In 2008 they close a factory plant in Bochum (Germany) to move it to Romania, with tax reductions from the Romanian government.
In that year they received the "Company of the Year" award from the Romanian government, many Romanians were of course happy to be given the opportunity for a job, while a anti-Nokia sentiment grew in Germany with the amount of jobs being lost.
A few years later (2011) Nokia moved the same factory to Vietnam.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/factory-closure...
https://www.ft.com/content/619bc988-ea7a-11e0-b0f5-00144feab...
http://www.business-review.eu/news/nokia-and-romanian-trade-...
I'm not sure if it is a niche large enough to be a viable business, however. In some areas, I source as much as I can from local providers - or use my own labor. However, that's probably not realistic for most folks. I'm fortunate enough to have an obscene number of acres and live next to a small family farm.
Of course there's quite a lot of bad behaviour happening among such a dynamic development, but I wouldn't actually worry too much about anything that goes into a car. It's almost all high tech, and really not amendable to be manufactured in sweat shops. Plus car manufacturers are large and brand-conscious, and tend to tightly control their supply chain.
Textiles are at a much higher risk of being manufactured under bad conditions, but even there I believe the race to the bottom is coming to a natural end. Over the last decade, they have moved first to China, then on to Vietnam and now, I believe, indonesia and Cambodia. They're quickly running out of countries with lax labor standards.
Umm...
You know what might help? Blockchains. This might actually be something that could help with. It'd be an immutable ledger of sources. It'd not be perfect, probably. But, it might help.
Additionally, I'd pay more for something like a Fair Trade automobile. My daily driver is a BMW. I'm pretty sure half the computer components were made by Asian children and/or an abused populous. It's one of the higher end models, nearly six figures, but I'd have happily paid something like 20% more - if it ensured the parts were sourced ethically.
German auto workers are mostly paid quite well according to collective agreements, similar to low-mid level knowledge workers. And for cars made in Europe, not that many parts are sourced from outside of Europe.
Then they actually have no (sustainable) leverage at all.
In the end, the shareholders just matter more to these companies than the employees. They're often the ones signing off on the renumeration of the CEO and the executive team.
> Then they actually have no (sustainable) leverage at all.
They kind of have. To go any lower with the wages, the car companies would have go outside of EU - to Serbia or Ukraine, for example. Then, they would be hit by the import duties they themselves lobbied for.
So the workers can ask for such increase, that is still a bit below the costs of having it behind EU borders plus duties.
The trend of the plant operators is currently exactly the other way: they try to import workers from these cheaper countries. Undocumented, of course.
Plus, this being VW, a German company, half of the board seats is held by union representatives, and a significant portion of the rest are held by local politicians (the state is a minority shareholder in VW).
So, Slovakian workers are now realizing their current leverage, they might actually receive raises, but soon auto companies will move on. Auto co shareholders want their company's suppliers to squeeze every last penny out of every part, haggling over 0.5 cent savings is really normal.
Source: My father has been working in automotive for last 2 decades (auto parts supplier). They had an unofficial saying "EBIT macht frei", a pun on Nazis' "Arbeit macht frei", meaning that EBIT has to be optimized for at ALL cost.
EDIT: Corrected the EBIT pun