MINIMUM WAGE AND DISCRIMINATION 最低工资与歧视 A look at the racist history of the minimum wage. 最低工资中的种族歧视历史一瞥 作者:Walter Williams @ 2017-02-08 译者:龟海海 校对:龙泉 来源:Frontpage Mag,http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265734/minimum-wage-and-discrimination-walter-williams There is little question in most academic research that increases in the minimum wage lead to increases in unemployment. The debatable issue is the magnitude of the increase. An issue not often included in minimum wage debates is the substitution effects of minimum wage increases. The substitution effect might explain why Business for a Fair Minimum Wage, a national network of business owners and executives, argues for higher minimum wages. Let's look at substitution effects in general. 提高最低工资会引起失业率上升，这一观点在大多数学术研究中都没多大争议。争议在于提高最低工资所能引起的失业率增加的幅度。一项最低工资辩论中不怎么讨论的议题是其增长所引发的“替代效应”。“替代效应”解释了为什么“商界支持合理最低工资”这个全国性企业主和管理者网站，也会主张更高的最低工资。那我们今天就讲一讲什么是“替代效应”。 When the price of anything rises, people seek substitutes and measures to economize. When gasoline prices rise, people seek to economize on the usage of gas by buying smaller cars. If the price of sugar rises, people seek cheaper sugar substitutes. If prices of goods in one store rise, people search for other stores. This last example helps explain why some businessmen support higher minimum wages. If they could impose higher labor costs on their less efficient competition, it might help drive them out of business. That would enable firms that survive to charge higher prices and earn greater profits. 当任何东西的价格上涨时，人们会寻求其他更实惠的替代品。当汽油价格上涨时，人们通过购买小型汽车（小排量）来节省油耗。如果一种糖的价格上涨，人们寻求更便宜的糖来替代。如果一家商店的商品价格上涨，人们寻找其他商店。最后一个例子有助于解释为什么有些商人支持更高的最低工资。如果可以对低效率的竞争对手施以更高的劳动力成本，这就可能使这些企业歇业。之后存活下来的公司可以提高产品价格并赚得更多利润。 There's a more insidious substitution effect of higher minimum wages. You see it by putting yourself in the place of a businessman who has to pay at least the minimum wage to anyone he hires. Say that you are hiring typists. There are some who can type 40 words per minute and others, equal in every other respect, who can type 80 words per minute. Whom would you hire? I'm guessing you'd hire the more highly skilled. 更高的最低工资线还有隐蔽的“替代效应”。你从商人的角度就不难看出，无论如何他必须支付最低工资给所有他雇用的人。假如：你正在招聘打字员。有些人可以每分钟输入40个单词，在其他方面条件相同的情况下，有人每分钟可以输入80个单词。你会雇佣谁？ 我猜你会雇佣技艺精湛的那个。 Thus, one effect of the minimum wage is discrimination against the employment of lower-skilled workers. In some places, the minimum wage is $15 an hour. But if a lower-skilled worker could offer to work for, say, $8 an hour, you might hire him. In addition to discrimination against lower-skilled workers, the minimum wage denies them the chance of sharpening their skills and ultimately earning higher wages. The most effective form of training for most of us is on-the-job training. 因此，最低工资的影响之一是对低技能工人的歧视。在某些地方，最低工资是每小时15美元。但是，例如一个低技能工人愿意以每小时8美元为你工作，你可能会雇用他。除了对低技能工人的歧视外，最低工资阻碍了他们提升自己的技能并最终获得更高的工资的机会。对我们大多数人来说，最有效的培训形式是在工作中学习。 An even more insidious substitution effect of minimum wages can be seen from a few quotations. During South Africa's apartheid era, racist unions, which would never accept a black member, were the major supporters of minimum wages for blacks. In 1925, the South African Economic and Wage Commission said, "The method would be to fix a minimum rate for an occupation or craft so high that no Native would be likely to be employed." 最低工资更隐蔽的“替代效应”可以从几个引证中看出。在南非的种族隔离时代，种族主义者的工会绝对不会接受黑人成员，而这些人正是黑人最低工资的主要支持者。在1925年，南非经济和工资委员会说，“该方法将为某些职业（低技能）固定最低工资，技艺精湛者工资非常高，以至于土著几乎找不到工作。” Gert Beetge, secretary of the racist Building Workers' Union, complained, "There is no job reservation left in the building industry, and in the circumstances, I support the rate for the job (minimum wage) as the second-best way of protecting our white artisans." "Equal pay for equal work" became the rallying slogan of the South African white labor movement. These laborers knew that if employers were forced to pay black workers the same wages as white workers, there'd be reduced incentive to hire blacks. 种族主义的建筑工人联盟秘书Gert Beetge抱怨：“建筑业没有工作职位空缺，在这种情况下，我支持建筑业施行（最低工资），作为对白人工匠们最好的保护措施。“同工同酬”成为南非白人工人运动的口号。这些工人知道，如果雇主被迫向黑人工匠支付与白人工匠相同的工资，那么就会减少雇用黑人的动机。 South Africans were not alone in their minimum wage conspiracy against blacks. After a bitter 1909 strike by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen in the U.S., an arbitration board decreed that blacks and whites were to be paid equal wages. Union members expressed their delight, saying, "If this course of action is followed by the company and the incentive for employing the Negro thus removed, the strike will not have been in vain." 南非人用最低工资对付黑人的阴谋并非孤例。在经历了美国火车司炉工与引擎师兄弟会1909年一次罢工所带来的痛苦之后，仲裁委员会颁布仲裁令：黑人和白人应支付同等水平工资。工会成员表达了他们的喜悦，说：“如果公司遵循这一仲裁令，并且雇用黑人的动机便不复存在，罢工就没有白费。” Our nation's first minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had racist motivation. During its legislative debate, its congressional supporters made such statements as, "That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country." During hearings, American Federation of Labor President William Green complained, "Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates." 我国第一个最低工资法，1931年《戴維斯-培根法》，也有种族主义动机。在其立法辩论期间，国会中的支持者发表了如下声明：“承包商运送廉价的有色人种劳动力，把他们安置在小棚屋里，正是这类劳动力在与全国各地的白人劳动者竞争。”在听证会上，美国劳工联合会主席威廉·格林抱怨说：“有色人种的劳动力正在谋求将工资率拉低到令人沮丧的水平。” Today's stated intentions behind the support of minimum wages are nothing like yesteryear's. However, intentions are irrelevant. In the name of decency, we must examine the effects. 如今的支持最低工资背后的意图与往昔截然不同。 然而，意图是无关紧要的。为体面起见，我们必须仔细考虑其影响。 （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

