c. Voluntary Self-Regulation
Today, many of the most prominent academic critics of sweatshops focus their
energy on calls for voluntary self-regulation on the part of MNEs and the sweatshops to which they subcontract. Their hope is that self-regulation can correct the
moral failings of sweatshops while at the same time avoiding the unintended harms
caused by the more heavy-handed attempts described above.
Nothing in The Argument is opposed to voluntary self-regulation as such. If,
as The Argument was specifically formulated to allow, many of the activities of
sweatshops are immoral, then they ought to change, and voluntary self-regulation
will often be the best way to accomplish this change.
Furthermore, by providing concrete examples of 'positive deviancy'—cases
where multinational enterprises have made changes to improve conditions for
workers in their supply chain above and beyond those required by market pressures
or the law—much of the recent scholarship on self-regulation has provided
a valuable model for firms who wish to wish to begin making changes in the right
direction.
There are, however, two significant causes for concern over the precise way in
which the case for self-regulation has been made in the recent literature. First, to
the extent that 'voluntary' self-regulation is to be accomplished by industry-wide
standards, the regulation is really only voluntary for the industry as a whole.^' For
any individual firm, compliance is essentially mandatory. Individual firms, then,
are in much the same position as they would be under legal regulation, insofar as
those who cannot afford to comply with the mandated standard would be forced
to cut costs or alter their production in a way that could negatively affect the employment
of sweatshop workers. Additionally, industry-wide standards serve as an
impediment to the market's discovery process. By establishing one standard with
which all firms must comply, this sort of approach discourages (and in some cases,
prohibits) individual firms from experimenting with their own standards which might
be better suited to the particular context in which they are operating.
The second and less well-recognized problem is that by making the case for
self-regulation in terms of the rights workers have to certain forms of treatment and
the obligations that MNEs have to ensure such treatment, supporters of 'voluntary'
self-regulation end up putting too strong a demand on MNEs for the kind of reform
they desire, while paying insufficient attention to ways of helping workers that fall
short of their desired goal.
To see this problem more clearly, we can look at the recent work of Denis Arnold.
The core philosophical argument of that work claims that workers have rights to
freedom and well-being," and argues that these rights require MNEs to ensure that
certain minimum conditions are met in their supply chain.^^ As an example of the
sort of specific obligation to which these general rights to freedom and well-being
give rise, Arnold and Hartman state in a recent paper that "respect for the rights of
workers to subsistence entails that MNEs and their suppliers have an obligation to
ensure that workers do not live under conditions of overall poverty by providing
adequate wages for a 48 h work week to satisfy both basic food needs and basic
non-food needs"
Now, it cannot be doubted that it would be a morally praiseworthy thing for
MNEs to ensure that their workers are given this level of treatment. But this is not
what Arnold is claiming. He is claiming that MNEs have an obligation to provide
this level of treatment—one that is grounded on workers' rights. This is making an
extremely strong moral claim. Rights are generally thought to be 'trumps'—considerations
which, when brought to bear on a decision, are supposed to override
any competing claims." Respecting rights is non-optional.
But notice that while rights as such are non-optional, the right and corresponding
obligation that Arnold endorses are conditional in an important way. Workers
have a right to certain levels of minimum treatment, and MNEs have an obligation
to provide it, MNEs involve those workers in their supply chain. But nothing
requires MNEs to do so. Workers have a right to adequate wages //MNEs contract
with sweatshops to employ them. But MNEs are under no obligation to outsource
labor in this way at all. And if the only morally permissible way to engage in such
outsourcing is to incur heavy costs by seeing that workers receive the minimum
level of wages, safety conditions and so forth demanded by Arnold et al., it is quite
possible that many MNEs will choose not to do so.