Re: Where's the hand wringing over other companies?
"And consider how horrible the conditions were in US factories a century ago, or UK factories before that. It is easy for us to get all high and mighty expecting other countries to have the same worker protection laws and enforcement we take for granted, because we've already "made it" economically."
The point is that these companies are moving production to these countries explicitly *BECAUSE* they don't have any worker or enviromental protection laws. Not having to protect or renumerate their employees to any reasonable standard is why they are cheap. Because they are cheap is why they mercilessly laid off their western employees who made the company what it is, and hired cheaper foreign labour.
If you are going to have a minimum wage and working conditions in your own country then you need to ensure that the same conditions are in place on foreign staff or your simply committing a nasty form of national suicide as your own economic base gets eaten out from underneath you.
While multinational companies are somewhat less dangerous today than they were in the days when the East India Company literially owned most of a sub continent outright I submit that multinationals are still at best a menace.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
