Member Stories: China Factory Conditions

We asked Charlie Lang, President, Global Supply Chain Solutions and former VP WW Supply Chain Management at Coors . . . "Charlie, what's your favorite story about working internationally?"

Charlie's answer: I was in negotiation for a new [Coors beer] producer in China and toured a new plant with the plant manager. The site had some of the most deplorable conditions I've ever seen. The workers were not protected; there was no sense of security or sanctity about them.

I asked him, "What happens if one of your workers gets hurt?" And he said, "I get rid of them. I get another one."

There was no OSHA, no sort of moral outrage; it was just a simple matter of - this is what happens. Over the next six months, as we went through the process of building our contract, I was able to convince him that, from an economic standpoint it made little sense to get a new worker and a lot more sense to protect people from being hurt - to provide safety shoes and eye and hearing protection, gloves, and things of that nature (really basic things that we would expect here in the U.S). That it costs him more to train new people to replace the ones who had been hurt, rather than actually protecting them.

Luckily, the economic argument worked well for him - once he realized he could make more money by sustaining and training and protecting those people. He loved that.

Had I approached him from a "Oh no, we don't do it this way in the U.S. You know, this is morally wrong." He would just have said "We don't want to do business with you, you're a pain in the neck."

What I learned: If I had done more talking than listening, and had arrived at this in a more forceful way, I doubt that he would have done business with us.

Comments

[Bill Warner]

This is typical of these emerging economies. Yet, we inist on taxing our corporations to death and burying them in costly regulations in order to keep manufacturing in the US. I am not advocating going to the extreme you cite in China, but your example is one of many illustrating that it does cost money to produce high quality products that are safe. China, over the last several months, has exported some very dangerous products. I guess the answer is to stop doing business with them and buying Chinese manufactured products.

Bill Warner