media-studies.ca

No Jobs in No Logo

Yi-Lan Chan

The life of a 19-year old girl who lives in China and a 19-year old girl who lives in Canada can be really different. The Chinese girl may share a six-by-eight foot room with six other girls and make running shoes for more than 100 hours a week. The Canadian girl may have to work at McDonald's as a temp, hardly making a living but thinking she may have to work for the company for the rest of her life. These two girls have something in common--they are both exploited by multinational corporations like Nike and McDonald's. These two girls want to make a living, pay their bills, and have a secure future. In Naomi Klein’s book No Logo, branding is fully explored in all of the chapters. In the section "No Jobs," Klein talks about how multinational corporations like Nike and McDonald's exploit workers all around the world, and how changes in the workforce are affecting Generation X.

The Discarded Factory

Naomi Klein believes branding is the way to capture the spirit of individuality, wilderness, or community (195). Nowadays, consumers no longer buy products; they buy brands: brandname shoes, clothes, bags, computers, and drinks. The difference is that a product is something that is made in a factory and a brand is something that is made in the mind. As the former chairman of United Biscuits explained: "Machines wear out. Cars rust. People die. But what lives on are the brands" (196).

Multi-national corporations realize the advantage of branding, and they are changing their companies from factories to brand builders. In order to be a successful brand builder, a company needs to spend billions of dollars on sponsorships, packaging, expansion, and advertising. To reduce production costs, a company must decrease the labor, material, and manufacturing overhead cost. This is easily done by moving the entire factories to developing countries, where everything is cheap and tax-free. When all the corporations move their factories from North America to developing countries like South Korea, South Asia, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, jobs are lost in North America.

Brand-name multinationals want to get the best deal they can in the global market. Free-trade zones in developing countries will be the best choice. In some of the zones, companies hire more than half of the total population in the town. Most of these zones are isolated from the outside world. Every zone is carefully planned to squeeze the maximum amount of production out of the laborers. The working conditions in the factories are horrible. There are no windows or air conditioners. Workers are forced to work six to seven days a week, more than 16 hours a day. Workers are not allowed to talk to other workers and leave their position during the working hours. Women in particular are being exploited in these factories. No unions or strikes are allowed in the zones. Every worker is working for minimum wages and the government has nothing to do with it.

Third world countries believe these free-trade zones will attract foreign investors and the local economy will benefit. These countries provide multinational corporations with tax breaks, lax regulations, and the services of a military willing and able to crush labor unrest (206). What really happens is the local workers fight for a job that pays less than a dollar a day and they never earn enough money to afford the consumer goods they produce. It is clear that factories don’t bring in taxes or create local infrastructures, and all the goods produced are exported. Local communities do not benefit from any of the free-trade zones.

Multinational corporations are interested in a high-quality garment, fast delivery, cheap overhead and money in their own pocket. For millions of workers around the world, "the choice is not between bad jobs and good jobs but between bad jobs and no jobs" (228).

Threats and Temps

Part-timers, temps, and freelancers are more common than ever in North America. The employment in North America is changing. There is little job security, and livable wages and benefits are increasingly scarce. There is only notoriously unstable, low-paying, overwhelmingly part-time work. Multinational corporations like Gap, McDonald's, and Starbucks refuse to pay higher wages or hire more full-time workers because it is costly. Corporations would rather spend their profit on advertising, promoting their brand, and opening a new store just around the corner from their other stores. Companies like WalMart and Starbucks like to hire part-time workers who have a full-time work duty. As Klein points out, a part-time job can be "a low skill, low pay, high stress, exhausting and unstable job" (237). The truth is, people need a steady full-time job to live in this world.

For corporations, paying livable wages is out of fashion and bad for business. Corporations are developing software programs that allow head office maximum down-to-the-minute control over the schedules of its clerks (243). This way, companies can guarantee workers have the duties of a full-time job but only get paid part-time wages and no benefits. Corporations compare this scheduling method to ordering merchandise.

Another policy that keeps the unions out and the wages low involves stock options or ‘profit-sharing’ for lower level employees. The unpaid culture job is also really common. People work for superbrand corporations for free just to get the internship and hopefully will get hired in the near future.

Since all the multinational corporations are decreasing their labor costs, there is a new business growing fast in North America and Europe--temp agencies where 4.5 million workers are assigned to jobs in Europe and the U.S. every day. Corporations contract out entire functions and divisions to the temp agencies that offer the lowest labour costs. Managers believe hiring and managing workers is not the base of a healthy company (248).

In Klein’s book, it is suggested that workers start their very own brand, a "Brand Called You" (252). Self-employment, free agent nation, and Me Inc. are all supposed to help workers start thinking about themselves as a service provider and hiring out their skills and services to the highest, or most interesting bidder (253). The fact is that not everyone can be self-employed because of his or her skills. For these people, their best hope is to work harder and hope their employers can be more successful. This way they can share the success with the company. Unfortunately, there is a weak link between the company success and the guaranteed sharing in that success (257).

Breed Disloyalty

Jobs are really different today compared to 30 years ago. For Generation X, jobs are being lost in North America and Europe. The whole idea of employment is changing. Workers used to rely on companies to provide jobs so they could make a living. But now, workers can rely on no one but themselves. Companies are changing from job creators to wealth creators.

As Klein points out, "An unmistakable message now emanates from our free markets: good jobs are bad for business, bad for ‘the economy’ and should be avoided at all cost" (262). Companies are decreasing costs by moving factories to third world countries, laying off workers in North America and hiring them back as temps.

In North America, local communities feel betrayed by the local corporations. The message is clear that workers can no longer believe in their employers. Workers need to think for themselves before anything else. For those who will be joining the workforce in the near future, like university students, it is often suggested they should start saving for their retirement before they’ve even picked a major (287). Generation X (those born between 1961 and 1980, though these years are in dispute) is more self-reliant than ever. They don’t believe in corporations or politicians. They are independent, tough, and focused because they can count on no one but themselves.

Working to Survive

In conclusion, there is no doubt that branding is good for the economy and bad for the workers. Multinational corporations provide the worst jobs and get the maximum profit. There is a strong relationship between branding and workers, but this relationship is an unpleasant one. In developing countries, millions of workers rely on making shoes and toys for super brands to make a little bit of money. Hopefully, this money can help their family to survive another month. Refusing to buy goods made in third world countries can cause workers to suffer in these countries. People should go to third world countries and see what it really looks like: working in factories with no windows or air conditioners, living under the poverty line, and struggling to survive for another day.

People with part-time jobs in North America may struggle to pay their electric bills or car insurance. Families in China striving for a better life are tempted to sell their children to be sweatshop labourers. The stakes are higher for the 19-year girl with a low-paying job in China than for the 19-year old in North America. The Chinese girl is working for the survival of her family.

Work Cited