Time to Change?

“In summary, free labor – black or white – was unlikely to be attracted to wage work on Southern cotton farms, because of both the poor functioning of labor markets and the superior alternative available to these workers – the family farm. Slavery, then, allowed cotton farmers both a way to avoid the risks associated with transacting the labor market and a way around the family labor constraint. Slavery also enabled the growers to cultivate greater acreage. The greater acreage, in turn, allowed cotton production to increase… Put simply, large farms were slave plantations, not family farms, and it was the slave plantations that produced most of the worlds cotton by 1860.” (Page 13)

As apparent from this passage taken from, “The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.” Slavery has played a huge role making American textile plants as powerful as they are. Without slaves would America have the upper hand in the textile industry? Plantation families alone would not be able to conduct business as usually and paid workers would not allow for the same profit margins as textile factories enjoyed. Slaves provided the plantation owner with flexibility to work around the farming schedules. If America hadn’t used slaves to run this industry would other countries have? While reading this novel I have been toying with the notion that the textile industry would not be as nearly as profitable or efficient if it was highly regulated from the beginning. If textile factories had to enforce normal work shifts and working conditions, they would certainly watch their profits fall. In America we used slaves, in China they used weak women who had no other choice but to work back breaking shifts in horrendous conditions for $2 a day. If China instituted strict working conditions and hours could they still compete on a global scale with other countries that employ child labor in sweat shops? Absolutely not. The competitive advantage in the textile industry is cheap, hardworking labor. As stated in the CNN article, “"Farming is really hard. It needs a lot of hard labor," says 22-year-old Tang Hui, who lost his manufacturing job four months ago. "None of the young people want to farm nowadays. The income is extremely low." (Etzler and FlorCruz) What will happen to this industry is people simply refuse to work in these conditions? Hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs in China due to poor economic conditions but as you can see from the past quote some still refuse to do the back breaking labor on a farm. These individuals can barely survive but still refuse to take part in farming. An example of the poverish conditions; “The family's cash earnings have evaporated, snatched away by a manufacturing crash cascading across China caused by falling global demand for its goods.” (Etzler and FlorCruz) This must be a wake up call to the industry! The farming industry must adapt to the dynamic business environment they operate in. In the past a competitive advantage was found with the cheapest labor possible, but in the future may the new advantage be motivation? Would textile industries see the same output from its workers if they treated them fairly with benefits and empowerment? Yes, their operating costs would increase but maybe their output would also increase, which could set off the extra costs. As a management major I understand the importance of motivating and empowering workers so they become stakeholders in the company they work for. This change in management attitude motivates the workers to work to the best of their ability. Not only will they work harder, but more individuals will apply and the companies can then choose the best workers. This may be fantasy talk because this industry has depended on cheap labor for hundreds of years, but maybe the decreasing amount of people willing to work like this will open textile and farming industries’ eyes.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/20/china.economy.family/index.html?iref=newssearch