A Case against Child Labor Prohibitions 对禁用童工的一个反对意见 作者:Benjamin Powell @ 2014-07-29 译者:Eartha(@王小贰_Eartha) 校对:辉格(@whigzhou) 来源:Cato Institute,http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/case-against-child-labor-prohibitions Halima is an 11-year-old girl who clips loose threads off of Hanes underwear in a Bangladeshi factory.1 She works about eight hours a day, six days per week. She has to process 150 pairs of underwear an hour. At work she feels “very tired and exhausted,” and sometimes falls asleep standing up. She makes 53 cents a day for her efforts. Make no mistake, it is a rough life. 哈丽玛是个十一岁的小女孩，在孟加拉的工厂里给Hanes牌内衣修线头，每天工作八小时，每周六天。① 她每小时需要处理150套内衣，工作时觉得“非常劳累”，有时站着就睡着了。而这样的努力工作每天能换来53美分。毫无疑问，这种生活非常艰苦。 Any decent person’s heart would go out to Halima and other child employees like her. Unfortunately, all too often, people’s emotional reaction lead them to advocate policies that will harm the very children they intend to help. Provisions against child labor are part of the International Labor Organization’s core labor standards. Anti-sweatshop groups almost universally condemn child labor and call for laws prohibiting child employment or boycotting products made with child labor. 任何一个正派人的内心都会对像哈丽玛这样的童工充满同情。但遗憾的是，人们的情绪化反应常常指引他们支持错误的政策，这反而会伤害那些他们原本想帮助的孩子。禁用童工条款是国际劳工组织的核心劳工标准的一部分。反对血汗工厂的团体几乎一致谴责使用童工的行为，呼吁通过禁止雇佣童工的法律或是抵制使用童工生产的商品。 In my recent book, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, I argue that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement agitates for would harm workers and that the process of economic development, in which sweatshops play an important role, is the best way to raise wages and improve working conditions. Child labor, although the most emotionally charged aspect of sweatshops, is not an exception to this analysis. 在我的新书《走出贫困：全球经济中的血汗工厂》中，我认为反血汗工厂运动的许多诉求将会损害工人们的利益，经济发展才是提高工资与改善工作环境的最好办法，而血汗工厂在其中发挥着重要作用。虽然在情感上，雇佣童工是血汗工厂最受世人谴责的方面，但它在上述分析中也不例外。 We should desire to see an end to child labor, but it has to come through a process that generates better opportunities for the children—not from legislative mandates that prevent children and their families from taking the best option available to them. Children work because their families are desperately poor, and the meager addition to the family income they can contribute is often necessary for survival. Banning child labor through trade regulations or governmental prohibitions often simply forces the children into less-desirable alternatives. When U.S. activists started pressuring Bangladesh into eliminating child labor, the results were disastrous. 我们期望看到童工的终结，但是这需要一个过程，要能为孩子们提供更好的机会，而不是通过法令阻止儿童和他们的家庭做出最佳的可行选择。儿童去工作是因为他们的家庭陷入了极度贫困，尽管收入微薄，但这对于整个家庭的生存来说通常是必要的。通过商业法规或政府管制来禁止雇佣童工常常只是在逼迫儿童们进入更糟糕的环境。美国的活动家们开始对孟加拉施压要求消除童工之后，显现的结果是灾难性的。 Effects of Child Labor Bans 童工禁令的效果 In 1993 Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Child Labor Deterrence Act, which would have banned imports from countries employing children. In response, that fall Bangladeshi garment companies let go approximately 50,000 children. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “It is widely thought that most of them have found employment in other garment factories, in smaller, unregistered subcontracting garment workshops, or in other sectors.”2 1993年，爱荷华州的民主党参议员汤姆·哈金提出了《童工慑止法》（the Child Labor Deterrence Act），意在禁止从雇佣童工的国家进口商品。那年秋天，孟加拉服装制造业对此作出反应，解雇了约50,000名童工。据美国劳工部的信息，“普遍认为，这些被解雇的儿童大部分在其他服装工厂，更小的、未经注册的转包作坊或是其他行业里找到了工作。”② That makes the introduction of the bill seem simply ineffective. The Department of Labor is sugarcoating the situation. Paul Krugman summarizes what happened more bluntly: “The direct result was that Bangladeshi textile factories stopped employing children. But did the children go back to school? Did they return to happy homes? Not according to Oxfam, which found that the displaced child workers ended up in even worse jobs, or on the streets—and that a significant number were forced into prostitution.”3 提出这部法案看起来毫无作用。劳工部的说法是在粉饰现实。保罗·克鲁格曼作了更直白的总结：“直接结果是孟加拉的纺织工厂停止了雇佣童工，但是这些孩子就此回到学校了吗？他们回到快乐的家里了吗？至少根据乐施会的资料，并没有。他们发现这些被解雇的童工最终找了更加糟糕的工作，或是流落街头——其中相当多的孩子被迫出卖身体。”③ Based on the information they have, families tend to choose the best available job for their children. Taking that option away does not eliminate the necessity of work; it forces them to take a less-desirable job. As repulsive as a child working in a sweatshop may be, it is not nearly as repulsive as a child forced into prostitution through the actions of unthinking Western activists. 基于所拥有的信息，每个家庭都想为自己的孩子在可选职业中挑出最好的。剥夺了那个选项并不等于消除了工作的需求，反而逼迫他们选择一个没那么好的工作。一个儿童在血汗工厂里工作，这确实让人反感，但这远远比不上看着一个孩子因为不动脑子的西方活动家而被迫出卖身体来的让人厌恶。 The Bangladesh story is a dramatic one, but it illustrates the general point that when children lose factory jobs they find less desirable jobs to replace the jobs they lost. In countries where sweatshops locate, child labor is often the norm, and most of the children work in less remunerative sectors with fewer opportunities for advancement than manufacturing, such as agriculture or domestic services. 孟加拉的故事有些极端，但它展示了一个要点：当儿童们失去了工厂里的工作之后，他们会寻找稍次的工作作为替代。在那些血汗工厂所处的国家里，雇佣童工是个惯例，并且大部分儿童工作的行业，如农业与国内服务业，酬劳没有制造业那么多，晋升机会也比较少。 In 2003 the World Bank measured the percentage of children aged 10 to 14 that were working in most countries.4 As Table 1 shows, child labor is not uncommon. Rates of child labor range from a high of nearly 27 percent of children in Bangladesh to a low of 3.3 percent in Costa Rica.5 2003年，世界银行调查了大部分国家中10至14岁儿童中童工的比例。④如表一所示，童工并不罕见，比例高可至孟加拉的几近27%，低的如哥斯达黎加的3.3%。⑤ The World Bank also collects data on the economic sectors in which children are employed. Figure 1 presents the distribution of employment of economically active children between the ages of 7 and 14 by sector.6 世界银行也从雇佣童工的各个经济部门收集数据。表一依照经济部门展示了7-14岁年龄段中参与经济活动的儿童在各行业中的分布情况。⑥ In seven of the nine countries for which data exists, most children were employed in agriculture, often by a wide margin.7 In the two exceptions, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, the leading sector employing children was service. India had the highest proportion of children employed in manufacturing, and there it was a little over 14 percent. 有数据可查的九个国家中，七个国家的大部分儿童受雇于农业部门，远超其他行业。⑦ 哥斯达黎加与多米尼加共和国是两个例外，雇佣童工最多的是服务业。印度制造业雇佣童工的比例在各国中最高，略超过14%。 Protests against sweatshops that use child labor implicitly assume that ending child labor in sweatshops by taking away the option to work in a factory will, on net, reduce child labor. Evidence on child labor in countries that have sweatshops indicates that is wrong. It is not a few “bad apple” firms exploiting children in factories. Child labor is common. Employment in agriculture is not necessarily safer, either. A 1997 child labor survey showed that 12 percent of children working in agriculture reported injuries, compared with 9 percent of those who worked in manufacturing.8 对雇佣童工的血汗工厂进行抗议，这种行为暗含了一种预设，即通过除去儿童在工厂工作的选择从而终结血汗工厂里的童工现象，童工数量就会出现净减少。从拥有血汗工厂的国家所获取的证据显示，这是错的。真相并不是个别“害群之马”在工厂里剥削儿童。雇佣童工的现象是普遍的。而且，在农地里工作也并不必然更加安全。一份1997年的童工调查显示，农业部门有12%的童工曾遭伤害，制造业则是9%。⑧ Child Labor and Economic Development 童工与经济发展 The thought of Third World children toiling in factories to produce garments for us in the developed world to wear is appalling, at least in part because child labor is virtually nonexistent in the United States and the rest of the more developed world.9 Virtually nowhere in the developed world do kids toil long hours every week in a factory in a manner that prevents them from obtaining schooling. 第三世界的儿童们在工厂里辛苦劳动，为我们这些发达地区的人生产服装——这种念头让人惊骇，至少部分原因在于童工事实上并不存在于美国及其他发达地区。⑨ 事实上，没有发达国家会允许儿童们每周长时间地在工厂里辛苦工作，以至于无法接受学校教育。 Children typically worked throughout human history, either long hours in agriculture or in factories once the industrial revolution emerged. The question is, why don’t kids work today? Rich countries do have laws against child labor, but so do many poor countries. In Costa Rica the legal working age is 15, but an ILO survey found 43 percent of working children were under the legal age.10 纵观人类历史，儿童其实一直都在工作，不管是长时间在农地里劳作，还是工业革命之后进入工厂工作。真正该问的问题是：为何今天儿童不工作了？富裕国家确实有禁止童工的法律，但是很多贫穷的国家也有。哥斯达黎加的法定工作年龄是15岁，但是国际劳工组织的一项调查发现有43%的童工低于法定年龄。⑩ Similarly, in the United States, Massachusetts passed the first restriction on child labor in 1842. However, that law and other states’ laws affected child labor nationally very little.11 By one estimate, more than 25 percent of males between the ages of 10 and 15 participated in the labor force in 1900.12 Another study of both boys and girls in that age group estimated that more than 18 percent of them were employed in 1900.13 Economist Carolyn Moehling also found little evidence that minimum-age laws for manufacturing implemented between 1880 and 1910 contributed to the decline in child labor.14 同样，在美国，马萨诸塞州在1842年最先对童工加以限制。然而，那部法律连同其他州的法律对于全国范围内的童工情况影响甚微。⑾ 有人估算过，1900年10-15岁的男性中超过25%的人参与工作.⑿ 另一项研究将同年龄段的女性也纳入了估算范围，结果发现1900年有超过18%的儿童参与了工作。⒀ 经济学家卡洛琳·莫和林也找不到证据证明1880至1910年间针对制造业实施的最低工资法起到了减少童工的作用。⒁ Similarly, economists Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz examined the period between 1910 and 1939 and found that child labor laws and compulsory school-attendance laws could explain at most 5 percent of the increase in high school enrollment.15 The United States did not enact a national law limiting child labor until the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938. By that time, the U.S. average per capita income was more than $10,200 (in 2010 dollars). 经济学家克劳迪亚·戈尔丁与拉里·卡茨仔细调查了1910至1939年间的情况，发现童工相关的法律与强制入学的法律最多只能解释5%的高中入学率增长幅度。⒂ 直到1938年《公平劳动标准法》通过，美国才有了全国性的限制童工的法律。在那时，美国人均收入已超过10,200美元（以2010年美元计算）。 Furthermore, child labor was defined much more narrowly when today’s wealthy countries first prohibited it. Massachusetts’s law limited children who were under 12 years old to no more than 10 hours of work per day. Belgium (1886) and France (1847) prohibited only children under the age of 12 from working. Germany (1891) set the minimum working age at 13.16 此外，如今的富裕国家当年第一次出台法律禁止童工时，其定义要比现在狭窄的多。马萨诸塞州法禁止12岁以下儿童每天工作超过10小时。比利时（1886年）与法国（1847年）只禁止12岁以下儿童工作。德国（1891年）将最低工作年龄限定在13岁。⒃ England, which passed its first enforceable child labor law in 1833, merely set the minimum age for textile work at nine years old. When these countries were developing, they simply did not put in place the type of restrictions on child labor that activists demand for Third World countries today. Binding legal restrictions came only after child labor had mostly disappeared. 英格兰在1833年通过了第一部童工法，将纺织业的最低工作年龄仅仅设在9岁。当这些国家处于发展阶段，他们通过的限制标准可比不上今天这些活动家对第三世界国家所要求的。有效的法律约束只有在童工几近消失之后才会到来。 The main reason children do not work in wealthy countries is precisely because they are wealthy. The relationship between child labor and income is striking. Using the same World Bank data on child labor participation rates we can observe how child labor varies with per capita income. Figure 2 divides countries into five groups based on their level of per capita income adjusted for purchasing power parity. In the richest two fifths of countries, all of whose incomes exceed $12,000 in 2010 dollars, child labor is virtually nonexistent. 富裕国家的儿童不工作的主要原因就是他们比较富有。童工比例与收入之间的相关性是显著的。通过前文提到的世界银行关于童工比例的数据，我们可以观察到童工比例是如何随人均收入的变化而改变的。经购买力平价调整后，图2按照人均收入水平将各国分成五组。最富有的两组国家人均收入超过12，000美元（以2010年美元计算），童工几乎不存在。 It is only when countries have an income less than $11,000 per year that we start to observe children in the labor force. But even here, rates of child labor remain relatively low through both the third and fourth quintiles. It is the poorest countries where rates of child labor explode. More than 30 percent of children work in the fifth of countries with incomes ranging from $600 to $2,000 per year. Economists Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik econometrically estimate that 73 percent of the variation of child labor rates can be explained by variation in GDP per capita.17 只有当一个国家的人均年收入低于11,000美元时，我们才开始观察到童工。即便如此，在第三与第四组国家中，中等及中等偏上收入家庭的童工比例相对来说也很低。而在穷国，童工比例暴增。最为贫穷的那组国家中，人均年收入在600美元到2，000美元之间，童工比例超过了30%。经济学家Eric Edmonds 与 Nina Pavcnik 运用计量经济学测算，认为童工比例差异中的73%可由人均GDP差异来解释。⒄ Of course, correlation is not causation. But in the case of child labor and wealth, the most intuitive interpretation is that increased wealth leads to reduced child labor. After all, all countries were once poor; in the countries that became rich, child labor disappeared. Few would contend that child labor disappeared in the United States or Great Britain prior to economic growth taking place—children populated their factories much as they do in the Third World today. 当然，有相关性不代表存在因果关系。但是当我们思考童工与财富之间的关系时，最符合直觉的解读就是财富的增长减少了童工。毕竟，所有国家都有过贫穷的阶段；在那些富裕起来的国家里，童工就消失了。鲜有人认为美国或者英国的童工在经济发展之前就已经消失了——就像今日的第三世界，工厂里到处都是儿童。 A little introspection, or for that matter our moral indignation at Third World child labor, reveals that most of us desire that children, especially our own, do not work. Thus, as we become richer and can afford to allow children to have leisure and education, we choose to. 我们对历史所做的一些反省，抑或出于对第三世界童工现象的道德愤慨，这些其实都反映了我们中的大部分人不希望孩子们去工作，尤其是自己的孩子。因此，当我们变得有钱，能够为孩子们提供闲暇的生活与教育之时，我们就这样做了。 Conclusion 结论 The thought of children laboring in sweatshops is repulsive. But that does not mean we can simply think with our hearts and not our heads. Families who send their children to work in sweatshops do so because they are poor and it is the best available alternative open to them. The vast majority of children employed in countries with sweatshops work in lower-productivity sectors than manufacturing. 让儿童在血汗工厂里工作的想法令人厌恶，但这不意味着我们就该简单地让同情心泛滥，而舍弃大脑的思考。家长把孩子送去血汗工厂里工作，是因为他们太穷了，而这已是可选的选项中最好的选择。在有着血汗工厂的国家里，大多数童工所在行业的生产能力比制造业更低。 Passing trade sanctions or other laws that take away the option of children working in sweatshops only limits their options further and throws them into worse alternatives. Luckily, as families escape poverty, child labor declines. As countries become rich, child labor virtually disappears. The answer for how to cure child labor lies in the process of economic growth—a process in which sweatshops play an important role. 出台贸易制裁措施或其他法律，将这些儿童的工作机会夺走，这只会进一步限制他们的选择，陷他们于更糟糕的境地之中。值得庆幸的是，当这些家庭脱离贫困之后，童工就减少了。随着国家慢慢富裕起来，童工在事实上就会消失。如何解决童工问题的答案就在经济发展的过程之中，而血汗工厂则在其中扮演了重要角色。 Notes 注记

