Subcontracting chains let firms deny responsibility for exploitative labor practices

Evidence

This situation appeared in the New York Times after an organized walkout from the indentured student workers at Hershey. CETUSA then decided to retaliate, and terminated the visas of some of the ringleaders, effectively getting them deported. The subcontracting arrangement allowed them to claim plausible deniability about the labor practices. Similar programs then came to light at other employers, because the larger program run by the State Department had placed 130,000 students in jobs during 2011. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 403

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the diamond-market subcontracting and plausible deniability logic from Richman’s ‘Opting out of the Legal System,’ and Perrow’s work on organized irresponsibility. — connects to: Neoliberal subcontracting creates undocumented workers whose legal invisibility lets employers evade obligations; Long intermediary chains let people commit abhorrent acts without role awareness — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 552

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal subcontracting creates undocumented workers whose legal invisibility lets employers evade obligations #corroborates (0.85)
• Long intermediary chains let people commit abhorrent acts without role awareness #corroborates (0.72) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 552