a large majority of corporate entities embrace outsourcing as their operative economic philosophy. Salon sat down with him to discuss whether a return to horrifying excesses of the Industrial Revolution and Gilded Age is inevitable, or whether it might still be possible to reverse course and not live in a world in which unregulated sweatshops and environmental indifference are accepted as the cost of doing business.
Your book starts with the Triangle Fire of 1911 and ends with the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh in 2013? How do you see those two events being connected?
In 1911, 146 apparel workers died at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City when their building caught on fire. They jumped to their deaths in front of the very people who purchased the clothing they made. The outrage of seeing these people die lead to consumer and political activism to ensure this did not happen again. Better fire safety, building safety, and workplace safety standards came out of this activism. And during the twentieth century Americans fought and demanded for change. We got the minimum wage, the 8-hour day, workers’ compensation, Social Security, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and a whole lot more.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the corporate response eventually became to move production overseas, first to Mexico, then to east Asia, and today all across Asia and Central America. They did so not only for cheap wages, but to avoid workplace safety regulations and environmental regulations. So in 2013, when over 1100 workers die at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, it is the same industry as the Triangle Fire, with the same subcontracted system of production that allows apparel companies to avoid responsibility for work as the Triangle Fire, and with the same workforce of young and poor women, the same type of cruel bosses, and the same terrible workplace safety standards as the Triangle Fire. The difference is that most of us can’t even find Bangladesh on a map, not to mention know enough about it to express the type of outrage our ancestors did after Triangle.
This separation of production from consumption is an intentional move by corporations precisely to avoid being held responsible by consumers for their actions. And it is very effective.
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http://www.salon.com/2015/07/06/no_one_is_making_them_stop_why_corporations_outsource_catastrophe_and_workers_pay_the_price/
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I wonder what exactly they are smoking 