1. National Labor Committee, “Child Labor: 11 year-old Halima Sews Clothing for Hanes,” 2006. A video of this interview with Halima is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIfY9SmJdA.
2. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs, 1994 Child Labor Report, Bangladesh, http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/sweat/bangladesh.htm
3. Paul Krugman, “Reckonings; Hearts and Heads,” New York Times (April 22, 2001), p. 17. Similarly, UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/, reports that many of these children turned to prostitution.
4. World Bank, World Development Indicators, CD-ROM (Washington: World Bank, 2005).
5. Mauritius is excluded from Table 1 because it is an outlier that is not representative of the general situation as I explain in Out of Poverty.
6. For each country, an average was taken for all years between 2000 and 2009 for which data are available.
7. The World Bank database does not include data for Vietnam, but Eric V. Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik, “Child Labor in the Global Economy,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 204, report that 92 percent of children working in Vietnam in 1998 worked in agriculture.
8. Kebebew Asshagrie, Statistics on Working Children and Hazardous Child Labour in Brief, Geneva: International Labor Organization (1997).
9. The International Labor Organization (ILO) estimates that 18 percent of children aged 5 to 14 are economically active worldwide. Of these, it estimates that 94 percent of them are in low-income countries, and only 2 percent are in what it classifies as developed countries. ILO, Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour, Geneva: ILO (2002).
10. International Labor Organization, Summary of the Results of the Child and Adolescent Labour Survey in Costa Rica, Geneva: ILO (2002), http://www.ilo.org/ipec/ChildlabourstatisticsSIMPOC/Questionnairessurveysandreports/lang—en/index.htm.
11. The remainder of this paragraph and the next draws on research found in Joshua C. Hall and Peter T. Leeson, “Good for the Goose, Bad for the Gander: International Labor Standards and Comparative Development,” Journal of Labor Research 28, no. 4 (September 2007): 658–76.
12. Robert Whaples, “Child Labor in the United States,” in EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. R. Whaples, retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whaples.childlabor.
13. Samuel Lindsay, “Child Labor in the United States,” American Economic Association 8, (February 1907): 256–259.
14. Carolyn Moehling, “State Child Labor Laws and the Decline in Child Labor,” Explorations in Economic History 36, no. 1 (1999): 72–105.
15. Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, “Mass Secondary Schooling and the State: The Role of State Compulsion and the High School Movement,” NBER Working Paper No. 10075 (2003).
16. France and Prussia both had earlier laws prohibiting child labor, but they were not enforceable. See Hall and Leeson (2007).
17. Edmonds and Pavcnik, (2005): 210.

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The Misogynist Origins of American Labor Law 美国劳动法的仇女起源 作者:Jeffrey Tucker @ 2016-02-17 译者:混乱阈值(@混乱阈值) 校对:鳗鱼禅(@鳗鱼禅) 来源:FEE,https://fee.org/articles/government-s-war-on-women-1900-1920/ Many now credit government for past progress in gender equality, mostly because of late 20th-century legislation that appeared to benefit women in the workplace. This is a distorted view. Few know that government at all levels actually sought to prevent that progress. 如今许多人把过去在性别平等上的进步归功于政府，主要是因为二十世纪后期的立法看似让职业女性受益。然而这个观点与现实不符。鲜为人知的是，各个层级的政府都曾企图阻挠这种进步。 A century ago, just as markets were attracting women to professional life, government regulation in the United States specifically targeted women to restrict their professional choices. The regulations were designed to drive them out of offices and factories and back into their homes — for their own good and the good of their families, their communities, and the future of the race. 一个世纪前，正当市场吸引女性进入职场之际，美国的政府管制刻意将女性作为目标人群，限制她们的职业选择。这些管制措施的目的是把女性从办公室和工厂驱赶回家中——为了女性和她们家庭、社区，以及民族的未来。 The new controls — the first round of a century of interventions in the free labor market — were designed to curb the sweeping changes in economics and demographics that were taking place due to material advances in the last quarter of the 19th century. The regulations limited women’s choices so they would stop making what elites considered the wrong decisions. 这些新的控制措施——是整整一个世纪对自由劳动力市场的干涉浪潮的第一波——意在阻止由于十九世纪最后二十五年物质进步所带来的经济和人口统计上的巨大变化。管制措施限制了女性的选择，这样她们就无法做出当时社会精英眼中的“错误”决定。 The real story, which is only beginning to emerge within the academic literature, is striking. It upends prevailing narratives about the relationship between government and women’s rights. Many cornerstones of the early welfare and regulatory state were designed to hobble women’s personal liberty and economic advancement. They were not progressive but reactionary, an attempt to turn back the clock. Women’s Work Is Not New 女性工作不是什么新鲜事 It was the freedom and opportunity realized in the latter period of the 19th century that changed everything for women workers, opening up new lines of employment. The growth of industrial capitalism meant that women could leave the farm and move to the city. They could choose to leave home without having married — and even stay in the workforce as married women. They enjoyed more choice in education and professional life than ever before. New clerical jobs, unknown a century earlier, were everywhere to be had. Women’s wages were rising quickly, by an impressive 16 percent from 1890 through 1920. Nor were women working at “exploitative” wages. A Rand corporation study of wage differentials discovered an interesting fact: women’s wages relative to men’s were higher in 1920 than they were in 1980. 新的文书类工作在那之前一个世纪还不存在，而此时已经到处都是。从1890年至1920年女性的工资快速上升，涨幅高达16%。女性的工资并非是“剥削性”的。兰德公司一项关于工资差异的研究揭示了一个有趣的事实：1920年女性工资相对于男性工资的比率要高于1980年。 The Law Intervenes 法律介入 And yet, these were also the years in which we first saw government intervention in the labor market, much of it specifically targeting women. As historian Thomas Leonard argues in his spectacular book Illiberal Reformers (2016), an entire generation of intellectuals and politicians panicked about what this could mean for the future of humanity. 然而，在那些年政府首次开始介入劳动力市场，明确针对的目标主要是女性。正如历史学家Thomas Leonard在其力作《非自由的改革者（Illiberal Reformers）》中指出的，整整一代的知识分子和政治家恐慌于女性工资上升会给人类未来带来的影响。 Society must control reproduction and therefore what women do with their lives. So said the prevailing ideology of the age. We couldn’t have a situation in which markets enticed women to leave the control of their families and move to the city. 社会必须控制生育，因而也就必须控制女性的人生。那个时代盛行的意识形态如是说。市场引诱女性离开家庭的控制搬迁到城市，这种情况让人无法接受。 Though they are called Progressives, the reformers’ rhetoric had more in common with the “family values” movement of the 1970s and ‘80s — with pseudoscientific race paranoia playing the role that religion would later play. In many ways, they were the ultimate conservatives, attempting to roll back the tide of history made possible by the advance of the capitalist economy. 尽管他们被称为进步主义者，这些改革者的话语倒跟1970和80年代的“家庭价值观”运动有更多共同点——也包括日后宗教也运用的伪科学种族妄想狂那一套。在许多方面，这些人是终极的保守主义者，他们企图使资本经济的进步带来的历史浪潮倒流。 They were incredibly successful. Over a 10-year period between 1909 and 1919, 40 states restricted the number of hours that women employees could work. Fifteen states passed new minimum wage laws to limit entry-level jobs. Most states created stipends for single-parent families, specifically to incentivize women to reject commercial life, return to protected domesticity, and stop competing with men for wages. 他们大获全胜。1909年至1919年的十年间，40个州限制了女性雇员可以工作的小时数。15个州通过了新的最低工资法来限制初级工作职位。大多数州制定了对单职工家庭的津贴，特意激励女性抵制商业生活回归被保护的家庭生活，同时不再与男人在职场上竞争。 Such laws were completely new in American history (and in almost all of modern history) because they intervened so fundamentally in the right of workers and employers to make any sort of contract. The Progressive agenda involved government deeply in issues that directly affected people’s ability to provide for themselves. It also created unprecedented impositions on both employees and their employers. Such laws would have been inconceivable even 50 years earlier. 这些法律在美国历史上（同时也在几乎整个现代历史上）没有先例。原因在于它们如此根本性地介入了工人和雇主订立任意契约的权利。在一些直接影响人们自给自足能力的议题上，进步主义的议程和政府关联极深。同时进步主义创立了前所未有的税项，同时向雇主和雇员征收。这样的法律即使在五十年前也是不可想象的。 How did all this happen so fast, and why? 政府的干预如何迅速实施？为何能得逞？ The Inferiority of Women 女性的劣势 Richard T. Ely, the hugely influential founder of the American Economic Association and the godfather of progressive economics, explained the issue clearly, laying the groundwork for the laws that followed. His 1894 book Socialism and Social Reform expressed a panic about women’s entry into the workforce: Richard T. Ely 是美国经济协会极具影响力的创建者，也是进步主义经济学的教父。他曾清楚地阐述了这个问题，为之后产生的法律打下了基石。他在1894年发表的著作《社会主义与社会改革》中对女性加入劳动力大军表达了恐慌：

