Globalization and labor exploitation – Past, Present and Future

 

Karl Marx, dare I say his name? While his ideas continue to spark celebration and critique, their relevance endures in understanding how social contexts influence human consciousness and behavior. His groundbreaking idea that social being determines individual consciousness inspired foundational work in areas like the sociology of art, religion, knowledge, and science. He also identified alienation as a critical issue in capitalist societies—workers become estranged from their labor, the products they create, and even their own humanity.

 

Marx divided society into two groups: the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (capitalists). He argued that capitalism inherently exploits workers while it extracts surplus value from their labor to enrich capitalists. He believed this exploitation would eventually lead to class consciousness, which could spark a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and pave the way for a classless, communist society. The expected revolutions in industrialized nations never materialized. Instead, capitalism adapted, and became more flexible and resilient. But, on a global scale his analysis remains relevant. While inequalities have shifted geographically, the exploitative mechanisms Marx described persist in today's globalized economy, often most visible in poorer regions (Van Heerikhuizen, 2015).

 

Whether we agree with his conclusions or not, Marx’s work compels us to critically examine the structures of society and the dynamics of economic systems—questions that remain as pressing as ever. The current global business strategies resemble the practices of early industrialization. Despite technological and structural advancements, the imperatives of cost reduction and capital accumulation persist, albeit in forms adapted to the 21st century. The current transformations (Le Coze, 2017):

1. Amplify risks through complexity and system decoupling.
2. Intensify labor exploitation by relocating production to less-regulated regions.
3. Shift accountability from state mechanisms to corporate actors, undermining oversight.
4. Accelerate automation and standardization, often marginalizing local expertise.

 

In this piece, I provide examples from various industries to illustrate the patterns of inequality and systemic exploitation. The strategies of outsourcing, standardization, financialization, digitalization, and self-regulation are central to these examples.

 

1. Outsourcing: The Global Displacement of Labor

 

Historical Parallel – Enclosures and exploitation
The enclosure movement in England violently displaced farmers and craftspeople from their traditional livelihoods, and forced them into wage labor. This early form of outsourcing centralized economic activity in urban factories, often at the expense of rural communities. Vulnerable groups, such as women and children, were particularly exploited in cottage industries under appalling conditions. The transition was marked not only by economic restructuring but also by brutal legal measures to discipline the newly created proletariat. The blood legislation enacted from the late 15th century imposed severe punishments on those uprooted by the enclosures and unable to find work. These dispossessed individuals were often treated as voluntary criminals for their inability to sustain themselves under non-existent conditions. Laws under monarchs like Henry VIII and Edward VI subjected them to whipping, branding, enslavement, and even execution if they failed to conform to the new order (Marx, 2018 [1872]).

Fast forward to the 21^st century’s global outsourcing, where vulnerable labor pools, particularly in developing regions, are similarly coerced into precarious work arrangements. In both cases, the systemic exploitation of marginalized workers is justified and enforced through legal and institutional frameworks designed to benefit capital accumulation.

 

Modern Examples

Dutch Meat-Processing Industry
In the Netherlands, temporary labor agencies exploit regulatory gaps to maximize profit, among other sectors in the meat-processing industry. Here, migrant workers face arbitrary dismissals, denial of benefits, and unsafe conditions, which saves their employers millions of euros (Tunali and Kuiper, 2024).

 

The same goes for global outsourcing trends, which exploit vulnerable labor pools to minimize costs while externalizing risks (Le Coze, 2017).

 

Global Supply Chains and Regulatory Arbitrage
High-wage jobs in developed nations are outsourced to regions with lower costs and weaker protections, such as:

• Poor safety standards have led to disasters like the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, where garments were manufactured (Le Coze, 2017);
• Aircraft maintenance is outsourced to low-regulation regions, where cost-cutting undermines the quality of skilled labor (Le Coze, 2017);

• A notable example is the cobalt supply chain discussed in Eyal Press’ Dirty Work (Press, 2021). Tech manufacturing obscures exploitative labor conditions. Cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo—often under hazardous and inhumane conditions—is an input which fuels the tech industry. Ethical oversight and adaptability to local realities are sacrificed, as corporations focus on compliance rather than addressing systemic exploitation.

 

Outsourcing perpetuates global inequalities by creating precarious conditions for workers in developing nations while reducing job stability in wealthier countries.

