Sind Jobs in Sweatshops die Mühe wert?
Vor einiger Zeit war die Diskussion um die vermeintliche Ausbeutung von Arbeitskräften in den sog. Sweatshops in Entwicklungsländern Thema bei uns. Bereits damals fanden sich Belege für Fehlschlüsse der Globalisierungsgegner über die Bedeutung von ausländischen Direktinvestitionen in den Entwicklungsländer. In dem aktuellen Paper Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat? greifen Benjamin Powell und David Skarbek dieses Thema noch einmal auf und zeigen, dass diese Jobs den dortigen Arbeitnehmern in den überwiegenden Fällen einen überdurchschnittlichen Lebensstandard ermöglichen:
Few dispute that multinational firms tend to pay their workers more than domestic firms in the Third World. Critics of sweatshops maintain that because subcontractors make many products for multinational firms, measuring only multinational firm wages does not address critics' complaints against sweatshops. We have addressed the deficiency in the literature by comparing apparel industry wages in countries that supposedly have sweatshops and the wages of individual firms accused of being sweatshops to measures of average standards of living in these ountries. The data clearly show that overall, apparel industry workers are far better off than most people in their economies. However, while the best available, the data used was far from perfect. Biases are likely causing us to understate earnings as a percent of living standards. Despite data limitations, individual firms accused of paying sweatshop wages often still compare favorably with other standard of living measures.
