The Taiwan Times (2015) reported that the Hualien Environmental Protection Bureau was tasked to sample wastewater, follwing complaints from residents that the color had changed to a "brownish-yellow." The article also mentions that the company has been in conversation with the bureau about installing emissions monitoring systems to address air pollution.
The positioning that you have to choose, and that Bono gets to choose, between livable working conditions and wages vs HIV treatment - forecloses possibility of HIV treatment AND acceptable working conditions.
Forecloses critique of the industries’ unethical work conditions - because they are “proven” by inspectors to have good working conditions, and the bodies of the HIV worker-patients who are treated are proof of the goodness of the corps
Worker resistance is foreclosed because they know they depend on this “ethical” reputation to even have industry in their country, which is needed for survival because of past extractions and present oppressive global trade conditions
Bind that the workers are in - they have to perform the ethicalness and pretend their working conditions are ok when inspected because they know that their job (and the whole country’s export industry) depends on this performance of ethicalness and goodness of the factory
Performed Inspections provide proof, as do their HIV-treated bodies
Bono - celebrities promoting - people and at the stores purchasing/consuming branded RED products - blatantly baking “ethical” into the branding of consumer goods.
Obscure bad working conditions with success of HIV treatment
ALAFA - while genuinely caring about workers’ health, they have made a decision on their behalf that this HIV treatment is what matters, and their working conditions don’t matter; same for Bono of U2 as an example celebrity here.
Fails on the worker’s understanding of responsibility to care for the sick - violation of moral order because factory makes you sick
Rejects and sidesteps responsibility for horrible working conditions (exposure and unlivable wages, no maternity leave, insecure) - focus instead on the HIV, for which they claim they have no responsibility, the HIV was already there, so they are responsible for treating those who are their current factory workers, giving them drugs and treatments that help them to be productive bodies, give them trainings that responsibilize them for getting the disease
The ethical is something you can enforce with these performed audits
The ethical is something consumers buy that’s branded and ethically produced - the ethical production is “no sweat” and also made by people whose suffering the profits can go to help
Celebrities and emotional and political sovereignty: “The vague network of forces for which Bono acts as spokesperson decides that HIV treatment is more important, and by extension, that labor violations, work rights, poverty, occupational health risks are less urgent forms of social suffering” -p474
ALAFA, a PPP organization, also makes this decision for the workers
ILO as well, as the inspectors
CSR through humanitarian fetishism, humanitarian consumption of ethical production, ethical industries or ethical production zones, where up the supply chain the brand buyers demand suppliers down the chain be “ethical” (while still demanding obscenely low prices, so of course it’s not possible).
Ethical production zone against the race-to-bottom for garment manufacturing - instead of the labor being cheap they are sick in a way that the corporation can treat to its own benefit while gaining moral capital - it is a PPP so there are many “stakeholders” paying for different things
Celebrity involvement - consumers of humanitarian products
In this article, it is comparing how polluted Newark is compared to the country mentioning facts such as Newark residents face the nation's second greatest risk due to diesel emissions, the city being the nation's largest trash incinerator in the Northeast, and 25% of the school children in Newark face asthma which is double compared to the nation's average rate.
The new initiative mentioned in the article wants to enhance Environmental Justice, good stewardship, and suistainable economic development by protecting the health of the residents in Newark, minimizing pollution, and by encouraging development that does affects Newark positively.