Ben Gardiner's Comm 101 Blog

It seems as though technology giant Samsung may have pushed its business practices to the limits in its profit-optimization race with Apple Inc., among other technology corporations. The China Labor watch, a non-governmental organization based out of New York City, recently released a report explaining details about factory abuses and employee mistreatment within Samsung-owned factories in China. Among the concerns were children under the age of 16 working in factories and employees working 100 hours or more of overtime in a month.

The main ethical issue here concerns the protection of the rights of factory workers, particularly their benefits and the way they are treated in the factory.  Chris MacDonald, in his article entitled, “Samsung, Chinese workers, and labour rights” explains the different perspectives on the issue. For example, MacDonald provides the argument that it is not necessarily a bad thing that workers are asking for so much overtime; if they want to pursue their happiness as such, shouldn’t they be allowed? On the other hand, MacDonald outlines the counter-argument that people may be so poorly paid they have to work overtime in order to earn enough to live.

Regardless of these justifications about the way in which Samsung’s workers are treated, the core issue still remains with the key question: “How well should factory workers be treated and what protections should they have?” Samsung’s treatment of their workers may be questionable, although it may very well be legal; this does not, however, mean they have upheld a high standard of ethics in their business practices.