Restrictions should be thrown about the employment of married women, and their employment for a considerable period before and after child-birth should be prohibited under any circumstances. There should also be a restriction of the work-day, as in England, for children and young persons under eighteen, and for women. Such a limitation having beneficial effect upon the health of the community…. Night work should be prohibited for women and persons under eighteen years of age and, in particular, all work injurious to the female organism should be forbidden to women. 应该限制雇用已婚女性，在任何情形下，都应该禁止雇用处于分娩期前后的女性，禁止雇用期应该相当长。我们应该仿效英格兰，限制儿童、十八岁以下的年轻人和女性的工作时长。这种限制利于社会健康发展。……应该禁止女性和不满十八岁者上夜班，尤其应该禁止女性从事那些损害女性生理机体的工作。

If the reference to the “female organism” sounds strange, remember that this generation of intellectuals believed in eugenics — using state force to plan the emergence of the model race — and hence saw women mainly as propagators of the race, not human individuals with the right to choose. 如果书中所谓的“女性生理机体”听着别扭，请记住那一代知识分子相信优生学——即使用国家的力量来制定生产模范种族的计划，因此他们将女性主要看成生育者，而非拥有选择权利的个人。 For anyone who believed that government had a responsibility to plan human production (and most intellectuals at the time did believe this), the role of women was critical. They couldn’t be allowed to do what they wanted, go where they wanted, or make lives for themselves. This was the normal thought pattern for the generation that gave the United States unprecedented legal restrictions on the labor market. 对于任何相信政府有责任对人类生育做规划的人（当时大多数知识分子确实相信）来说，女性的角色至关重要。女性不能被允许做自己想做的事，去她们想去的地方，或过她们自己想要的生活。这就是当时一代人通常的思维模式，而正是这种思维模式让美国政府对劳动力市场进行前所未有的法律限制。 The Supreme Court Weighs In 最高法院的介入 Consider the Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon, which considered state legislation on maximum working hours and decided in favor of the state. Oregon was hardly unusual; it was typical of the 20 states that had already passed such laws directed at women’s freedom to choose employment. From the text of Colorado’s law passed in 1903: “No woman” shall “work or labor for a greater number than eight hours in the twenty-four hour day … where such labor, work, or occupation by its nature, requires the woman to stand or be upon her feet.” 看一下Muller诉俄勒冈州这个最高法院案例，最高法院认可对最大工作小时数的州立法，并做了对州政府有利的判决。俄勒冈州并非特别，它只是已经通过此类针对女性选择工作自由的法律的二十个州的典型。在1903年通过的科罗拉多州的法律这样写道：“没有女性”应该“在一天的24小时中进行8小时以上的工作或劳动……这里指的是需要女性站立完成的工作、劳动或职业。” The decision in Muller v. Oregon, then, ratified such laws all over the country. Today, this case is widely considered the foundation of progressive labor law. What’s not well known is that the brief that settled the case was a remarkable piece of pseudoscience that argued for the inferiority of women and hence their need for special protections from the demands of commercial enterprise. That brief was filed by future Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. 于是，最高法院对Muller诉俄勒冈州案的判决正式批准了全国范围内此类法律。今天，该诉讼被普遍认为是进步主义劳动法的基础。而不为人所周知的是，终结该诉讼的那份简报是一篇令人称奇的伪科学文章，该简报论述了女性的劣势，认为女性需要特殊的保护使她们免受商业公司侵害。这份简报正是后来成为最高法院法官的Louis Brandeis提交的。 The Weird and Awful “Brandeis Brief” 奇怪又糟糕的“Brandeis简报” The “Brandeis Brief” argued that the law had to stop the massive influx of women into the workplace because women have “special susceptibility to fatigue and disease,” because female blood has more water in it than men’s blood. Their blood composition also accounts for why women have less focus, energy, and strength generally, according to the brief. “Brandeis简报”认为法律必须制止大量女性流入劳动力大军，因为女性“特别容易疲劳和生病”，原因是与男性相比，女性血液中含有更高比例的水分。按照这份简报的说法，女性的血液成分比例也解释了为何女性通常在注意力、精力和体力上逊于男性。。 “Physicians are agreed that women are fundamentally weaker than men in all that makes for endurance: in muscular strength, in nervous energy, in the powers of persistent attention and application.” “医生们认同女性在一切和耐力有关的方面从根本上弱于男性的观点：这些方面包括肌肉力量，神经系统的能量，持续保持注意力和坚持的能力。” Moreover, “In strength as well as in rapidity and precision of movement women are inferior to men. This is not a conclusion that has ever been contested.” 此外，“不仅在力量上，在速度和动作的精确度上，女性都劣于男性。这一结论从未受到过质疑。” Long hours are “more disastrous to the health of women than to men,” the brief explained. Government therefore needed to regulate work hours for the “health, safety, morals, and general welfare of women.” 长时间工作“对女性健康的损害要大于对男性，”该简报这样解释道。因此政府需要为了“女性的健康、安全、道德，以及生活幸福”对工作时长进行管制。 Restrictions on work hours were therefore essential. “It is of great hygienic importance on account of the more delicate physical organization of woman,” the brief said, “and will contribute much toward the better care of children and the maintenance of a regular family life.” 因此限制工作时间就至关重要。“考虑到女性生理组织更脆弱，（限制工作时间长度）在卫生上具有重大意义”，该简报这样写道，“这对关爱儿童和维持正常家庭生活都非常有益。” This brief is also notable for being the first to combine science, however bogus, and public policy in an appeal to the Supreme Court. 这份简报另一个闻名于世的原因，是它首次在向最高法院的上诉中将科学——尽管是冒牌货——与公共政策结合在一起。 Florence Kelley’s Dream of Nonworking Women Florence Kelley的女性不工作梦想 One might suspect that the entire effort was a male-driven one to stop female progress, but that’s not the case. A leader in the campaign for such labor interventions was writer and activist Florence Kelley. Modern progressives celebrate her activism for maximum work hours, the 10-hour workday, minimum wages, and children’s rights. Indeed, she is considered a great hero by the sanitized version of history that progressives tell each other. 现在可能有人会怀疑这整个事情都是男性驱使的，意在阻止女性进步，但事实并非如此。支持政府介入劳动力市场的运动的一位领导者Florence Kelley是一名作家兼激进分子。现代进步主义者颂扬了她在最大工作时长、十小时工作制、最低工资和儿童权益上的激进主义。没错，在进步主义者相互传颂的历史洁本中，她是一位伟大的英雄。 Before we cheer her accomplishments, however, we should look at Kelley’s driving motivation. Writing in the American Journal of Sociology, she explained that she wanted a minimum wage as a wage floor to stop manufacturing plants and retail outlets from employing women for less than they could otherwise employ men. 但在为她的成就欢呼之前，我们应该看看Kelley的动机。在发表于《美国社会学杂志》的文章上，她解释道，她支持最低工资标准是因为最低工资相当于工资门槛，可以不让工厂和零售商店以低于男性工资的标准雇佣女性。 Retail stores, she wrote, tend to “minimize the employment of men, substituting them for women, girls, and boys, employed largely at less than living wages.” It was precisely such competition from women and children that Kelley intended to stop, so that men could earn higher wages and women could return to traditional roles. 她写道，零售商店倾向于“将雇佣的男性数量最小化，取而代之的是以低于基本生活工资的薪酬雇佣女性，女孩和男孩。”Kelley希望制止的正是这些来自于女性和儿童的就业竞争，这样男性就可以赚更多工资，而女性则可以回归她们的传统角色。 In her book Some Ethical Gains through Legislation (1905), Kelley said that long working hours had to be ended for women because commercial life was introducing “vice” into communities (“vice” for this generation was the preferred euphemism for every manner of sexual sin). Worse, women were choosing commercial life over home “on their own initiative.” 在出版于1905年的《一些通过立法获得的伦理好处》一书中，Kelley认为女性长时间工作必须被阻止，因为商业化生活正在将“恶习”带入社区（那一代人更喜欢用“恶习”这一委婉说法来指代任何与性相关的罪孽 ）。而更糟的是，女性在商业化生活和家庭二者间选择了前者，完全是“自己主动的”。 Kelley considered it necessary to restrict women’s rights for their own “health and morality,” she said, and also to boost men’s wages so women would stay home under the care of their mothers, fathers, suitors, and husbands. Kelley认为有必要为了女性的“健康和道德”限制女性权利。在书中她写道，限制女性权利也是为了推动男性工资的增长，从而使得女性可以留在家中受她们的父母、求婚者和丈夫们的照顾。 Moreover, to make such work illegal would make “righteous living” more practical for women. If they stopped being rewarded in wages, they would return to domestic life. Kelley even regretted the invention of electricity because it allowed women to work late at factories, when they should be at home reading to children by firelight. 此外，将女性长时间工作定为非法会使得“正直的生活”对女性来说更为实际可行。如果女性不再受工资回报的奖励，她们就会回归家庭生活。Kelley甚至还为电的发明感到遗憾，因为是电让女性可以夜晚在工厂工作，而此时她们本应在家中的炉火旁给孩子们讲故事。 In Kelley’s view, the ideal role of women with children is not to enter commercial life at all: “Family life in the home is sapped in its foundation when mothers of young children work for wages.” It’s an opinion with which some may still sympathize, but should such an opinion be imposed on working families by coercive legislation? For this paragon of progressive social reform, it was clear that lawmakers had to force women back into the home. 在Kelley看来，女性面对孩子的理想角色是完全不进入商业化生活：“当小孩的母亲们为工资工作时，家庭生活的基础被削弱了。”现在有些人依然支持这样的观点，但这样的观点应该通过强制性立法被强加于双职工家庭吗？按照这种进步主义社会改革的范式，立法者必须强迫女性回家。 