by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:

Globalization is good.

We shouldn’t force all these jobs back here if you want to sell in the US.

It’s “fabulous” that Levis, and others, can get work done for pennies an hour, instead of dollars.  The sexual assault is free, you see, and it’s part of your “wage”.

Oh, and if the abused are slant-eyed, brown or black?  That’s ok too.  It’s raciss to point out that those who have and continue to exploit such bullcrap are inherently abusive, the firms doing so are inherently involved in the slave trade, that such was allegedly made illegal by the 13th Amendment but it’s all ok as long as it’s done for money.

Not like it was previously done for……. oh wait, that was money too, right?

The labor rights group investigated Taiwan-based Nien Hsing Textile factories in Lesotho — a poor, mountainous kingdom encircled by South Africa — after hearing from a number of sources that women who sew, sand, wash and add rivets to blue jeans and other clothes were facing gender-based violence.

Managers and supervisors forced many female workers into sexual relationships in exchange for job security or promotions, the report says. In dozens of interviews, the women described a pattern of abuse and harassment, including inappropriate touching, sexual demands and crude comments.

Of course the companies claim “well, these are outside suppliers and we’re not responsible.  But we’ll agree to outside oversight.”

Uh huh.

Levi Strauss & Co. vice president of sustainability Michael Kobori said that as soon as the company received the Worker Rights Consortium report it told Nien Hsing “that this would not be tolerated and required them to develop a corrective action plan.”

I thought sexual assault was a crime?  “Corrective action plan”?  You mean hide it where we can’t see it any more, right?

Rola Abimourched, a senior program director at the Worker Rights Consortium, said the Lesotho agreement should serve as a model for the rest of the apparel industry to prevent abuse and harassment.

“Hopefully this is something others will see and build on, so we can collectively make an impact far beyond any single country,” she said.

Of course the entire point of putting the “apparel industry” there was to abuse workers in the first place.  It is precisely because you can do that over there that they moved the factories to those locations originally.  Whether the abuse is sexual or simply a function of pay and working conditions — it’s still abuse.

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