Guitar Center and child/slave labor laws

[thegreatgazoo]

Looks like GC could care less about doing the legwork to ensure that their ****ty Chinese crap isn't the result of slave and/or child labor.
That's cause we all know a decent percentage of it probably is and Bain never would have paid $2Bil for them had they not made the bulk of their money over the short term due to these working conditions in Asia and elsewhere.
God forbid they have to check and see if the gear is made at the expense of suffering 3rd world kids... I mean, they've got Pro Coverage to sell!

(Quote from nameless GC stooge comes about halfway down the page)

http://www3.cfo.com/article/2012/1/supply-chain_disclosure-laws-workers-rights-abuses-california

[J]

You raise a fair point, but its really tough to hold GC accountable (or any retail chain for that matter) for the tactics that are used to manufacture goods overseas for a few reasons:

1)  Retailers the middle men.  More often than not, they don't activly run the factories that product their goods.  While good retail chains to inspect these factories for violations, its not that tough to hide those violations during a tour.  Ensuring that all the activities we rail against never happen is a very tall order.

2)  Cost is king, because we demand it.  Everyone likes to talk about how they want better treatment of workers overseas, but how often do you ACTUALLY do anything about it by voting with our wallet and paying more for something made ethically.  I know that I'll get some backlash for this one, but if we are actually honest with ourselves, most of us turn a blind eye to where/how our goods are made when it means we can save a few bucks and make our situation easier.  Retails are responding to market forces by buying cheap goods made by these people; if ethical treatment was truly king, then these factories wouldn't have customers.

3)  We are applying Western values.  I had the chance to tour a few factories in India a while back.  I was pretty appauled by the fact that they were using young labor (9, 10, 11 year olds) to make the products.  I spoke to a few of my contacts in India about it, asking how they could justify using child labor.  Their answer was that this was one of the best places for the kids - their families couldn't afford to feed/cloth/educate them with their earnings and there weren't any government programs to help the kids out.  While the factory life wasn't perfect, the kids got a hot meal and earned enough to help the family put food on the table.  The only other option for them was begging on the street.  We forget sometimes that when we rail against child labor, we are assuming that they have the same opportunities there that a child in the Western  world has.  The simply truth is that for many of these kids, the factory is the best option out there.

The bottom line is that child labor isn't a good thing, but the issue is very complex.  While we would all like to live in a world where these things don't happen, the sacrifices that would have to be made to eliminate it are immence and people, retailers included, don't want to or can't bear that cost.

[noah]

I agree about Asian made guitars sucking. That being said, that's what the morons want. If you go to the local low end shop chances are they have the same crap so it's more the consumer's fault then the big company's fault. As GC usually has Gibson USA stuff from about $350/$400 up.