Charges of exploitation look weaker now that virtually every government in the world is struggling to attract the investment, jobs and technology that only transnational corporations can deliver. But that development has only exacerbated complaints that jobs are being jeopardized in the richer nations. Such allegations are made in a report submitted last month by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University to the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission. The report castigates American bosses for fomenting insecurity among workers by threatening to move operations abroad, or close factories altogether, whenever labor unions seek to gain a foothold. The report paints the familiar caricature of U.S. corporations migrating around the globe ''in search of lower and lower labor costs and higher and higher profit margins.'' Similar accusations are frequently leveled by union-inspired student activists railing against Third World sweatshops.
Transnational corporations are no saints.
They put their own interests, or, in the case of U.S. companies, those of their shareholders, first. But they should at least be criticized on the right grounds. As another report this month shows, there is little evidence to support these well-worn complaints against them. More and more countries realize that foreign investment is vital to prosperity and are changing their policies and regulations to attract it. Living and working conditions are likely to be worst where foreign investment is lowest.