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In today's globalized economy, businesses are increasingly expected to take responsibility for their ethical decisions and the impact on workers and society.  Among these broad ethical landscapes, labor exploitation stands out as an urgent issue, since it raises profound questions about fairness and responsibility in global commerce. As highlighted by the United Nations, "decent work means opportunities for everyone to get work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families" (United Nations, 2025). This essay examines labor exploitation as a pressing business ethics issue, interpreting the problem through virtue ethics and Kantian ethics, and focuses on its connection to UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth.

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The article ‘Modern Slavery in Business: The Sad and Sorry State of a Non-Field’ by Caruana, Crane, Gold, and LeBaron (2021) positions modern slavery in business not as a marginal phenomenon but as a structural outcome of global supply-chain design. Specifically, they identify recurring forms of exploitation—wage suppression, hazardous working environments, and restrictions on worker mobility—and emphasize that these are perpetuated through cost-driven outsourcing and opaque subcontracting. In the article, this phenomenon is well shown in Bangladesh’s garment industry: International brands keep putting pressure on suppliers to lower prices. In response, suppliers have to reduce expenditures on workers’ benefits, making it impossible to improve the working conditions. Meanwhile, workers’ wages remain far below the level needed to make a living. Moreover, the authors further emphasize that many companies’ efforts to handle modern slavery, such as complying with the UK Modern Slavery Act, often only involve symbolic compliance—these actions tend to be more about avoiding reputational risks than actually addressing the underlying exploitation.

Building on this analysis, the significance of this ethical issue lies in its systemic drivers. The article explains how companies justify exploitation by relying on market logic and fragmented accountability system. Additionally, Richard (2023) describes poverty wage as a “disequilibrium price” to explain the persistence of these wages. His paper shows that market balance can normalize unequal value distributions, as it is in line with economic laws, rather than being an ethical problem. This perspective helps explain Caruana et al.’s observation: wage suppression remains  common even in competitive markets. Building on this, Arun (2023) expands the discussion by pointing out “intersectional vulnerabilities”, especially based on gender and migrant status. These factors place certain groups at even higher risk due to their limited capacity to resist unfair conditions. These insights deepen the understanding of the Bangladeshi case. Low wages and hazardous conditions are not just about global cost pressures. They are also about the power imbalance which erodes certain groups of legal protection.

Consequently,  these research results indicate that mere symbolic compliance is never sufficient. If exploitation stems from structural incentives and entrenched inequalities, businesses cannot rely on voluntary disclosure alone. Instead, they face an ethical obligation to pursue enforceable due diligence, adopt living-wage standards, and strengthen protections for vulnerable workers. This responsibility aligns closely with Sustainable Development Goal 8, which calls for “decent work and economic growth,” making clear that genuine reform in labor practices is essential for achieving global sustainability targets.

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Richard Wolff: How You Are Being Exploited

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Ethical Theories Behind Labor Exploitation

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Ethical Theories Behind Labor Exploitation

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Behind the issue of labor exploitation lie deeper ethical debates, particularly visible through Kantian ethics and virtue ethics. These two frameworks help illuminate why business practices that rely on underpaid and vulnerable workers are ethically problematic, even when disguised as market efficiency or global competitiveness.

Kantian ethics provides the most direct critique. Kant distinguishes between perfect and imperfect duties, both grounded in the Categorical Imperative. As Saunders et al. (2024, p. 4) explain, imperfect duties such as beneficence “strictly require agents to adopt certain ends” even if they allow some latitude in how they are fulfilled. Applying this to labor exploitation, multinational firms cannot justify a system where workers’ basic humanity is treated as expendable. The failure to ensure living wages violates the perfect duty not to use persons merely as means, while neglecting worker welfare breaches the imperfect duty to promote others’ ends. In this light, exploitation is not merely a managerial failure but a structural violation of Kantian moral law, where duty should constrain profit-seeking.

Virtue ethics, while less stringent in form, highlights another layer of critique. Aristotle saw virtue as “excellence of the soul” and insisted that happiness and virtue are “internally connected” (Pradhan, 2022, p. 159). Exploitative labor practices degrade both workers, who are denied the conditions to cultivate temperance, courage, or justice, and employers, whose pursuit of excessive profit reflects the vice of greed rather than the virtue of moderation. From this perspective, labor exploitation undermines the moral character of business actors and prevents a flourishing society.

Together, both theories converge in affirming that sustainable business cannot coexist with systemic exploitation.

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SDG 8 seeks to promote inclusive economic growth and ensure decent work, with Target 8.7 calling to “end modern slavery and human trafficking” (United Nations, 2025). The labor exploitation patterns identified earlier reveal a direct conflict with this agenda. At a basic level, wage suppression and unsafe conditions undermine the very notion of decent work. More critically, practices such as document confiscation and coerced overtime amount to modern slavery, placing these supply-chain dynamics in outright violation of Target 8.7 itself.

