Synopsis:
One of the important ethical issues an international firm should consider is how to adhere to global labor standards. The media spotlight on sweatshop practices becomes intensify recently. For the past several months, human right groups have been demanding several multinational corporations to disclose the location of their foreign factories so that a credible sweatshop monitoring system can be established. However, the responses from those companies were not satisfactory.

This article explains the recent breakthrough in the anti-sweatshop movement. Several companies, including Nike Inc., became more cooperative and allowed external monitoring by truly independent outsiders. This article also discusses the potential impact of the recent breakthrough on other companies and on the global labor standards.

Full-text Article: http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_45/b3654170.htm

Text connection:
Chapter 2 "National Differences in Political Economy" (pp.69-70).