Flirtation
with rationality
So seldom does the administration and Faculty Senate
behave rationally where a political issue is concerned that one
tends to regard such a phenomenon with the same excitement one
would feel if offered the opportunity to view Halley's Comet from
space or Lillie Langtry in the nude. I did not expect to see such
a thing in my lifetime. Thus, the University's recent decision
("College Report," June/00) to decline joining the Worker Rights
Consortium (WRC) filled me with as much joy as a conchologist
observing the mucous muscular spasms of a sinistral whelk.
It is natural that students, guilt-ridden because
their shoe allowance, remitted quarterly, exceeds the per capita
income of the heads of households of most third-world countries,
should exhibit remorse at the human cost of their ensembles. Supporting
liberal causes by the radical step of purchasing T-shirts and
other promotional items proffered by the alternative band sector
of the music business seeking to beef up its bottom line, market
its product, and establish itself at the vanguard of the socially
conscious may offer some respite. The pain at the point of purchase
remains, and the true cost of a pair of Nikes or a U of C sweat(shop)shirt
is paid in the solitary, dark hours of the night or in vocalized,
collective self-loathing. The epiphany: if the wardrobe were made
by well-fed, well-scrubbed workers laboring happily in well-lit
factories with modern bathrooms, guilt would be replaced by the
nirvana previously enjoyed only by the likes of Calvin Klein on
seeing his creations spread from the runway to the discount stores.
Unfortunately, the local employees who endure horrible
conditions do so because the job offers the prospect of a better
life. The factory is there because its cost of production per
unit is lower than at alternative locations. If regulations were
introduced that increased the cost, the factory would likely lose
its competitive edge and its orders. It would be forced to close.
Its former employees would be back to near-subsistence existences.
In the days of apartheid in South Africa, white
labor unions supported a minimum wage while black activists opposed
it. Increasing the cost of employing the less educated black workers
would have led to replacing them with white workers, better educated
and thus more productive. Likewise, increasing the cost of less
productive workers in the developing world will lead to their
jobs being exported to countries with higher per capita incomes
where the gross cost of employment per worker is higher, but where
the per unit cost of production is less. Remember that factories
have been moving into less developed countries as economic socialization
and education allowed them to achieve an acceptable cost per unit
produced. Adding costs to the factories in the poorer countries
could reverse this trend.
Alas, the flirtation with rational behavior was
as brief as the possibility of sexual orgasm among the Drosophilia
melanogaster. The administration announced that it was not joining
the Worker Rights Consortium because its vendors already abided
by guidelines similar to the WRC's. That is, it was already doing
its part to take jobs from the poorest, least employable workers
in the weakest economies in order to employ better-fed, more productive
workers with more liberal bathroom privileges elsewhere.
Kenneth
R. Shelton Jr., AB'69
Galveston,
Texas