 

2. Standardization: Efficiency Versus Adaptability in Global Systems

Standardization plays a critical role in creating efficiency and control within global supply chains. Historically rooted in industrial practices such as Taylorism and the scientific management principles of F.W. Taylor, standardization has evolved into a core component of modern safety management and operational frameworks. However, its implementation reveals both opportunities and challenges, particularly when navigating unexpected events or crises.

 

Historical Roots: From Mechanized Repetition to Bureaucratic Control

During the Industrial Revolution, the adoption of mechanized factory systems replaced craft-based production with repetitive tasks. This approach, which optimized efficiency through hierarchical control and process specialization, diminished the autonomy of skilled workers, who were then treated as cogs in a larger bureaucratic machine. While this approach boosted productivity, it also disconnected workers from the broader context of their labor, leading to alienation and a loss of adaptability (Marx, 2018 [1872]).

 

Modern Standardization: Global Supply Chains and Safety Management

Today, standardization manifests in the global alignment of processes, skills, and outputs. Frameworks like ISO certifications ensure that work procedures are uniform across regions, which allows companies to streamline production while maintaining predictable quality and safety outcomes. For example:

1. Standardized operating models in the Norwegian Oil and Gas sector were implemented to improve safety, planning, and operational efficiency. By centralizing decision-making and rotating personnel across installations, the model aimed to create a unified company culture and ensure consistent safety practices (Antonsen et al, 2012).
2. Uniform standards for food packaging and distribution create efficiencies but often disregard local variations, such as storage challenges in tropical climates. This rigidity mirrors the loss of adaptability seen during the rise of factory systems.

 

Benefits of Standardization: Predictability and Coordination

Standardization supports global integration by ensuring uniformity in safety and operational procedures. Benefits include:

• Detailed operating procedures allow companies to maintain control over complex, globalized systems.
• Common frameworks are used to enforce adherence to safety regulations and minimize errors in routine tasks.
• Personnel rotations and shared practices promote cross-organizational learning. For instance, oil rigs using standardized procedures benefit from rotating staff who bring diverse operational insights (Antonsen et al, 2012).

 

Challenges: Reduced Flexibility and Crisis Response

Despite its advantages, excessive standardization can hinder an organization’s ability to adapt during crises or manage unique local challenges. This is particularly evident in high-risk industries like oil and gas, where rigid protocols may conflict with the need for situational improvisation. For example:

1. Rotating personnel across installations reduces the depth of site-specific expertise. In crises requiring intimate knowledge of an installation’s unique systems, the lack of local competence can jeopardize safety and efficiency.
2. Offshore workers in standardized systems often describe their roles as passive, reduced to executing predefined tasks without autonomy. This dynamic echoes the alienation observed in Taylorist factory systems and can demotivate workers, ultimately compromising safety.
3. Standardization prioritizes planning for predictable scenarios but often fails to account for improvisational skills needed in emergencies. As seen in the Mann Gulch wildfire disaster, crisis management often depends on the ability to adapt creatively and quickly, a skill eroded by over-standardization.

 

Balancing standardization and flexibility

The safety and efficiency of global systems depend on achieving a balance between standardization and adaptability. Companies can foster this balance by:

• Standards should provide a framework within which situational adaptations are allowed. For instance, offshore teams could retain some decision-making authority for localized operations, enhancing their responsiveness during anomalies.
• Rotating personnel between sites can increase organizational knowledge, but preserving site-specific expertise is equally important. Companies should prioritize mixed approaches, combining local specialization with global standardization.
• Organizations must ensure that employees are equipped with both technical skills and the ability to adapt creatively under pressure. For example, simulations and cross-disciplinary training can strengthen improvisational capabilities.

 

Although standardization is a powerful tool for achieving efficiency, over-standardization risks alienating workers, stifling creativity, and undermining an organization’s ability to respond effectively to crises. Companies are advised to strive for systems that balance the predictability of standardization with the resilience provided by local adaptability and human ingenuity.

 

3. Financialization: Profit Over People

 

Historical Parallel: Detachment of Capital from Production

The prioritization of profits over people is not a new phenomenon. During early industrialization, capital increasingly shifted focus from labor (variable capital) to machinery and infrastructure (constant capital), as noted by Marx in Das Kapital (Marx, 2018 [1872]). This transition commodified resources and labor, emphasizing productivity and profits while marginalizing workforce well-being. Speculative ventures grew increasingly detached from the realities of production and the lives of workers, setting a precedent for the financialized practices of today.

