Reference no: EM132197892

Your manager has asked that you attend a meeting with another unit of your firm. The manager of that unit suspects that one of your firm’s major subcontractors operating in a Southeast Asian country might be violating your firm’s labor standards by employing minors. As you prepare to attend the meeting, your manager mentioned a video from aljazeera on child labor that he thought was relevant to the discussion. He stated that if you have not seen it, that you should look for it first before you go to the meeting.

Of course you have been exposed to the social concerns regarding the employment of minors in American society and are aware of your firm’s policy against the employment of minors. During the meeting, the unit manager informed the attendees that he decided to convene the meeting after he found out that the subcontractor’s factory in the Southeast Asian country was actually subcontracting work to women who brought work home and returned finished products to the factory. They were paid by the piece. While the factory’s piece rate system was designed to allow employees working a regular eight-hour day to get paid the daily minimum wage, it was found that these women were earning much more than the minimum wage for a day’s work. After speaking with the factory manager by long-distance, a citizen of that country, the unit manager was informed by the factory manager that these women were making their children help them work on the products to increase their production in order that they could earn more than the minimum wage. The children were mostly minors. The government of that country has regulations against child labor, although it was common knowledge in that country that enforcement was lax. The minimum wage in the country was below what some argued to be a living wage for a family of four. What should be the firm’s course of action on this issue?