In this paper you are required to write a persuasive values-driven argument. In particular, you are required to take a position on the following statement and argue for your position in writing.
All businesses have a responsibility to make a real contribution to the reduction of slavery. However, they are unable to do so effectively because of the dynamics of global capitalism.
The context of capitalism and modern slavery has been long associated with each other, though not as a unity (Brandon 2015). The concept of slavery is different from that of capitalism in terms of alternative, discrete or anachronistic forms of labour in the current era. In the modern world, all the business organizations have the basic responsibility to make efforts for eradicating the concept of slavery from their organizational workforce. There lies a clear link between the slavery and capitalism in the context of economy, clarity, and force (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). The building block of modern capitalism is suspected to fuel the expansion of slavery throughout the globe (Tomich 2017). From the innovation and introduction in the technology and marketing to the development of financial instruments that are sophisticated, the rise in the modern capitalism is a treat to the society and results in a devastating human cost in the modern era (New 2015). Though it has been found and many business organizations claim that they are unable to implement any effective measures to abolish the concept of modern labour due to the dynamics of global capitalism (Dirlik 2018). This paper explores the clear and deep connection between the modern slavery and capitalism in the modern era and the reduction of slavery is essential to promote equality and effective scale of international workforce system as a whole (Mackey and Sisodia 2014). It further more highlights the measures and the targeted laws that each and every organizations should follow to ensure abolition of slavery from the organization.
According to the reports by the United Nations, top economies of the world have been spending to eradicate and abolish the context of modern slavery. Though the business organization also needs to play a big role to abolish slavery by ensuring that their supply chains are free of modern slaves. Researchers also found that the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are spending on the anti-slavery initiatives (Rifkin 2014). The slavery has been an increasingly major global issue that has been a topic of debate. There is also thus a growing scrutiny on how much amount is being spent to abolish and eradicate the slavery by the UN (Gold, Trautrims and Trodd 2015). The UN targets to enslave about 45 million people by the end of 2030 and raise the annual illegal profits by the business organization (New 2015).In many of the developing and developed countries, the use of slaves are considered as normal. People hire and enslave backward people under their rule to draw huge amount of production that results in their benefits in the business. Due to the scarce level of data, rising capitalism and limited coordination among the governments, it has been hard to measure and identify the measure to abolish the modern slavery. Apart from this, there exist some of the fundamental regulations and laws that initiate protection of employees in the workplace o the modern business organizations. Organizations are instructed to follow the rules as the preliminary step to eradicate modern slavery.
The Minimum Wage Law- This law was introduced to ensure that all the workers in the organization receive a minimum wage for their employees. The use of slaves and bonded labourers were an age-old practice from the historical context. In the earlier times, slaves were not payed any wages, they were not even given the basic necessities since they were treated as commodities that were being bought as any other thing for use till their old age (Piper, Segrave and Napier-Moore 2015). Though Most of the private and public business organization tends to pay less to their workers and forces them to work for long hours. This law protects them from the inhuman practices inside the organization.
The workplace safety Act- The occupational safety and Health Act was introduced in 1970 to minimize the risk and dangers in the workplace for the employees (Williams 2014). This piece of legislation formed a number of specific safety provisions and acts that included guidelines and norms that are industry-specific in nature. This act includes clauses of general duty that highlights the prohibition of any actions or practices in the workplace that represents a clear risk to the workers. Furthermore this act ensures protection of the female employees from any mental or physical harassment from any employee or the employer of the organization.
The Health Coverage Act- The affordable care act ensures to make health insurance in 2010. This act was introduced to ensure that each and every business organization provides a minimum health care facility to each and every employee working with them. This act was fully implemented in most of the organization’s post-2015 (Brandon 2015).
The Social Security Act- The year 1935 was marked as the remarkable year that introduced the social security act. This act was introduced to ensure disabled and retired personals with financial safety rule (Fulcher 2015). These benefits are funded by the government of the state with the means of payroll taxes. In this law, each and every business organization contributes an amount of 6.3% with the members earning for their benefit and wellbeing.