 

Modern Examples: Meat-Processing, Digital Platforms, and Food Delivery

The rise of financialization amplifies these historical patterns, detaching corporate strategies from productive investments and employee welfare. Contemporary examples highlight its effects:

• Migrant Labor in Meat Processing: Temporary labor agencies in the Dutch meat industry exemplify the financialized commodification of labor. Migrant workers are employed under precarious conditions, often fired on the spot to avoid paying wages or benefits (Tunali and Kuiper, 2024). These practices prioritize cost-cutting and flexibility for employers while undermining job stability and worker protections.
• Food Delivery Platforms During the Pandemic: The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the exploitative effects of financialization in digital platforms. Food delivery services experienced unprecedented demand, but workers faced unsafe conditions, inadequate protections, and low wages. While these platforms thrived, extracting profits for shareholders, delivery workers bore the risks, illustrating how financialized strategies prioritize shareholder returns over worker welfare (Meyer-Ahuja & Nachtwey, 2019).

 

Financialization: Inequality and Disposable Labor

Financialization magnifies economic inequality by emphasizing value extraction over value creation. Firms increasingly view labor as a disposable cost, leveraging precarious work arrangements, outsourcing, and short-term profitability strategies at the expense of long-term sustainability. This trend echoes historical patterns but is exacerbated in today’s globalized and deregulated markets, where financial imperatives dominate organizational decision-making (Batt and Appelbaum, 2013).

To challenge this trajectory, future practices and policies must prioritize sustainable enterprise models that balance profitability with equitable employment and stakeholder well-being. Only then can labor be reintegrated as a cornerstone of productive and ethical economic systems.

 

Digitalization - Automation and risk decoupling

Historical context – Mechanized agriculture and centralized decision-making

The mechanization of agriculture provides a historical framework for examining the transformative effects of digitalization. It centralized decision-making, reduced manual labor, and significantly increased efficiency. However, this shift detached workers from direct engagement in production processes, resulting in environmental degradation and worker alienation, as noted by Marx (2018 [1872]). This historical precedent illustrates how technological advances, while beneficial, can create unintended consequences for workers and ecosystems.

 

Modern case studies – Digital platforms and ethical challenges

1. Digital platforms have revolutionized operational processes in industries like petroleum extraction, enhancing efficiency and safety monitoring. However, these systems heighten the risks of cascading failures due to over-reliance on automated decision-making. Additionally, workers remain largely excluded from critical decision-making processes, eroding their sense of control and agency within their roles.
2. Algorithm-driven platforms such as Uber and Wolt have expanded rapidly, but often they do so at the expense of worker stability. By classifying employees as independent contractors, these platforms bypass traditional labor protections. This can lead to precarity and job insecurity. This change is comparable to the psychosocial risks identified in modern digital workplaces, including stress, isolation, and diminished worker rights.
3. The collaboration between Google and China on the Dragonfly project underscores the ethical complexities of digitalization. While advancing surveillance and censorship technologies, the initiative conflicted with Google's core values of empowerment and transparency. This led to significant employee discontent, ethical alienation, and reputational risks for the organization (Press, 2021). Such cases highlight the tension between technological advancements and corporate accountability.

 

What we can learn from digitalization trends

Digitalization reflects historical trends of prioritizing efficiency and productivity over worker engagement and ethical considerations. The adoption of robotics, AI, and digital platforms frequently amplifies the divide between decision-makers and laborers. While these systems streamline operations, they often do so at the cost of human-centric values, such as accountability, autonomy, and inclusivity. Moreover, emerging digital risks, such as privacy violations, job insecurity, and psychosocial strains, compound these challenges (Milea, 2023).

 

4. Self-Regulation - A license for exploitation?

 

Historical parallel - Gang labor systems

In 19^th-century England, gangmasters outsourced agricultural labor management, resulting in exploitative conditions for women and children. Self-regulation allowed unchecked abuse, leaving vulnerable workers at the mercy of profit-driven overseers (Marx, 2018 [1872]). This historical example highlights how self-regulation can prioritize profit over protection, creating systems where exploitation flourishes.

 

Modern examples - Temporary labor agencies and gig economy platforms

Today, self-regulation mirrors these historical systems in multiple industries:

• Workers in the meat-processing industry face precarious conditions under self-regulated agencies that bypass enforceable protections (Tunali & Kuiper, 2024).
• Gig economy platforms rely on voluntary corporate standards, avoid enforceable labor laws and leave workers vulnerable to exploitation without collective bargaining rights.
• In both sectors, cost-cutting practices drive inadequate safety measures, exposing workers to preventable risks.