Florence Kelley and the movement she represented sought to disemploy women and get everyone back to a premodern form of domestic living. She wanted not more rights for women but fewer. The workplace was properly for men, who were to get paid high wages sufficient for the whole family. That was the basis for her support of a range of legislation to drive women out of the workforce and put an end to the new range of options available to them, options that many women were happy to choose. Florence Kelley与她代表的运动，追求的是女性不被雇佣以及所有人都回归现代之前的家庭生活。她要的不是女性拥有更多权利，而是更少。工作场所适合男性，因为他们在那里能获得高薪酬，足够养活全家人。就是基于这样的理念，她支持通过广泛的立法将女性从工作场所驱逐出去，使女性不再有一系列新的选项——很多女性乐于选择的选项。 Fear the Women of East Prussia 对东普鲁士女性的恐惧 All this scholarship and activism is one thing, but what about the popular press? 这些学术研究和激进主义是一回事，那大众传媒又怎么样呢？ Professor Edward A. Ross, author of Sin and Society, spoke out in the New York Times on May 3, 1908. In an article titled “The Price Woman Pays to Industrial Progress,” Ross warned that America’s “fine feminine form” was endangered by commercial society. Edward A. Ross教授是《罪与社会》一书的作者。他在1908年3月3日纽约时报上一篇题为《女性为产业进步所付出的代价》文章中警告了“精致的女性气质”正在被商业化社会所危害。 If women were permitted to work, an evolutionary selection process would govern their reproduction to the detriment of the human race. The graceful women who would otherwise bear beautiful children would be pushed out of the gene pool and replaced by “squat, splay-footed, wide-backed, flat-breasted, broad-faced, short-necked — a type that lacks every grace that we associate with women.” 如果允许女性工作，进化选择过程会主宰她们的生育，危害人类。本来会生养漂亮孩子的优雅女性会被挤出基因池，取而代之的将是“矮胖、八字脚、宽背、平胸、脸蛋平庸、脖子短的女性——这种类型的女性在任何方面都不能让我们把女性优雅与之相联系。” Ross’s example: “the women of East Prussia,” who “bear a child in the morning” and “are out in the field in the afternoon.” Ross举的例子是“东普鲁士女人”，她们“在早晨刚生完孩子”，“下午就下地”。 The professor explained that women who had worked in factories would not make suitable bearers of children. “Think of the discouraging situation of the young man who after he has been married two or three years finds he has a wife who at the age of 28 or 30 has collapsed, become a miserable invalid, suffering aches and pains all the time.” Why, she might find herself “unable to keep the home attractive.” And all of this “because of just a few extra dollars added to the profits of the employer or a few extra dollars saved to the consumer.” 该教授解释说，在工厂工作的女性不会是合适的生养者。“试想一下这样令人沮丧的情况：一个年轻男人在和他妻子结婚两三年后发现她在28或30岁的年纪垮掉了，终日一身病痛。”这样的妻子可能会发现自己“无法把家里弄得漂亮”。而这一切“仅仅是为了让雇主多赚几美元，或是让消费者多省几美元”。 Because of the dangerous combination of employment and natural selection, Ross contended, the government had to extend a hand to help these women by limiting working hours and establishing a high bar to enter the workforce: minimum wages. 由于雇佣劳动和自然选择的危险结合，Ross主张政府必须通过限制工作时长，并对进入劳动力市场设置高门槛——即最低工资——向女性伸出援手。 Only through such enlightened interventions could government save women from the workplace, so that they could return to the maternal duties of rearing “girls who have the qualities of fineness — grace and charm.” 政府只有通过这样高明的干预才能将女性从工作场所中拯救出来，这样女性才能回归母亲的角色，抚养“具有优雅和美丽这些优秀特质的女孩”。 Is This Satire? 讽刺否？ If this reads like satire, sadly it is not. Nor were such views unusual in a generation of ruling-class intellectuals, politicians, and activists that embraced eugenics and rejected capitalism as too random, too chaotic, too liberating. Their plan was to reestablish and entrench by law the family and marital structure they believed in, which absolutely precluded a generation of women making individual choices over their own lives. Every trend panicked the eugenic generation. They fretted about the falling birth rate among those who should be reproducing and the rising birth rate among those who shouldn’t be. They worried about morals, about competition, about health, about culture. Most of all, they regretted the change that a dynamic economy was bringing about. 所有的时代趋向都让相信优生学的一代人恐慌。他们担心本应生养的群体的生育率在下降，而那些本不应生育的群体的生育率却在上升。他们忧虑于道德、竞争、健康和文化。所有问题中他们最担心的是充满活力的经济即将带来的改变。 Thus, from 1900 through 1920, a period that set the stage for a century of interventions in the labor market, hundreds of laws stifling women were passed in every state and at the federal level, too. None dared call it misogyny, but this is real history, however rarely it is told. 因此，1900至1920年间，政府为干预劳动力市场打好了舞台，这种干预持续了一个世纪。数以百计窒息女性的法律在所有州以及联邦层面上通过。没人敢称之为厌女，但这是真实的历史，尽管很少被说起。 Feminists against Regulation 对抗管控的女权主义 Laws that disemployed thousands of women nationwide led to vast protests. The Equal Opportunity League, an early feminist organization in New York, lobbied the state legislature to repeal the bans on work. And it received quite the press coverage. 使全国范围内成千上万的女性失去工作的法律导致了大范围的抗议。机会平等联盟是一个位于纽约的早期女权组织，它游说州立法机构废除对女性工作的禁令，得到了相当多的媒体报道。 “So-called ‘welfare’ legislation is not asked for or wanted by real working women,” the league said. “These ‘welfare’ bills are drafted by self-styled social uplifters who assert that working women do not know enough to protect themselves.” “所谓的“福利”立法不是真正在工作的女性要求或内心想要的，”该联盟如是说。“这些“福利”法案由自封的社会提升者起草，他们认为工作的女性不知如何保护自己。” “Are women people? Women are no longer the wards of the State and a law that is unconstitutional for a man voter is equally unconstitutional for a woman voter.” “女性也是人吧？女性不再是州政府的被监护人，对男性投票人来说违宪的法律对女性投票人来说一样违宪。” “Working at night is not more injurious than working in the daytime,” the league argued. “Many women prefer to work at night because the wage is higher, opportunities for advancement greater, and women with children can enjoy being with their child after school hours in the day time.” “在晚上工作不比在白天工作更有害”，该联盟这样认为。“许多女性喜欢在晚上工作是因为工资更高，升职的机会更大，而且有孩子的女性可以在白天孩子放学后和孩子在一起。” In fact, the phrase “equal pay for equal work” was not created to mandate higher wages for women. It was a league slogan invoked to argue against laws that made it “a crime to employ women even five minutes after the eight-hour day.” The phrase emerged as a preferred slogan to protest in favor of free markets, not against them. 事实上，“同工同酬”这一警句的出现并非为了强制提高女性工资。它是联盟的一句口号，用来反对那些认定“8小时工作时间之外即使多雇佣女性5分钟也是犯罪”的法律。这一广受欢迎警句的是作为亲市场而非反对自由市场的口号而提出的。 The Equal Opportunity League also passionately opposed the minimum wage law. Such laws, it argued, “while purporting to be for [women’s] benefit, would really be a serious handicap to them in competing with men workers for desirable positions.” 平等机会联盟也积极地反对最低工资法。联盟认为这样的法律“尽管本意是为了照顾（女性）利益，实质上却让女性在与男性工人竞争好职位时受到严重妨碍”。 In short, the conclusion of the League is that these proposed bills and laws, ostensibly intended to protect and shield the woman worker, will, if permitted to stand, unquestionably work her industrial ruin and throw her back into the slough of drudgery out of which she is just emerging after centuries of painful, laborious effort to better her condition. ("Women’s Work Limited by Law," New York Times, January 18, 1920) 简单来说，联盟的结论是这些提议中的法案和法律表面上意在保护女性工人，实际上一旦通过则毫无疑问会毁坏女性的职业生涯，将女性赶回家务重活的泥沼。而女性在经历数个世纪痛苦艰难的努力后才刚刚脱离这一泥沼而改善了自己的状况。（《女性的工作被法律所限》，《纽约时报》1920年1月18日。） Restriction Becomes Liberation? 限制变成了解放？ The fairy tale version of history says that during the 20th century, government freed women to become newly empowered in the workplace. The reality is exactly the opposite. Just as the market was granting women more choices, government swept in to limit them in the name of health, purity, family values, and social uplift. Such laws and regulations are still around today, though they have been recharacterized in a completely different way. As Orwell might say, somewhere along the way, restriction became liberation. 历史的童话版本说，在20世纪政府给予了女性自由，让女性在工作场所拥有了权利。真相恰好相反。市场给予女性更多的选择，而政府却插手进来以健康、纯洁、家庭价值观和社会地位提升等名义限制女性的选择。这类法律和法规在今天仍然存在，虽然它们以完全不同的方式被重新描绘。正如奥威尔所说，在通往动物庄园路途中，不知从何处起，限制变成了解放。 (Author’s note: I’m grateful to Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers for providing the footnotes I followed to write this piece. Also, much more rethinking of Progressive Era politics and its impact on the family is discussed in Steven Horwitz’s Hayek’s Modern Family, newly published by Palgrave.) （作者附言：非常感激Thomas Leonard的《非自由的改革者》，循着该书提供的脚注，我写下了此文。另外，对进步时代的政治及其对家庭之影响的更多再思考，在Steven Horwitz所著的由Palgrave最新出版的《哈耶克的现代家庭》一书中有更多讨论。） （编辑：辉格@whigzhou） *注：本译文未经原作者授权，本站对原文不持有也不主张任何权利，如果你恰好对原文拥有权益并希望我们移除相关内容，请私信联系，我们会立即作出响应。

