The story of the Leisure Clothing factory, the Chinese textile company operating in Malta, has filled many a news bulletin and newspaper column. The management was accus­ed of breaking industrial laws by overworking and underpaying its staff. Many expressed anger and disgust at the mores of the company.

The factory’s practices are typical of many factories in the Third World. Given the high cost of labour in First World countries and the fierce competition when it comes to sales, many companies have found a solution by ‘outsourcing’. Companies based in these countries have their products, especially those that are labour intensive, manufactured in countries where labour is cheap.

This explains why computers, smartphones and even bananas are relatively cheap. They are produced by workers who receive low wages for long hours.

Most of the products sold by well-known brands are produced in this way. These items are still costly but the purchaser pays for the brand name, not for the production. The huge profits end up in the coffers of the owner of the brand.

The factory that collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013, killing more than a thousand of its employees, made clothes for Benetton.

Although we are indignant at the mores of the Leisure Clothing factory, our indignation should extend to include the whole system, including ourselves who, in many ways, participate in it.

This demands a serious examination of our economic system. Uruguayan economist Elena Lasida, in an article published in Concilium, suggests that while our economic system is built on competition and forecasts, it is also possible to build it on alliance and promise.

If we put the dignity of people first and foremost we start seeing things differently

Every economic deal, even a simple purchase, implies a contract intended to protect the interests of the individuals immediately involv­ed in the deal. However, it stops there. Calculation and satisfaction of the dealers are the hallmarks of contractual relationships. The common good is totally ignored.

Lasida suggests that we should move from ‘contract’ to ‘alliance’ so as to promote the common good. Alliance seeks to serve not only the individual interests of the contracting parties but the interests of all involved, including those of society.

She gives several examples of this type of economic activity, such as fair trade and micro credit. These economic activities belong to what is called ‘social and solidarity economics’. They are based on trust rather than on calculation. They take into consideration the dignity of all the people involved.

Jesus’s ‘Parable of the hours’ is an exercise in this type of economics. In the parable, a landowner seeks labourers for his field at different times of the day. At the end of the day he pays those employed last and who worked least as much as those who had toiled all day.

Most of us sympathise with the complaints of the latter and find it difficult to digest the landowner’s retort that he was good. This is because we do not immediately realise that Jesus is introducing a new type of economics: pay should not depend upon the amount produced but upon what is necessary so that the worker can live with dignity.

Fair trade, for instance, demands that workers should not be exploited so that their dignity would be safeguarded. As a consequence the cost of production rises and we have to pay more for the product. This is necessary to be fair to the workers.

In an economy based on competition, fair trade does not stand a chance but if we put the dignity of people first and foremost we start seeing things differently. Unfortunately, we absorb what the world gives us too easily.

Social and solidarity economic activities also have a prophetic function. They address what is most genuine within us. Ultimately it’s up to us to choose, but egoistic choices might make us lose some of the right we have to be indignant at the injustices of the world.

ajsmicallef@gmail.com

Fr Alfred Micallef is a member of the Society of Jesus.

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