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1.A Snapshot of Labour Exploitation in China

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1.A Snapshot of Labour Exploitation in China

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The insights discussed earlier resonate with real-world investigations. China Labor Watch (2023) published a report on the Chengdu Foxconn factory, showing that excessive overtime, wage deductions, and discriminatory recruitment severely undermines workers’ rights while maintaining a veneer of legality. Even more alarming, a similar situation is found in Guangdong province, yet their struggles failed to attract public scrutiny (Respect International, 2023). Altogether, modern slavery and labour exploitation are multi-sided: visible abuses coexist with legalized invisibility. Detecting and addressing these layers required collective effort among regulators, NGOs, and businesses, and there still remains a long way to go.

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Apple’s China Gamble: iPhone 17, Foxconn’s 200K Workers, Endless Overtime; Xi’s Fate Sealed?

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In several countries in East Asia, excessive overtime has been a norm for years, especially in manufacturing and service industries. A study focusing on overtime patterns in China, Japan, and South Korea reveals that workers in China report the longest average hours, often exceeding 70 hours per week (Tsai et al., 2016). This issue is linked to weak labor protections and market pressures, with low-skilled workers in China and professionals in Japan facing extreme workloads. These practices  intensify labor exploitation and cause serious harms to workers’ health and well-being.

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Child labour refers to the situation where children are deprived of their education prematurely in order to make living. This issue still exists in many regions, especially in high risk industries such as agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. According to an official study, 138 million children are in child labour around the world, with nearly one third of them struggling in hazardous tasks (ILO & UNICEF, 2024). This exploitation is mainly due to poverty and lack of educational access, and it brings physical and psychological harm to the vulnerable youth.

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Child labor Around The World Is More Complicated Than You Think

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Labor exploitation is not an isolated management failure, but a systemic ethical issue sustained by market logics, legal invisibility, and weak accountability. Kantian ethics sees exploitation as a violation of universal duties, while virtue ethics highlights exploitation’s corrosive impact on moral character and social flourishing. Moreover, the persistence of child labor, forced overtime, and specific cases such as Foxconn demonstrate the necessity of  structural reforms. Achieving SDG 8 requires enforceable due diligence, wage benchmarks, and genuine worker participation, which helps sustainable businesses become a reality. At the global level, tackling labor exploitation is vital not only for protecting workers, but also for ensuring sustainable economic development, promoting fair trade and shared prosperity.

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AJ+. (2025, June 12). Child labor around the world is more complicated than you think [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/awiQd8BVGTs

Arun, S. (2023). Modern slavery and exploitative work regimes: An intersectional approach. Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2023.2173725

Caruana, R., Crane, A., Gold, S., & LeBaron, G. (2021). Modern slavery in business: The sad and sorry state of a non-field. Journal of Business Ethics, 174(2), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04534-0

China Labor Watch. (2023). Investigation of an Apple supplier: Chengdu Foxconn report. https://chinalaborwatch.org/investigation-of-an-apple-supplier-chengdu-foxconn-report-in-2023/

China Unfiltered. (2025, September 14). Apple's China gamble: iPhone 17, Foxconn’s 200K workers [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/YCg129f1fwE

GreggU. (2018, September 30). Employee and employer rights [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/_M4q-xTLPAM

ILO & UNICEF. (2024). Child Labour: Global Estimates 2024, Trends and the Road Forward. International Labour Organization & United Nations Children’s Fund.

Pradhan, R. C. (2024). Virtue ethics. In Ethics, self and the world (pp. 157–177). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-3496-2_8

Respect International. (2023). The dark side of the glittering world: A report on exploitation in toy factories in China. https://respect.international/the-dark-side-of-the-glittering-world-a-report-on-exploitation-in-toy-factories-in-china/

Richard, S. (2023). Wage exploitation as disequilibrium price. Business Ethics Quarterly, 33(2), 327–351. https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2021.45

Saunders, J., Slater, J., & Sticker, M. (2024). Kant and overdemandingness I: The demandingness of imperfect duties. Philosophy Compass, e12998. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12998

The Gravel Institute. (2021, January 22). Richard Wolff: How you are being exploited [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/2mI_RMQEulw

Tsai, M.C., Nitta, M., Kim, S.W., & Wang, W. (2016). Working overtime in East Asia: Convergence or divergence? Journal of Contemporary Asia, 46(4), 700–722. https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2016.1144778

United Nations. (2025). SDG 8: Decent work and economic growth. United Nations. https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal8