- Multinationals -

RioTinto Zinc.

In Reply to: I NEED HELP!!! posted by Julia on March 02, 1999 at 13:49:06:

: Thanks for the help. If you have facts about wages, etc, could you please also indicate where you got the info. from (ie. web address, etc)?

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: McSpotlight: A good website for general information is Corporate Watch.

I am a undergraduate at the University of Northern British Columbia and I have written many papers on multinational corporations and the affect on the environment and thrid world countries.
If you need a particular lead on a case study I suggest you do a report on a company known as RTZ or RioTinto Zinc. They are a large multinational corporation based in London. They are the largest mining corporation in the world and own operations in almost thirty countries, mostly third world. The two best examples of their actions are in Bougainville, a small island in Papua New Guinea and Mozambique (sorry for the spelling if wrong). If you need I got excellent information on their operations in Bougainville. If you are still doing the paper, as I know it is almost the end of the yeear for you, send me a message or just look it up on the web. There is an excellent article entitled Mercenaries, mines and something I can't remember, but it is in The World Today v.53 no11 Nov '97 p.278-80.
To answer your questions, of course corporations should feel an ethical responsibility to their workers as it is not expected that these CEO's would do the work that they aree asking these people to do. However, if MNC's are treating their workers the same as the rest of the workers in that country, why should we impose Western values on another society.
Second, it is true that many workers make more in these sweatshops than they would in other jobs. However, these companies make the workers dependant on their masters and will do anything to keep the jobs. That is why there aree cases of abuse to workers, low pay and chemical exposure.
Finally, we are responsible for this exploitation by buying these products, but there are things that can be done to stop it. Stop allowing companies to shut down and re-start operations in other countries, create universal laws on labour rights or even create a regulatory body funded by the IMF or World Bank.

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