The unemployment benefits law- Even though each state has their own unemployment insurance agency, the benefit of joblessness is offered by a joint federal state-based program (Clegg 2015). According to this act, all the business organization is entitled to give a minimum amount of unemployment benefit to the employees who are retired or currently unemployed due to workplace injuries or personal accidents.
The employment-based discrimination act- The social justice in the world came into recognition by the introduction of the civil rights act of 1964 (Williams 2014).This act ensures that no business organization discriminates any employee on the basis of race, religion, color, sex or national origin. This act further strengthens the rights of the employees in the workplace by imposing strict prohibition in the discrimination of wages against women and the minorities.
The employment law is the fundamental step that each and every business organization can take to ensure the reduction and abolition of modern slavery in the era of rising capitalism (Piper, Segrave and Napier-Moore 2015).
Capitalism is a natural progression that has evolved and forwarded through the ages. This system prevailed from the feudal system where factory based unskilled laborers were forced and bonded to employment with little or no wage. The concept of capitalism is an economic system. It was created by the combination of various arts and many other economic systems (Della Porta 2015). The concept of capitalism was based on the idea that all the business firms will carry out the factors of production and trade. They would initiate control over the prices and market of their own. The precursor of the capitalism is the mercantilism. It was the concept of the wealth and power of the state (Harvey 2014). The capitalist, on the other hand, focuses on the wealth of the individual. In the modern context of global economic crisis, the discussion of capitalism and the effects of capitalism on slavery have crossed the political boundaries (Fuchs 2017). As per the claim of the modern business organization, the concept of capitalism is all about labour markets, contracts and the rule of law. But in the reality, the connection between the slavery and capitalism is one of the key factors for understanding the origins of the modern and current world. The much debates that the capitalism is dependent on slavery are not at all a new concept. According to various researchers, slavery forms the backbone of any emerging industry (Martin 2016). It forms the basis of the economic life of any nation and most of the business organizations depend on it (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). Slavery has always been considered as the important and essential source of profit for the business organization. The banks of the state capitalized the concept of the slave trade and the insurance companies underwrote it (Piper, Segrave and Napier-Moore 2015). The use of the human capital or the modern slave is one of the major violations of human rights in the current era. Each and every person in the globe are entitled to their inalienable rights or born free rights as human being, Forced and bonded labour or the modern slavery id one of the most heinous crimes the business organizations are doing in the modern day for the increase of their production (Fulcher 2015). According to Karl Marx, the concept of capitalism was the essential stepping stone for the progression an evolution of an individual (Moore 2015). In his work, Capital, he tried to draw a parallel between the justifications of the capitalist about their justifications for the domination over free slaves and the justifications by the masters over their rue of the slaves. According to the concept of capitalism by Karl Marx, the rich get richer and the poor people get poorer due to the rising capitalism (Gold, Trautrims and Trodd 2015). He defines capital as the economic and social relationships among people rather than among people and things. In his criticism against the concept and emerging capitalism throughout the world, he summarized that owners o production process do not generally work and they exploit the workforce to productivity from them by pushing their limits, manipulating them to work for long hours, forcing them to overshoot their targets and threatening them about termination (Tomich 2017). The capitalist world economy has been rising through the decade. With the high-cost rates, higher costs of material inputs, rising tax schemes and rising anti-systematic movements the crisis of capitalism is a big issue in the current scenario. The concept of modern slavery encircles the point that the educated individuals who have the skills and technological pieces of knowledge are the slaves of the business organization (Dirlik 2018). They are the modern slaves of the current era who are being employed by the business organizations and worked under immense pressure and targets to achieve production; failure to which they are subjected to termination without prior notice (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). With the rising era of unemployment, it is thus a big challenge for the employees whether to raise voice against this inhuman practice since their protest can take away their job.
