Swot Analysis Case - Is It Moral for a Company to Use Cheap Labor Overseas?

Is it moral for a company to use cheap labor overseas?

The American labor force has tremendously changed throughout the years. Political, social, and economic reasons have forced many companies, firms and business to migrate the productions of goods abroad to countries where labor is much cheaper.

Such migration of businesses is deeply rooted in America’s labor history. Towards the end of the 19th century, the nation began to change from an agricultural nation to an industrial one. With the industrial growth, millions of people began to move throughout the country seeking economic opportunities. Many relocated in the North, West and Southwest of the Pacific where new factories needed workers (Schneider, 2012).

According to the Department of State, many unskilled workers including children, women and immigrants were hired to work the machinery in factories which were often characterized by the mass production of goods and fairly low wages. With the rise of this new working class came the labor unions, which aimed to protect workers’ rights, and worked hand in hand with politicians (www.state.gov). Throughout the 1930s and later years, many laws and acts were created to enhance the lives of the working force in America.

Up until World War II, unions prospered and many citizens held blue-collar factory jobs. However shortly after the end of the war the number of workers employed in manufacturing industries greatly declined. As Heffner stated in his article American Manufacturing Can no Longer Compete, “Today there are fewer manufacturing employees than in 1955, and over the past 20 years 6.4 million manufacturing jobs have been lost” (Heffner, 2012). Between 1950 and 1990 non- farm jobs increased from 45 to 129.52 million workers, which were employed in the service-producing sector providing services such as transportation, utilities, wholesale, retail trade, finance, insurance, real estate, and government (www.state.gov).

While labor in the service sector increased manufacturing and production decreased by the numbers as many companies throughout the United States began to send their production and manufacturing work to nations where the labor is much cheaper thus cutting down in expenses back at home. The article “What Happened to Made In the USA?” featured in good.is.com describes the movement of labor from the US to countries where it is much cheaper to produce the same products. According to the article by 2007, 95% of the apparel (clothing) bought in the United Stated was imported from other countries around the world. They attribute this shift to the post war period (WWII), which found an increased demand for clothing from a rapidly growing American population, and they sought to meet such demands via mass cheap production.

Nowadays companies in the US have manufacturing business nearly across the globe; Japan was one of the first few nations