My feeling is that without a dedicated world body with the force of law behind it like a "Bern Convention" but for labor, what you are proposing is fantastic.
It's as if one might expect people who buy a burger from McDonald's to go ahead and give the half way difference between what a burger costs at McDonald's and a Gourment burger joint (assuming McD pays its employees around minimum wage and the Gourment joint pays more) to McD's workers "to be fair".
If China feels it's in its interest not to bolster its labor laws and not to vigorously enforce those it has, then leaving it up to individual companies to unilaterally take up the good cause is not an effective policy. The central government could fix all these issues, but it feels they are subservient to other issues. Mandating higher wages risks making automation more attractive which would dispossess these marginal workers. Foxconn as it is, is exploring this alternative as they witness wage inflation.
Why would Volkswagen, Toyota, Dell, Hitachi, Samsung, even Huawei, etc., unilaterally require that their OEMs pay their (OEMs's not actually the foreign firms's) employees any more than they do when doing so would put them at a disadvantage vis a vis other OEMs and those customers who do not pay higher wages? Let's say Acer picked up the good cause but no one else did, Acer would eventually lose to the others due to higher costs. It's not as though the OEMs and their customers need to compete for labor.
It's as if one might expect people who buy a burger from McDonald's to go ahead and give the half way difference between what a burger costs at McDonald's and a Gourment burger joint (assuming McD pays its employees around minimum wage and the Gourment joint pays more) to McD's workers "to be fair".
If China feels it's in its interest not to bolster its labor laws and not to vigorously enforce those it has, then leaving it up to individual companies to unilaterally take up the good cause is not an effective policy. The central government could fix all these issues, but it feels they are subservient to other issues. Mandating higher wages risks making automation more attractive which would dispossess these marginal workers. Foxconn as it is, is exploring this alternative as they witness wage inflation.
Why would Volkswagen, Toyota, Dell, Hitachi, Samsung, even Huawei, etc., unilaterally require that their OEMs pay their (OEMs's not actually the foreign firms's) employees any more than they do when doing so would put them at a disadvantage vis a vis other OEMs and those customers who do not pay higher wages? Let's say Acer picked up the good cause but no one else did, Acer would eventually lose to the others due to higher costs. It's not as though the OEMs and their customers need to compete for labor.