This is because economic development is a necessary...
Universal standards of labour and business are not suited to the race for development
Developing countries are in a race to develop their economies. The prioritisation of countries that are not currently developed is different to the priorities of developed countries as a result of their circumstances and they must be allowed to temporarily push back standards of labour and business until they achieve a level playing field with the rest of the world. This is because economic development is a necessary precondition for many of the kinds of labour standards enjoyed in the west. For there to be high labour standards there clearly needs to be employment to have those standards. Undeveloped countries are reliant upon cheap, flexible, labour to work in factories to create economic growth as happened in China. In such cases the comparative advantage is through their cheap labour. If there had been high levels of government imposed labour standards and working conditions then multinational firms would never have located their factories in the country as the cost of running them would have been too high.[1] Malaysia for example has struggled to contain activity from the Malaysian Trades Union Congress to prevent their jobs moving to China[2] as the competition does not have labour standards so helping keep employment cheap.[3] [1] Fang, Cai, and Wang, Dewen, ‘Employment growth, labour scarcity and the nature of China’s trade expansion’, http://epress.anu.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ch09.pdf, p.145, 154 [2] Rasiah, Rajah, ‘The Competitive Impact of China on Southeast Asia’s Labor Markets’, Development Research Series, Research Center on Development and International Relations, Working Paper No.114, 2002, http://vbn.aau.dk/files/33796055/DIR_wp_114.pdf P.32 [3] Bildner, Eli, ‘China’s Uneven Labor Revolution’, The Atlantic, 11 January 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/01/chinas-uneven-labor-revolution/267041/