The Unfair Advantage

Sally Field in Norma Rae

If you've lived in the twentieth century, you've heard of terms like cheap labor, unfair advantage, and phrases like the rich get richer.  Norma Rae starring Sally Field is a movie you'd want to watch, gauging a background on how unfair labor and labor unions work in U.S.  The movie takes place at a mill in U.S.—crowded working conditions are suffered by Norma and other women at the factory; however, organized labor succeeds in attaining results in favor of the union party after Norma and others conjoin to fight for their fair treatment.  Yes, the labor union triumphs.  

In the recent decades, unfair labor conditions and unfair advantage have shifted on the domestic front and onto abroad —in developing countries, specifically, the Third World where labor and resources are exploited by us advanced countries, otherwise known as the westernized and the industrialized.  Young girls are used for cheap labor in factories (South and Southeast Asia and here are some of them:  Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Americas like Dominican Republic), commonly known as sweatshops that sell retail apparels to United States.  Brands and retail stores in which us American consumers shop at malls and discount stores carry manufactured overseas products that were made out of cheap labor in the aforementioned developing countries.  Consumers, not aware of disadvantageous conditions young girls forego, buy the products for cheap prices that comes from cheap labor which comes at a cost to those who do not yet have the voice and power to have their voices heard.  Human Rights Watch's Unfair Advantage is a good read.    

The following poem is inspired by the movie and the unfair labor that occurs between the developed countries and the Third World:

Unfair Labor

Listen, how you would reap fruits of your labor,

When parties and firms stave off your rise on the rung,

How else would owners reap profits on your cheap labor,

But to overcrowd and overburden the young,

 

 

Young girls at mills—underpaid, under-appraised, 

Labor under grueling clock—a stern fold,

A favorable conditions largely by the governance,

While young girls are under unyielding injustice,

 

 

Swamped and struck with fear—the unfavorable fall to silence,

Out of fear—of loss, of income—the unfavorable labors,

Through hard and grim labor,

To fight hand-to-hand, to service,

 

 

Til a day arrives for organized labor to honor,

When seasons span wide, so let the chasm teeter-totter,

At a tail’s end the rift seesaws; indeed the unfavorable has sung,

So do our rung for fair and just labor which have finally rung.