In practice, they provide cheap labour (mainly from Asia) for the garment industry, farming and fish-processing.
But in the short term it fears an influx of cheap labour from Poland and Hungary.
Moreover, it is not true that countries with cheap labour always have lower costs.
So the work that is and has to be cheap labour intensive will go there.
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Other multinationals have come here to capitalise on the cheap labour and rental costs, setting up offices.
The ADB has warned before of the dangers of growth fuelled by natural bounty and cheap labour.
Yet even the best corporate-ethics programme will not end complaints about cheap labour.
But this means a lot more than just marrying capital in the territory with cheap labour around the region.
Business is under growing scrutiny for such alleged misdeeds as exploiting cheap labour or being indifferent to the environment.
The economy's bounciness still owes more to cheap labour than to high productivity.
China is no longer just a source of cheap labour, says Ms Xu.
The premium is smaller in India and Pakistan, two other big growers with lots of cheap labour, and greater in America.
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But Britain had coal, which replaced firewood as a fuel, and colonies with slaves providing plenty of farmland and cheap labour.
This is about more than outsourcing manufacturing to places with cheap labour, or producing cars near to where they are sold.
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Gulf employers have got accustomed to using cheap labour and they are ready to fight tooth and nail to keep it.
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Jim Sheridan (West Renfrewshire) raised the matter of redundancies in the UK in the light of moves abroad for cheap labour.
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And for the UK, that wealth isn't going to come from digging things out of the ground or competing on cheap labour.
Many Chinese businesses have been built on using cheap labour to produce cheap, commoditised goods such as clothes and shoes for export.
Politicians accused the firm of a ploy to make cheap labour from eastern Europe more easily available to McDonald's managers across the continent.
Some of the reasons for Asia's dominance are obvious: cheap labour feeds into low prices, and huge local markets allow economies of scale.
Mr Kalyani says he was early to realise that India could not be a success relying on cheap labour to produce cheap goods.
Cheap land, cheap labour and rich natural resources have attracted big inflows of foreign investment, especially from Asian neighbours like China, Vietnam and Thailand.
Cheap labour, fiscal support such as duty-free import of fabrics and accessories, and new infrastructure to help smoother, quicker exports have helped the industry grow rapidly.
Very few seemed willing to accept any blame for failing to establish new niches based on good design, marketing or the use of technology, rather than cheap labour.
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The Lewis Point is the great test for catch-up economies, when they can no longer rely on cheap labour, copied technology, and export-led growth to keep the game going.
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The other problem with Italy's small firms is that too many of them are in the wrong industries, relying for too long on cheap labour for their competitive advantage.
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You might like cheap labour scurrying round with a broom in your kitchen - but you feel differently when it is cheap labour doing the job you thought was yours.
Now they are stuck with them and can do nothing to fight the competition, since Dubai is, in essence, a tax-free zone with access to cheap labour from the Indian subcontinent.
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