Social Actors

The essay examines the impacts of globalization on jobs, including low pay and poor working conditions, which have a negative impact on their living levels and willingness to provide for themselves and their families. Because of the interconnectivity of ties and their global contact, social actors at the global level influence the conditions of employees employed in cooperation to maintain the established conditions. Consumers, retailers, brands, and factories are examples of these actors. Consumers pay low prices for products produced in bad conditions in Cambodia, Bangladesh, and other countries with lower manufacturing costs. Consumers do not view the workers making these clothes as humans with a name, a life beyond the job, and relatives perpetuating the existing conditions and preventing change towards better conditions for these workers. Consumers need to call for industry-wide and systematic changes, and companies have to commit to these changes to make them count for the workers. Retailers and brands focus on their bottom-line and have not committed enough towards helping the workers beyond the factory floor. The improvement in worker conditions including factory inspections, better building safety, and increased worker and manager training are not enough to change the conditions for the workers. Consumers have to insist that the retailers and brands invest in labor both at home and abroad and pressure factories to increase worker’s wages (Coates, par. 12). The achievement of aims for workers requirements concerted efforts of these four social actors related at national regional and global level with consumers influencing the actions of brands and retailers whose financial and decision-making powers can impact factories’ payment to workers and improving working conditions.

Factories have to commit towards achieving systematic changes to allow workers have better and human working conditions and receive a living wage to allow them to sustain themselves and their families. Factories will also benefit from the better performance of workers who have better pay and healthier living improving profits. Consumers also have the responsibility of ensuring elected leaders hold other governments accountable to ensure the conditions and pay in factories in global locations are improved. The efforts of consumers, retailers, and brands culminate in implementation at factories in Cambodia and Bangladesh among other global locations depicting the close interaction between these social actors.





Work Cited

Coates, Karen. Blood on our backs. Aljazeera, January 11, 2014. Accessed on http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/1/blood-on-our-backs.html