Globalization Is Everywhere, and Everywhere a Mixed Blessing

It took Fastrak and a seriously upset stomach to push me to an appreciation of the fine points of globalization.

As a hi-tech aficionado from the San Francisco Bay Area, I know about the global reach of technology and multinationals' drive to envelop new markets. But the last place I expected to see the robot toll collectors was on the broad, landscaped highway to town from Kuala Lumpur International Airport -- after all, we just got the contraptions a few months ago back home.

A few days later, when local microbes made themselves comfortable in my digestive tract, I raced for a remedy at a familiar refuge that seemed to be on every corner: 7-11. After that, I passed on such specialties as nasi goreng and kari ayam for the safer McDonald's -- although I can't remember the last time I ate at one back home. These were packed with locals, many of whom perceived eating and working at the western establishment a sign of status.

But it is the poor who benefit most from globalization, according to Goran Lindahl, special advisor to the UN Secretary General for the Global Compact, speaking at a regional business conference in Hong Kong. They gain because jobs are created, and mobility and technology are improved.

But just a peek beneath the surface of Malaysia's shiny high rises and ambitious "Multimedia Supercorridor" reveals that not all the poor are better off.

In the microchip plants of such companies as Motorola, Texas Instruments, Seagate and Harris Semiconductors, young women from poor rural areas of Malaysia spend long hours staring through microscopes configuring miniature circuit boards. They do it until their vision begins to quiver and blur.

These women -- about 90 percent of the workers in these factories are women -- were chosen because they exhibited a high tolerance for the task, employers say. But Irene Fernandez, founder of the 10-year-old Tenaganita (Women's Spirit), thinks women are hired because they are too docile to protest against the damaged vision that often results from the intense work.

Over the more than 20 years that Fernandez and others have worked to establish unions in Malaysia's electronics plants, they have heard complaints of health problems ranging from breathing difficulties and hair loss to miscarriages and stillbirths.

Fernandez suspects all are the product of exposure to chemicals or radiation, but without systematic monitoring, her organization -- and doctors -- are helpless to demonstrate any connections. Another obstacle is that sick workers are paid a lump sum in exchange for a promise not to take legal action, she says -- typically $26,000, a sizable sum for a worker paid $132 per month.

Such abuses have been well documented across Asia, and there seems little chance of any change.

Yet at the business conference, some comments from a surprising source -- Prime Minister of Thailand Thaksin Shinawatra -- offered some distant hope.

He warned that Asia's share "in the value chain of producing goods of the world" will face greater pressure to produce at ever-lower prices, "pitting our farmers and unskilled labor against each other in an unending and ruinous price war."

He went on to say that the cycle of financial crisis and devaluation is actually brought about by the competition to sell human labor and skill at the lowest price. As the next leader of the World Trade Organization, Shinawatra is in a position to act on his understandings.

He has suggested that Asian countries, including his own, reject dysfunctional patterns of dealing with multinationals. By referring to all of Asia collectively, Shinawatra is asking nations in the region to band together to prohibit foreign companies from depleting their resources and then moving on -- just what is happening in the current downturn as many companies explore even cheaper labor markets.