Labor Party Beliefs

To deal with the four points made by my opponent in the last round in order:1: ON THE RIGHTS OF CORPORATIONS, AND THE DISCONNECT BETWEEN SHAREHOLDERS' AND WORKERS' RIGHTS AND INTERESTSMy opponent merely asserts that expanding corporations would, without the minimum wage, have no negative impact on employees' standards of living and income. There is no reason to believe this to be the case: indeed, if all that a company is concerned about is expansion, and increasing the number of workers, then one of the easiest ways to do so is to decrease the wage paid to each worker. This is common practice amongst multi-national corporations, who exploit the lack of minimum wage, overtime and/or child labour laws (or the non-enforcement of existing laws) in order to increase their profits worldwide. See http://homepage.mac.com... for just one example of a company (Nike) that does this. See also http://finance.yahoo.com... for information on Apple doing the same, and for further information on the negative impacts of such disregard for foreign workers. I don't know about my opponent, but it's this sort of information that makes me glad to live in a First World country that doesn't allow for exploitation of its citizens in this way, like Third World countries (along with First World countries like China) so often do.The fact that companies such as Nike, and Apple, seek to publicly deny these allegations (and are very quick to be seen to make amends when they are definitively proven) shows that they, as much as everyone else, recognise the negative nature of such exploitation. But the marching call of ever-increasing expansion cannot be denied, and they cut corners wherever they can to make an extra buck. There is also a difference - swept over by my opponent - between accepting that corporations are made up of people, and claiming that corporations are people. It is easy enough to provide free-speech rights to the individuals within such companies - through data protection laws, for instance - without going so far as to grant personhood to inanimate corporations.2: ON TRADE UNIONSNoticeably, my opponent did not deal with my argumentation about the positive nature of trade unions, seeking to represent the interests of busy workers who simply don't have the time to read into current employment law, etc., and thus risk being outmaneuvered by management, who have the money to hire consultants to do that work for them. To avoid this exploitation, everyone should join a union.Also, it is bizarre now that my opponent is making claims about unionised workers that are not only not backed up by the facts, but also by his own source: http://omegahrsolutions.com..., as indeed directly quoted by him. For instance, it can't both be true that unionised workers are likely to have lower salaries (as my opponent claims), and that unions rise the wages of their members (to alleged detrimental effect, as the source claims).As for why increased minimum wages are justified in the face of such arguments, I refer back to my previous arguments about minimum wages being vital for the maintenance of reasonable standards of living in workers, and the disparity between the interest to a larger company, and the right to such a standard of living.My opponent also repeats arguments about unionisation and productivity, in regards to alleged "sloth" and "dumbness", and on this I refer back to the previous round, where I argued that sensible companies will write in levels of expected productivity into employment contracts. If these standards are reasonable, then they are enforceable through workers being fired for failing to live up to them.3: ON TEENAGERS AND THE MINIMUM WAGEOnce again, my opponent has here repeated argumentation without dealing with my rebuttal on the issue: in this situation, regarding the ability of low-/unskilled workers (including/especially teens) to 'shop around' for jobs. To repeat here what I said then:"All that happens with no minimum wage is that these teenagers – being unskilled and thus have not much to offer that every other prospective worker has - have no bargaining power with the employers and so will take any job they can, regardless of the price, simply because it gets them minutely closer to being able to afford basic living standards. All that my opponent's policy does is harm the people at the bottom of the ladder, whereas those at the top can afford to take lower paid jobs – because either they or their parents already have enough to subsidise their basic living standards - or unpaid internships, to increase work experience and thus give them an even greater advantage over the unskilled teens at the bottom of the ladder."The comments about "slothful teens" is dealt with by my arguments about contractual levels of productivity in the previous round. Teens, if they have finished high school and are not going to college, should not have to rely on their parents for room and board either. Their parents should be encouraging them to live independently, with a minimum wage acting as incentive via giving them enough money to do so.4: ON CHILD LABOUR LAWS, AND ASSOCIATED ISSUESHere, I really don't understand why my opponent claims that I have "misinterpreted" his point, because I haven't. I agree entirely that some workers protection laws may end up to be unnecessary, but unless my opponent names them specifically we cannot really debate whether the laws in question actually are unnecessary. The only specific example my opponent gave was child labour laws - helpfully defined in the second round as laws restricting work for the over-12s - and I did deal with that argument, and will continue to do so now.The first thing to mention is that I'm sure that my opponent, at the age of 14, would be able to balance schoolwork and work competently. I would like to hope that I also could have done so when I was 14. But not everyone can: especially for teenagers feeling oppressed by their parents' rules, the ability to earn a wage can seem at that point in life overwhelmingly seductive, and it could be difficult for many teenagers to quite understand when to stop, and to comprehend at the point of skipping school in order to go to work, just how much their schoolwork is being affected.But at this point, my opponent claims that at the age of 12, the child has learned enough. I disagree, for two reasons: firstly, because the school education system is laid out already to give children a good balance through their childhood years of fun/play and work. But secondly, and far more importantly, there is a big stigma against people who don't complete their teenage schooling - in Britain, this would be failing your GCSEs; in America, this would be failing to graduate from high school. Due to a lack of education, their career options are limited. They may be able to work their way through the ladder of one career choice, but what if that career becomes defunct 20/30 years down the line? What if a future recession renders them unemployed and unable to retrain? Giving teenagers an incentive to not finish / ignore their schooling and work full-time may seem seductive to them in the short term, but runs the risk of being far more detrimental in the long-term. This is the same argument that I deploy against the Dick Grotton argument quoted by my opponent. Notwithstanding the fact that I disagree with the assumption - 40 hours of leisure activity a week, equivalent to a full-time job, seems way too much to fit in with a good school education - there is a big difference between supplementing your education with skills via sports, glee club or debating, and trashing the lot for paid employment.