Modern slavery is rooted in capitalism (Mackey and Sisodia 2014). The concept of slavery is prevailing from the historical times. By the definitions of the International labour organization, slavery is the service or the work that is exacted and undertaken involuntarily by illegal means. The slavery is exacted under the risk of penalty which ranges from eating’s, starvation, rape, sexual abuse, mental and physical harassments and threats to life. Thus the slavery or the entire concept should be abolished. Slavery is the violation of the basic human rights (Sombart 2017). The right to dignity and the right to life are the violated with the practice of slavery. Each and every business organization should ensure that the employees’ rights and health are ensured while working in the organization (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). Modern slavery should be eliminated; the organizations should introduce and implement newer measures for protecting the rights and the dignity of the workers in the workplace, furthermore, the state government should initiate and plan out new strategies to investigate whether the business organizations are actually paying attention to their employees for preserving their rights and dignities (New 2015). The government should further ensure that no individuals or employees remain enslaved under any contractor or any business organization (Dirlik 2018). The employees should work in healthy and in good condition and no individual should be forced to any contracts or bondages. Furthermore, no one should be worked without any pay and introduction of overtime and extra allowance should be encouraged and implemented by each and every business organization (Chuang 2015). Besides this, all the employees and individuals working in the organization should initiate protest movement in case of any discrimination or violation of their basic rights. Employment laws and rules by the government of each and every state should be amended by all the business organization since these are the basic forms or steps the organization can take to initiate the eradication of modern labour in the rising era of the capitalist economy (Clegg 2015). People should fight for their right and should not fall into any trap of contract and bondage. Though it is quite impossible to abolish the capitalist economy from the modern economic system due to the high rate of globalization and increased capitalist market and the formation of new business organizations who aims to gain profit and make money by utilizing the current and basic workforce, still new and innovative approaches should be initiated for the betterment and wellbeing of the individuals and the employees in the workforce (Mackey and Sisodia 2014). It has been seen that many organizations intentionally do not give its employees the basic rights they are entitled to receive due to their motive of huge production and profit. This is an inhuman approach since the cost of a human life or the wellness of a human life can never be compared to the profit or the money (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). Though the modern economy shows inhuman and selfish approach towards the workforce (Sombart 2017). The business organizations do not usually care about the health of the employees or the capabilities of them, they often force them to work in their week offs, in national holidays and even work after office hours from home without giving them any benefit of over time. This approach should be changed. Furthermore, the workplace should also promote measures to restrict workplace discrimination and gender discrimination to have a healthy and effective work environment in the organization.
Conclusion
The slavery has not yet abolished. It has just grown and evolved over the time. The previous concept of bonded labour and slavery system has evolved to the sophisticated modern concept of slavery where the workers in the workforce are given a marginalized amount of salary and are manipulated and forced to work for long hours for the profit of the organization. There lies a clear link between the capitalism and slavery in the context of clarity and force and economy (Acemoglu and Robinson 2015). Though there exist many other laws and employment laws for the protection of the employees of the organization, it is still a big doubt that how much of those are actually practiced and implemented on the employees of the business organization (Morgan 2017). Newer governmental measure and regulations and governmental agencies should be introduced to investigate the business organizations and their employees. The government should ensure that the laws related to employment and the regulations targeting the dignity and respect of an individual is not hampered and violated by any organization in the name of employment. With the increasing capitalist world economy, it is thus still a big challenge to eradicate the modern slavery
References
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Brandon, P., 2015. Rethinking capitalism and slavery: New perspectives from American debates. Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis, 12(4), p.117.
Byrne, F.J., 2015. The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860. Civil War Book Review, 17(4), p.6.
Chuang, J.A., 2015. Giving as Governance: Philanthrocapitalism and Modern-Day Slavery Abolitionism. UCLA L. Rev., 62, p.1516.
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Harvey, D., 2014. Seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. Oxford University Press (UK).
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