If the union was any good, they would negotiate a price that was better than the individual could get on their own but cheaper to the company than moving a whole factory half way across the world. There is a spectrum between the two extremes where negotiation should take place.
I mean I know factories in India which have buildings with asbestos roofs.
China has grizzly videos of workers moving metal scaffolding and then accidentally getting electrocuted as it moves into exposed high voltage cable.
And that is still a step up from the misery there was before.
I don't see how you can afford environmental protections, worker safety, when instead for a small fraction of the cost you can just send the request to a contractor, and then say "Oh we didn't know the conditions in the factory were bad. We thought those quaint third world concepts were just rumors! Oh those poor souls!".
> I mean I know factories in India which have buildings with asbestos roofs.
And how much would your company be forced to pay and abdicate to relocate their headquarters to that asbestos-packed hell-hole?
Do the company's middle and upper management tolerate the idea of moving to a different continent and be forced to live with inhumane infrastructures setup by inhumane and careless middle and upper management types?
Not every job is a factory job or involves low-skilled grunt work. Not all companies are willing to lift the proverbial anchor and relocate to a different continent just because a job seeker has a trade union representative with him during negotiations.
No matter how you cut it there's less overhead in those countries.
Depending on the nature of the good and the scale it's almost impossible to have the price of the good be competitive when it gets to the first world.
At high volume it's easy to amortize the cost cost of teaching a factory in overseas how to make for example a high quality forging that a first world supplier could produce properly the first time without asking questions.
If you're gonna need to make a different forging every year then you might want a supplier closer to home that you don't have to hand hold.
If you're making something with less safety/environmental overhead than the steel forging then that tips things less in favor of off-shoring.