——海德沙龙·翻译组，致力于将英文世界的好文章搬进中文世界——

欧洲青年失业率高企乃政策恶果 辉格 2012年5月29日 今年的国际劳工大会即将在日内瓦召开，这次会议的一大议题是青年失业危机，所以此前一周，部分与会者已在日内瓦召集了一个青年就业论坛专门讨论这一危机；按国际劳工组织总干事的看法，青年失业率高企是因为政策对青年人的忽视，而忽视又是因为政策制定过程缺乏青年人的参与。 如此看待政策与其社会效果之间关系的方式实在幼稚，仿佛只要政府里增加几个女议员女部长，女性状况就会改善了，照此逻辑，婴儿和动物的状况恐怕就永难指望因政策而改善了；其实，青年就业问题从来未被忽视，在问题最严重的几个欧洲国家，多年来它一直是竞选和政策辩论的重要话题，也出台了大量针对性的法规，只是这些法规起不到预期效果，反而使问题越来越严重。 可以预料的是，只要试图解决问题的政策路线仍走在目前主导欧洲政治的福利主义轨道上，未来青年失业问题只会越来越严重；实际上，这一危机正是社会保障、劳工保护和就业促进这三大福利政策交配繁殖出的恶果：社会福利首先降低了就业的必要性，最低工资法继而将低生产率劳工排除出就业市场，最后，职业保障法的种种严苛规定让企业不敢雇人，宁可用机器代替或将业务外包到其他国家。 这些政策提高了整体失业率水平，同时因为其结构性特征，失业后果大部分落在了青年头上，这些国家的青年失业率平时就在平均水平的两倍以上，萧条期则更高，当衰退导致失业加剧时，青年失业率常翻倍上涨，远高于总体上涨速度。 原因不难寻找，首先，最低工资法剥夺的是低生产率劳工的就业机会，而青年由于缺乏职业经验，劳动生产率往往不如中年人，同时他们因跳槽、婚假、产假而带给雇主的负担也较高，所以当雇主因最低工资法而放弃部分雇佣时，年轻人会被优先考虑。 其次，因为劳动法极大的限制了雇主解雇员工的能力，并提高了解雇的成本，这样当企业需要裁员时，首选途径便是退休等自然减员方式，同时在雇佣新人上变得极其谨慎，因为一旦与某人签订长期雇佣协议，就很难再摆脱他，于是排在年龄队伍后面的青年自然就被挡在了就业市场外面。 上述政策效果在西班牙表现的最清楚，福利和劳动政策的结果让该国失业率在80年代达到20%，政府也意识到严厉的劳动法规让企业不敢轻易雇佣员工，但他们不是纠正之前的错误，而是制订新法规来“鼓励”企业雇佣年轻人，比如允许在签订长期雇佣协议之前经历一个长达三年的试用期。 该法规在起初效果似乎很好，几年内将失业率降低了4、5个百分点，但很快人们发现，新增雇员都是临时工，而且随着时间推移，企业普遍用临时工替换长期雇员，试用期满就换人；到本世纪初，临时工已占西班牙劳动市场1/3，试用期满后获得长期合同的比例只有6%，20岁以下劳动者80%是临时工，甚至30岁员工的临时工比例也高达1/3。 如今，西班牙失业率再次逼近25%，青年失业率已过50%；一番折腾下来，这些法规最显著的效果就是让就业市场发生了两级分化：获得长期职位成为一道极难逾越的门槛，一旦越过就体面光鲜、终身无忧，但大部分年轻人都要在门槛外苦苦等待拼搏煎熬多年，禀赋稍差者便陷于绝望，许多人因此索性绝了上进念头，干脆安心打临工或吃福利。 青年期正是个人为自己寻找竞争舞台和社会位置、形成自我人格的时期，将青年排斥在职业市场之外，不仅剥夺了他们的发展机会，也人为制造了社会不安定因素，假如年轻人无法在职场中找到自己的位置，就会从其他地方找，比如街头帮派、足球流氓、黑社会、甚至恐怖组织；讽刺的是，这些结果居然是宣称以公共福利和社会稳定为宗旨的法规与政策一手制造的，更讽刺的是，一些后发国家正在将它们当作先进经验学习效仿。

不应强求雇主承担丈夫的责任 辉格 2012年5月9日 近日，国务院公布了《女职工劳动保护特别规定》，在原有规定的基础上，全面扩大了雇主对女性雇员的特别责任，特别是与生育和哺乳有关的责任，包括延长产假、新设流产产假、承担产检和流产费用、提供哺乳条件等等，并对违规行为规定了更加具体而严厉的惩罚措施。 因为天然的承担了生育和哺乳的任务，加上与此有关的生理条件，女性在职业市场上先天的处于不利地位，难以在照顾孩子的同时独立维持生计，正因为此，人类自古以来便采用了男女配偶分工合作的核心家庭模式，女性用她们宝贵的生育能力换取男性的保护和帮助，这一合作模式不仅构成了我们古老婚姻与家庭的基础，更为我们的文化与传统奠定了基调。 现代化过程中，女性逐渐走出家庭进入职业市场，这一方面因为奶粉、洗衣机、幼儿园等现代育儿商品和服务降低了育儿成本和幼儿对母亲的依赖，同时，生产率的提高也让许多女性的劳动价值大大高出了育儿成本，因而购买这些育儿商品以腾出时间去工作，就变得越来越合算了。 不过，只要人们仍在生孩子，育儿需要所带来的两性职业价值差异便不会消失，两性分工因而仍将存在，在现代主要表现为，在工作挣钱养家方面，丈夫比妻子负有更多的责任；这也意味着，男性在这方面的意愿和能力，仍将是女性择偶的重要考虑。 然而，上述规定却意在将原本由丈夫所承担的责任，强行转嫁到雇主头上，如此转嫁从道义上实在找不出什么理由；丈夫承担此一责任，是因为这是古老婚姻契约的核心内容，可谓天经地义；假如人们非要从与女性具有某种关系的人中挑出一个来接替丈夫的责任，为何偏偏选中雇主呢？为何不是她的父母、亲戚、或邻居？或者她的开户银行？或她每天去的那家超市？或给她接生的那家医院？难道雇佣关系就那么特别吗？那么雇佣女律师的当事人是否也要负担她的带薪产假？ 以带薪产假为代表的、由雇主承担的“生育福利”，其实是一种实物薪酬，即便没有政府规定，有些企业也会实行，因为经验表明，如果恰当选择的话，用实物和福利部分取代现金报酬，会收到更好的激励效果，所以许多企业都会为员工提供旅游、体检、生日蛋糕、年货、聚餐、球票戏票等福利和实物报酬，这些实物往往比现金更能给员工留下深刻印象，感觉到雇主的关心和慷慨。 可实物薪酬的选择是有讲究的，占总薪酬的比例不能太高以至显著降低现金报酬水平，同时要让大部分员工觉得物有所值，而生育福利未必符合这些条件；有三种企业大概会愿意提供生育福利，一种是其女性员工生育的可能性很小，这样雇主用很小的代价即可换来一个好名声，另一种是其女性员工绝大部分会在雇佣期内生育，这样生育福利就相当于人人用得着的购物券，对现金有很好的替代性，第三种是薪酬水平很高，且其中大部分是产假中无须支付的绩效工资或奖金。 不符合这些条件的雇主将倾向于不提供带薪产假，因为他们为相同劳动愿意支付的总报酬是给定的，提供带薪产假即意味着降低了那些不生育女性雇员的报酬，从而削弱他们招募优秀女性雇员的能力，除非他们能事先甄别哪些雇员将在雇佣期内生育，并对她们支付不同的薪酬。 甄别方法之一是先筛选出那些不大可能再生育的女性，在计划生育制度下这倒是可以做到，要求应聘者出示户口本即可，她们将获得常规薪酬，可是在剩下的可能生育的女性中，哪些会在雇佣期内生育仍难确定，而且按现行劳动法，这一点显然也无法在雇佣契约中加以约束；这样，雇主就只能拉低这些“风险雇员”的平均工资来平摊生育福利成本了。 可是，拉低平均薪酬也是有限度的，首先，在许多低端行业，工资水平原本就接近法定最低工资水平，再拉低就违规了，此时雇主只好完全规避风险雇员，其次，那些不想生育但又被一起拉低工资的女性风险雇员，可能会觉得不值得为更低的工资工作，索性退出职业市场，这两种情况都会将部分女性排除出就业市场。