 

Neoliberal ideology and the erosion of oversight

The rise of neoliberalism has shifted the regulatory landscape by promoting deregulation and self-regulation. This ideology has significantly eroded technical expertise within regulatory agencies, replacing in-depth safety analyses with superficial compliance checks. These checks are often based on inadequately validated corporate standards, undermining the robustness of oversight systems. As a result, accountability is diminished, enabling environments where exploitation can thrive.

 

Examples of exploitation enabled by self-regulation

• Subsidiary companies that manage non-medical services like laundry and logistics in hospitals frequently employ migrant workers under exploitative conditions, such as low pay and a lack of job security (Meyer-Ahuja & Nachtwey, 2021). The absence of rigorous oversight under self-regulation parallels historical gang labor systems, allowing these practices to persist unchecked. Despite this, workers continue to resist, organizing campaigns to combat outsourcing and demand accountability.
• Workers, including children, endure hazardous conditions to mine cobalt for global tech industries in the Congo. Self-regulation in supply chains permits the prioritization of production efficiency over worker safety and rights, perpetuating systemic abuse.
• Cost-cutting in privately managed prisons has resulted in chronic understaffing, unsafe environments, and systemic mistreatment of inmates and staff. Self-regulation in this sector further enables profit maximization at the expense of human rights and safety.
• In the construction industry, self-regulation often means cutting corners to prioritize return on investment (ROI). This leads to unsafe working conditions, and workers are exposed to preventable risks and injuries.

 

The structural flaws of self-regulation in safety

Self-regulation fosters conditions where safety measures are diluted, focusing more on corporate compliance with voluntary standards than addressing structural hazards. Across industries, marginalized and vulnerable workers face increased risks under these frameworks. Without enforceable accountability mechanisms, self-regulation continues to echo the exploitative practices of historical gang labor systems, leaving workers exposed to modern forms of systemic abuse.

 

5. Conclusion - Addressing systemic exploitation

 

The strategies of outsourcing, standardization, financialization, digitalization, and self-regulation perpetuate a historical legacy of exploitation. To address these systemic issues, it helps to:

• Strengthen oversight and enforceable regulations to counter self-regulation’s failures.
• Collaborate globally to establish fair labor standards.
• Advocate for collective action, drawing on worker movements and modern campaigns for labor rights.

 

Acknowledging historical parallels by itself does nothing, of course. The open question is how society can work toward a more equitable global economy that prioritizes human dignity over profit. Exposing systemic exploitation is only the first step. Asking for institutional change, although it sometimes feels futile, is the only way available to change. This often goes step-by-step instead of in great “paradigm shifts”.

 

Sources:

- Antonsen, S., Skarholt, K., Ringstad, A.J. (2012), “The role of standardization in safety management – A case study of a major oil & gas company”, in: Safety Science, Vol. 50, Iss. 10, December 2012, pp. 2001-2009.

- Batt, R.L., Appelbaum, E. (2013), The impact of financialization on management and

 employment outcomes, Upjohn Institute Working Paper, No. 13-191, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, Kalamazoo, MI.

- Hart, S.M. (2010), “Self-regulation, Corporate Social Responsibility, and the Business Case: Do they Work in Achieving Workplace Equality and Safety?”, in: Journal of Business Ethics (2010) 92: pp. 585–600.

- Heerikhuizen, B. van (2015), Classical Sociological Theory, Massive Online Open Course, Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam.

- Le Coze, J.C. (2017), “Globalization and high-risk systems”, in: Policy and Practice in Health and Safety, Vol. 15, Issue 1, pp. 57-81.

- Marx, K. (2018 [1872]), Das Kapital, Köln: Anaconda Verlag GmbH.

- Mayer-Ahuja, N., Nachtwey, O. (eds.., 2021), Verkannte Leistungsträger:innen - Berichte aus der Klassengesellschaft, Berlin: Suhrkamp.

- Milea, A. (2023), “Digitalization of Work and Its Impact on Worker Safety and Health”, in: Moldovan, L., Gligor, A. (eds.), The 17th International Conference Interdisciplinarity in Engineering,

 Inter-Eng 2023 Conference Proceedings Volume 2, Cham: Springer.

- Press, E. (2021), Dirty Work – Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

- Tunali, T., Kuiper, M. (2024), “Uitzendbureaus ontslaan arbeidsmigranten onterecht om miljoenen te besparen, zegt de Arbeidsinspectie”, in: NRC, 19 November 2024.