Question

*Long answer greatly appreciated :)

You are the product manager of a confectionery company that includes small plastic toy  with its chocolate sweets. Having met a potential Thai manufacturer of these toys at a trade fair in Europe, you now visit the company in  north eastern Thailand to finalize a two year supply contact. Arriving there and talking to the sales manager you are able to arrange a deal that supplies you with the toys at a third of the cost currently charged by your Portuguese supplier, but with equivalent quality and supply arrangements.

In order to check the reliability of the manufacturing process you ask the manager to show you around the place. You are surprised to find out that there is no real workshop on the premises. Rather the production process is organized in such a way that at 6:00 a.m., about thirty men show up at the company's gate, load large boxes with toy components on their carts or motor-scooters and take the material to their homes.

Your prospective supplier then takes you to one of these places where you see a large family, sitting in a garage-like barn assembling the toys. Not only are the mother and father doing the job, but also the couples six children aged  5 to 14, who are working busily, and from what you see, very cheerfully , together with the parents, while the grandmother is looking after the food in an adjacent room. In the evening around 8:00p.m., the day's work is done, the assembled toys are stored back in the boxes and taken back to the workshop of the company, where the men receive their payment for the finished goods. At the end of the week. the toys are shipped to the customers in Europe.

As you have never come across such a pattern of manufacturing, your Thai partner explains  to you that this is a very common and well-established practice in this part of the country, and one which guarantees a a good level of quality. Satisfied you tell the Thai manager that you will conclude the paperwork once you get back home, and you leave the company's offices happy in the knowledge of the cost saving you are going to make. and quite  confident that it will result in a healthy bonus for you at the end of the year.

On your way back , while buying some souvenirs for your 5 and 7 year old nieces at the airport, you suddenly start wondering if you would like to see them growing up the same way as the child workers that you have just employed to make your company's toys.

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Question

Once home you must decide to proceed with this deal or not.

Give two ethical issues you face.

What is your decision--yes or no--and why

Answer 1

It is a very good method of employment in certain parts of Thailand so as to sustain a livelihood. But ethically and morally, this is not correct.

1. The children, though happy to work, must and should have a right to education and not be part of the working class at such a tender age. They might not know or be aware of the power of learning and knowledge and have a right to education no matter which sect of society they belong to. Children are our future generation. They are deprived of their rights and this is ethically wrong.

2. Also, old people should be given proper rest and not be stressed with cooking for a large family. They have worked hard all their lives and need rest and peace and not stress. They should be taken care of and not the other way.

3. Every organization should have a certified employees list and the employees should be given benefits and compensations and proper salaries. With such an informal arrangement the employees are deprived of those benefits.

I would not make a deal and would request the company to do something for the welfare of the employees and their children.