韩国改革面临最后攻坚战
辉格
2009年8月6日

日前，韩国双龙汽车的重组因工会拒绝接受重组方案而告失败，债权人最终申请破产，随后，400名特警开始向工人占领的最后两个喷涂车间发动进攻，拒绝离职的一千名工人对厂区两个多月的强行占领和怵目惊心的暴力对抗即将结束；这场漫长的对峙尽管导致了重组失败，把原本有望得救的双龙送进了坟墓，也让上汽的投资化为乌有，但韩国政府顶住了工会压力，没有干预劳资谈判，没有施压银行追加贷款，更没有动用财政资金施救；这一政策最终打破了工会试图利用强制行动和政治影响力来获取谈判利益的幻想，为李明博政府击退工团主义的斗争赢得了关键一战，也为继续推行其大规模改革方案创造了十分有利的条件。

与此同时，国会也在上演一场名副其实的搏斗，上月下旬，在一片辱骂厮打声中，表决通过了开放媒体兼营的《报纸法》、《广播法》和《网络电视法》，以及开放企业入股银行的《金融控股公司法》；去年初李明博上台之后，虽然遭遇金融危机后的不利局面，但凭借执政党在国会170席（57%）的绝对多数，加上另外三个保守派政党20多席的配合，他的改革路线正在稳步推进；民主党的84个席位无法阻止任何法案通过，只得采用封锁议会大门和占领议长席等暴力手段进行阻挠。韩国从1997年金融危机之后所启动的一系列改革，已经成功的打破了财阀体系，实现了政企分离、银企分离、金融和投资自由化，贸易开放也有很大进展，眼下正面临着工团主义这一最后堡垒，此战胜负将在很大程度上决定改革的成败和今后数十年经济体制的走向。

财阀和工团是长期困扰韩国的两大痼疾，财阀们利用与政府的亲密关系，为他们的投资和经营提供或明或暗的财政担保，在政府影响下，银行毫无节制的为他们的扩张提供信贷支持，为了维持自己的垄断地位，财阀们竭力鼓动政府实施准入管制和贸易保护；尽管在劳资谈判中，工会和财阀是对手，但在维持财阀体系及其垄断地位方面，他们实际上结成了默契的同盟关系：每当财阀企业陷入财务困境，需要政府和银行出手帮助时，工会的罢工和抗议是最有效的施压手段，在对自由贸易的抵制中，这种同盟关系则更加明显。97年危机令大批财阀垮台，加上此后金大中政府在IMF严格要求下实施的彻底改革，最终打破财阀体系，尤其是斩断了财阀对银行的寄生关系。

工团势力也正是从97年危机之后开始走下坡路，尽管韩国工会的组织能力依然强大，行动方式依然强悍暴烈，但他们的谈判对手已经完全改变了：在此之前，表面上劳资谈判是在工会与管理层之间进行，而实际上，由于财阀体制把政府和银行绑架在企业上，工会讨价还价的对手其实是全体纳税人和广大银行储户，只要政府出手让银行继续为企业输血，加点工资便不在话下；正是因为此种手法屡屡奏效，工会已经习惯了有哭必应的娇宠生活，问题是，企业背后那条输血脐带如今已不复存在，工会的谈判对手已经成了资源有限、自负盈亏的独立企业，双龙工会的人显然没有看清这一点，所以当他们不顾企业死活，毫不退让的坚持自己的要求时，企业只好走上破产之路了。

早期的工会曾是组织集体谈判和维护工人权利的良性组织，但自从他们开始组织纠察队用暴力追求自己的目标，并利用选票寻求政治家保护和支持其暴力行动时，他们的性质已经完全改变了；这些工会经常占领和封锁厂区、暴力阻止非工会工人上班，动辄非法拘禁、动用私刑、破坏私人财物，却因为其强大的组织能力和政治影响力而得到法律豁免，这对正常的市场经济秩序乃至法治环境构成了极大的破坏，也严重损害了非工会工人的利益；工团主义蔓延所及的每一个产业，都无一例外的迅速走向僵化、停滞和衰败，实际上，他们与农贸市场用暴力霸占摊位的黑帮没有什么区别。

许多发达国家在其制造业达到顶峰的时候，都或多或少的遭受过工团主义的危害，而上世纪80年代的撒切尔-里根自由化改革，也都是以击败工团主义为关键突破点；1981年8月美国航管工会（PATCO ）发动非法罢工，里根在48小时通牒过后，果断开除了11345名拒绝复工的航管员，美国工团运动从此一蹶不振；1984-85年，撒切尔凭借巨大的政治决心和勇气，抵抗住了全国矿工工会（NUM）长达一年的总罢工，结果，曾在1974年通过罢工令希斯政府垮台的、一度强大无比的NUM，就此从英国政治舞台上消失。面对人数众多、组织严密、而又素以强悍暴烈著称的韩国工会，李明博赢得了一次小规模战役，要拿下整个工团堡垒，还有很多硬仗要打。

（按：我对该则新闻的第一反应是：全总想把中国工人变成他们的奴工。最近小鬼们一个个跳的很欢，骗子的黄金时代到来了，连仰融都要回来啦，呵呵）

警惕劳动制度的计划回归
辉格
2009年7月21日

日前，全国总工会发布了《行业性工资集体协商工作的指导意见》，提出企业尤其是非公有制中小企业和劳动密集型企业，不得单方面制定工资标准和劳动定额，要求由行业工会代表工人与企业或行业协会谈判，以行业工资专项集体合同，来确定行业内工资水平、劳动定额和最低工资标准；这是一项重大而危险的举措，近年来，政府对劳动市场的管制日益严厉，但此前的措施，主要还是对企业行为划定边界和施加外部约束，而全总的这一行动，则已经把干预深入到了企业内部的经营和管理过程中；这样的深度干预，很可能使得历经三十年艰辛改革所达致的自谋职业、自主协议、自由流动的劳动力市场，向计划经济时代封闭僵化低效的国营职工体系回归，值得引起各方警惕。

全总副主席在答记者问时表示，行业工资专项集体合同，是借鉴发达市场经济国家的作法；这一说法是误导性的，众所周知，我们社会主义国家的工会，在性质上完全不同于资本主义国家的工会，是接受党和政府领导的，是全国自上而下统一组织的，是覆盖全部行业和任何可能的就业者的；毫无疑问，我们的工会，无论在目标指向、政策精神、运行规则、实施方案和具体措施上，都历来并将继续与党和政府保持高度一致；因而，全总的“指导意见”，实际上等同于政府政策，全总的要求和措施，等同于政府的管制和干预措施；“着力推动各级政府主导工资集体协商工作，协助政府强化对企业工资分配的宏观调控”，《指导意见》中的这一句，明白无误的揭示了这一点。

与最低工资标准不同，制定具体的工资标准和劳动定额，需要深入到企业的生产、工艺和财务过程中去，必须掌握这些环节的细节，标准制定工作才有可能开展；每个企业都有不同的生产流程和工艺路线，职能分工和岗位设置也千差万别，企业不可能为所有岗位设置统一的工资水平和劳动定额，并且在许多情况下，岗位固定工资和定额化绩效管理并非有效的管理方法，不同的企业、不同的部门，有不同的激励机制，相应的，也会采用不同的绩效管理和薪酬计算方法；采用何种恰当的激励机制和薪酬体系，历来是企业管理中的难题，很难想象，那些由总工会指派的首席协商代表们（按《指导意见》将“由行业所在区域相应一级的工会主席担任”），能够把握和理解这一过程中所涉及的管理细节和激励作用，从而找出对特定企业有效的工资标准和定额水平。

如果薪酬体系由政府或全总主导设计，由于岗位、工种和资历差异决定了单一工资水平和定额不可能实行，结果必然是向等级化方向发展：工人按熟练度和资历分为一级工到八级工，技术岗位从技术员到工程师到高工，管理岗位从科员、科级直到部级分成六等十八级，等等；这正是三十年前所实行的制度，也是各国公务员体系所采用的方式；这样的体系，无论好坏，是政府主导下的人事制度发展的必然结果，无论东方西方社会主义资本主义，概莫能外；然而，固定等级化体系显然不适合企业，尤其是中小企业，可以想象，企业为了规避管制很可能将大部分雇员定为最低的几个级别，然后用另一套激励方法（比如奖金）来实现自己的管理目标；但这样一来全总大概会有意见，它的应对办法是把各等级的比例甚至名额固定下来，于是，工人今后想要提升级别就要获得工会批准；如此发展的结果，全总将逐步接管企业的劳动和人事体系。

