Date
Cath Kidston Head Offices
Dear Madam,
I am writing to you to in support of the way your company makes its products. I have many Cath Kidston items and I like them very much. What makes them even better is that I know that that they are made in the UK, (on the label they read “made in England”).
In class this term we have been learning all about Globalization and how it is affecting the world. Personally I think that we need Globalization to move on and lift the world out of poverty, although for this to happen there are going to be a hard period of about ten to twenty years when the people that are workers are going to have to work hard and be paid little.
I think it is wrong for big worldwide companies to take advantage of the cheap labour in the Far East and use it to mass produce items, pay the workers very little and make huge profits.
In the Far East factor workers are being exploited to provide cheap labour because they are desperate for jobs. They earn a tiny fraction of the final selling price of the garment they are making. They also work in very poor conditions and for excessive hours. Did you know that an estimated 1.1 billion people are living on less than $1 a day and over 50% of the population in the East Asia/ Pacific region are living on less than $2 a day? I think this really brings out the horrible side of world globalization.
However, some argue that globalization is good. They say that even though there are workers all over the world in dreadful conditions, gradually their conditions are being improved as developing countries enter the last stages of industrialisation. For example, in China, due to major economic advances the number of impoverish people has dropped massively in recent years and continues to improve, even as the overall population continues to rise.
Looking at all of this, I hope that you are going to carry on making your products in the U.K as I think that even though the profit looks very good on paper if you use Far East factories there is also the question of Global Warming. All your products will carry thousands of air miles and add to global air pollution. So if we have perfectly good factories back here in England then why not use them.
But of course, the cost of production here in the U.K is much, much greater than that of the Far East, so you are not going to make as much profit. However, I think that if you keep making your products I England, your company will expand as people chose to buy your products in the knowledge that what they are buying has no air miles and was made by factory workers in England who were paid no less than the minimum wage.
That is why I hope and will continue to support you if, even if you go world wide, you continue to use English factories to produce the wonderful products that everyone enjoys so much.
Yours sincerely,
Miss Duncan