劳动者，和其他资源拥有者一样，一旦把自己的谈判权利让渡出去，而且是不可撤消的永久让渡给一个没有竞争对手的单一组织，那么，他从这份资源获得的收入必然会减少；那些与经纪人签订了长期排他性合约的明星们，应该最清楚这一点；对于明星们，他们用这一代价换来了从无名之辈变成明星的机会，那么，当我们的工人因法律的规定而不得不将其劳动价格谈判权让渡给全总之后，他们将换来什么呢？长久以来，生存于最底层的几亿农民，没有出租或转让其土地的权利，因而错失了土地增值所带来的巨额财富，他们小本经营的尝试得不到银行的信贷支持，却遇到了无数法规的管制和城管的驱逐，他们唯一的机会是出售劳动，如今，不仅这一机会正在被管制所束缚，他们还不得不聘请全国总工会做他们的经纪人。

过去十年，中国制造业的高速增长，曾经造就了一个世界奇迹，也是推动国民经济腾飞的主力，这一成就很大程度上要归功于灵活自由的雇佣制度和劳动市场，它既给企业带来了增长，也为劳动者创造了收入；现在，这一增长机会正在被管制所扼杀，近年来一系列的管制法规和措施，将使劳动市场逐渐失去其来之不易的开放性和灵活性，而全总这次深入企业经营细节的深度干预措施，无疑又会将强化管制趋势向前大大推进一步。

劳动恶法又一例，见新浪报道：

　　新华网天津1月8日电(记者 周润健)天津市人大常委会日前审议通过《天津市就业促进条例》，禁止用人单位以实习名义廉价使用在校学生。该条例将于2009年3月1日起施行。
　　《条例》明确规定除学校按照教学要求组织的实习外，单位以实习名义招用高等院校、中等职业学校在校学生的行为属于违法行为，由劳动行政部门责令改正，并按照每招用一人处以五百元罚款。
　　根据《条例》，以下七种行为也属于不法用工，包括：提供虚假招聘信息；扣押员工身份证、职业资格证书或其他证件；向劳动者收取保证金、抵押金及其他财物；雇佣童工；招用无合法身份证件的人员；招用无相应职业资格证书人员从事特殊工种的；以招用人员为名牟取不正当利益或者进行其他违法活动。

穷人与他们何怨何仇，要如此断人生路？

 

与法国郊区失业青年骚乱、德国光头党到处闹事一样，这次希腊骚乱也非一日之寒，长期高达1/4的青年失业率下，不骚乱才怪。青年高失业率的原因很简单，严格的劳动法和最低工资标准让企业不敢雇佣新员工，即使雇佣也以临时工和实习生为主，已经雇佣的老员工受法律所限解雇不掉，结果青年只好吞吃苦果。

最低工资标准，说白了就是禁止劳动产出率低于该标准的人工作，这跟欧洲禁止2欧元以下的温州打火机进入欧洲市场，完全是一码事，糊涂人不明白，支持前者，反对后者。以下摘自WSJ的报道：

从罗马到柏林，再到马德里，年轻人大学毕业的时间比北欧、美国或英国的同龄人晚很多，毕业后要找到提供社会保障福利的长期工作也是困难重重。

在德国，包括众多大学毕业生在内的很多年轻人近些年一直在努力寻找支付全额工资的工作。长期以来他们一直以无薪或低薪实习的方式工作。德国媒体将这些没有经济保障的年轻人称为“实习的一代”(Generation Intern)。

西班牙这代年轻人的工作福利和保障也少得可怜，他们经常在临时性工作之间换来换去，这样其雇主就可以避开国内劳动法规定的繁杂义务。媒体将这些人称为“mileuristas”，简单来说，就是指那些靠每月1000欧元微薄收入生存的人。在希腊，类似的人群则被称为“600欧元一代”，因为希腊的最低工资标准是600欧元。

 

此前的国会听证会上，议员们貌似火力凶猛，实则避重就轻，把焦点扯到了私人飞机和高管薪酬等枝节问题上，这一次，共和党参议员总算抓住了要害——劳动成本，以下摘自WSJ报道：

两党的谈判集中在如何让美国汽车业作出一系列承诺上，包括进行债务重组、以及将用工成本降至与丰田汽车公司(Toyota Motor Corp.)和日产汽车公司(Nissan Motor Co.)在美业务相一致的水平等。但由于共和党人坚持要三大汽车公司在2009年就将员工工资降至与丰田和日产在美员工工资相一致的水平，谈判最终还是破裂了。……民主党人也支持将三大汽车公司的员工工资降至与丰田和日产在美业务一致的水平，但不同意以如此快的速度完成。

救助案在参院和众院的不同命运乃意料中事，参议员的任期长度是众议员的三倍，因而相对不受短期民意和舆论的影响，对自己观点（无论是正确还是错误的）比较能坚持。

在压力之下，沃尔玛禁止了供应商使用来自乌兹别克的棉花制品，此举会改善乌兹别克孩子的命运吗？如Fortune的报道，“每年有两个半月，这个中亚国家全国的教室都是空的”，而今后，我猜，这个中亚国家全国30%的教室，一年到头都是空的。

在农村，孩子帮家长干点农活，贴补家用，天经地义。那些要求贫穷国家禁止童工的城里人们，最好先掏钱把童工们原来拿的工资付了，他们这样到处与穷人作对，断绝他们用自己的汗水改变命运的机会，还把这说成是慈善工作，其实仅仅是为了自己高尚的五官不被臭汗污染。

    去年春天，一批自称具有社会责任感的养老金、劳工和投资基金的股东发起了一项运动，旨在帮助乌兹别克斯坦的童工。……“每年有两个半月，这个中亚国家全国的教室都是空的，学生们不上课而是去地里采摘棉花。”

    乌兹别克斯坦是世界第三大棉花种植国，棉花是该国最主要的出口商品，因此欧洲和美国的零售商如果给乌兹别克斯坦施压，有可能会起到作用。……

    ……理查德•古耶尔（Richard Coyle）是沃尔玛负责国际企业事务的高级总监，他对《财富》说：“我们是这样想的，这件事太恶劣了，我们不可能坐视不顾。”

    股东联合会的发起人之一As You Sow也对沃尔玛起到的领导作用进行了赞扬，跨信仰企业责任中心（Interfairth Center on Corporate Responsibility）也对沃尔玛的做法给予充分肯定，这个中心是以信仰为基础的投资者联盟，其代表的资本高达1000亿美元。

    沃尔玛要求其供应商拒绝使用乌兹别克斯坦的棉花，这是沃尔玛第一次要求供应商追溯其制作服饰及家居用品所用棉花的原产地。……

底特律的困境是国内车企的机会 辉格 2008年7月1日 近日，本已深陷困境的美国三大汽车制造商再次向下沉沦，通用和福特的近期表现令投资者对其扭亏前景失去了信心，加上次贷危机所导致的信用紧缩和高油价带来的汽车市场不景气，美国汽车业前景一片黯淡。标准普尔和惠誉等评级机构纷纷将三家的债券降为垃圾级，通用和福特的股票大幅下跌，通用的市值更是降到可笑的62亿美元，相对于其巨大的规模——数十个知名品牌、27万雇员、近千万的年产量和1800亿年销售额——几乎已分文不值。 美国汽车制造商的困境，肇始于汽车业强大的工会力量，后者所推动的僵硬的集体雇佣和薪资安排在战后的繁荣期似乎为车业巨头们提供了稳定的劳动力供给，但在日韩汽车业崛起和此后的全球化浪潮中，却充分表现出其难以应对变化及时作出调整的致命弱点。过去十几年，一方面日益庞大的退休雇员福利开支使他们难以控制成本，另一方面僵硬的劳资协议阻碍了其向新兴工业地区大规模转移产能。最终，尽管他们在技术和品牌上拥有巨大优势，甚至销售也十分旺盛，但仍然不得不面临巨额亏损。如果说全球化进程中有失败者，那么美国汽车业便是最突出的例子。 通用福特们的困境，既不是因为经营管理不善，也不是因为核心资源丧失，而仅仅是因为雇佣制度的僵化所造成的调整障碍和历史包袱，这一特点，给正在迅猛发展的国内汽车产业创造了极佳的收购机会。首先，由于障碍是制度性的，使得整体性的并购或重组成为不可能，无论是同行还是杠杆并购者，都会被随并购而来的巨大包袱所吓退，而现行制度下可行的重组手段，可以说已经被现有的管理层用尽了，已被证明无法根本扭转局面。 看上去美国车企唯一可能的出路是不断出售其优质资产来清偿债务和履行其对在职和退休雇员的义务，其产品线和产能将随之不断萎缩，最后他们将退化成三个养老院。在包袱没有解除之前，他们甚至连破产的机会都难以得到，他们就像被绑在树上的巨人，只能一块块切下自己的肉来换取苟延残喘的机会。可能被出售的资产包括品牌、设计、技术和制造能力，所有这些，正是国内新兴车企所急需的。这样的机会真可谓千载难逢。 塔塔汽车已经抢先跨出一步，今年3月塔塔以23亿美元收购了福特的捷豹和路虎两个品牌及其制造资源，而福特还为随之而转移的养老金包袱倒贴了6亿美元。而去年五月，戴姆勒奔驰已将克莱斯勒出售给瑟伯勒斯资本管理公司，后者很可能在未来将克莱斯勒的资产分拆出售。如今，陷入绝境的通用汽车也难免走上此路。06年10月，吉利通过与锰铜公司建立的合资公司获得了TX4黑色出租车的生产授权和亚洲销售权，并取得锰铜公司23%股权而成为其最大股东，最近，吉利生产的TX4样车已经下线。 前几年，万向集团一直在积极收购北美汽车零件制造商的资产，其中包括德尔福和福特旗下ACH集团的部分资产，相信今后万向会有更多收购机会。06年，万向的电动车样车通过了科技部的检测，据说正在等待获得发改委的生产许可，万向发展整车业务的雄心可见一斑，而眼下正是他赶超先行者的绝佳机会。 面对机会，国内新兴车企因积极准备，制订自己的发展路线，研究那些面临困境的传统车企的资产特点，选定适合自己发展战略的目标，制订融资与整合方案，以便在机会到来时能够迅速作出反应。