What are sweatshops? The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines sweatshops as: A shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions. These factories are mainly located in Third-World countries, although there are still a few in the United States. Many popular, name brand companies like Nike, use sweatshops around the world. Today there is much controversy about sweatshops and whether they should be banned and closed. In reality, the conditions of these factories are terrible. The employees are paid very little, even after working long, hard hours. The supervisors of these shops are often cruel, malicious, and brutal. Sadly, these factories are often the only source of income for Third-World workers. As bad as these sweatshops might be, they have pulled many countries and individuals out of poverty. So, are sweatshops beneficial? Sweatshops are a very big topic today, especially in politics. People are chaotically protesting against these factories. What are the reasons behind this? One of the main reasons, they say, is that they factory owners and …show more content…
USAS is a group of college students who want to either do away with sweatshops completely or use governmental policies to improve them to their standards. In an interview with John Stossel of ABC News, they tried to explain to him their reasons for opposing sweatshops. One of the main leaders of USAS said, “Workers have no choices about what their lives are, they have to go to work in these factories. The workers themselves have come to us and said ‘You benefit from our exploitation, give us back something.’” The young man was talking about sweatshop workers and workers around their university, but the main idea applies to all sweatshops. Is this true? Do the workers in these poor Third-World countries feel like they are being
Some of the arguments against sweatshops raised by Americans is the they take jobs away from the American people. In the job force it is becoming harder to find an open position any where. Instead of keeping the factories here the companies are shipped over seas, causing millions of job opportunities for Americans to be lost. Some arguments raised by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) are the poor working conditions, low wages, long hours, and children in the factories. The damp, dark, and cold environment can depress the workers even more than they may be, causing rates in suicide to increase. Low wages is another concern USAS have. The workers barley get enough money to survive.
Sweatshops started around the 1830’s when industrialization started growing in urban areas. Most people who worked in them at the time were immigrants who didn't have their papers. They took jobs where they thought they'd have the most economic stability. It’s changed a bit since then, companies just want the cheapest labor they can get and to be able to sell the product in order to make a big profit. It’s hard to find these types of workers in developed areas so they look toward 3rd world countries. “sweatshops exist wherever there is an opportunity to exploit workers who lack the knowledge and resources to stand up for themselves.” (Morey) In third world countries many people are very poor and are unable to afford food and water so the kids are pulled out of school and forced to work so they can try to better their lives. This results in n immense amount of uneducated people unaware they can have better jobs and that the sweatshops are basically slavery. With a large amounts uneducated they continue the cycle of economic instability. There becomes no hope for a brighter future so people just carry on not fighting for their basic rights. Times have changed. 5 Years ago companies would pay a much larger amount for a product to be made but now if they’re lucky they’ll pay half, if a manufacturer doesn't like that another company will happily take it (Barnes). Companies have gotten greedier and greedier in what they’ll pay to have a product manufactured. Companies have taken advantage of the fact that people in developing countries will do just about anything to feed their families, they know that if the sweatshop in Cambodia don't like getting paid 2 dollars per garment the one in Indonesia will. This means that there is less money being paid to the workers which mean more will starve and live in very unsafe environments. Life is
With the continued rise of consumer "needs" in "industrial" countries such as the United States, and the consistently high price that corporations must pay to produce goods in these countries, companies are looking to "increase (their) profits by driving down costs any way possible... To minimize costs, companies look for places with the lowest wages and human rights protections" (Dosomething). Countries with lax or unenforced labor laws grant multinational corporations the leeway to use cheap foreign labor to mass-produce their commodities so that they can be sold in countries like America. These inexpensive, sometimes borderline illegal, establishments are known as sweatshops. In his book Timmerman discusses the topic of sweatshops in great detail. Originally in search of "where (his) T-shirt was made(;) (Timmerman) (went) to visit the factory where it was made and (met) the people who made (it)" (Timmerman5).
...e their product. Sweatshops are found usually all over the world and need to make a better decision as in more labor laws, fair wages, and safety standards to better the workers' conditions. It should benefit the mutually experiences by both the employers and the employees. Most important is the need to be educated about their rights and including local labor laws.
Some people of North America know about these sweatshop workers, they feel bad and some also protest. They set up NGOs, send funds and donations but they never try to break the tradition of sweatshop working. They all assume that this is best for the society. An Idea can be drawn from William
It is often said that products made in sweatshops are cheap and that is why people buy those products, but why is it behind the clothes or shoes that we wear that make sweatshops bad? In the article Sweat, Fire and Ethics by Bob Jeffcott is trying to persuade the people and tell them how sweatshops are bad. Bob Jeffcott supports the effort of workers of the global supply chains in order to win improved wages and good working conditions and a better quality of life of those who work on sweatshops. He mentions and describes in detail how the conditions of the sweatshops are and how the people working in them are forced to long working hours for little money. He makes the question, “we think we can end sweatshops abuses by just changing our individual buying habits?” referring to we can’t end the abuses that those women have by just stopping of buying their products because those women still have to work those long hours because other people are buying their product for less pay or less money.
Sweatshops are factories that violate two or more human rights. Sweatshops are known in the media and politically as dangerous places for workers to work in and are infamous for paying minimum wages for long hours of labour. The first source is a quote that states that Nike has helped improve Vietnamese’s’ workers lives by helping them be able to afford luxuries they did not have access to before such as scooters, bicycles and even cars. The source is showing sweatshops in a positive light stating how before sweatshops were established in developing countries, Vietnamese citizens were very poor and underprivileged. The source continues to say that the moment when sweatshops came to Vietnam, workers started to get more profit and their lives eventually went uphill from their due to being able to afford more necessities and luxuries; one of them being a vehicle, which makes their commute to work much faster which in turn increases their quality of life. The source demonstrates this point by mentioning that this is all due to globalization. Because of globalization, multinationals are able to make investments in developing countries which in turn offers the sweatshops and the employees better technology, better working skills and an improvement in their education which overall helps raise the sweatshops’ productivity which results in an increase
A sweatshop is a workplace where individuals work with no benefits, inadequate living wages, and poor working conditions (Dictionary.com). Sweatshops can be found all around the world, especially in developing nations where local laws are easily corrupted: Central America, South America, Asia, and in certain places in Europe (Background on Sweatshops). China, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Bangladesh are the main places where most sweatshop products are made (McAllister). Often sweatshop workers are individuals who have immigrated and are working in other countries. Although many U.S. citizens do not know or do not believe that the U.S. has sweatshops, they do exist, many are in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (Background on Sweatshops). Sweatshops grew in popularity during the Industrial Revolution because farmers left their land to acquire new jobs in factories (Sweatshops). The global economy should not depend on sweatshops, instead developed nations that obtain services from overseas sweatshops should improve the working conditions and provide a living wage for their workers.
We humans have accomplished so much, that we can do the things that we thought were unattainable. We talk to people who are millions mile away, we fly and go to our desire places, we even go to the moon and other planets, we bring the dead and we heal the sick people. How cool are we right? But why are we facing global climate change? Why are many species suddenly disappearing? It is because of us human beings, whom can do the impossible but fail to understand the simple side effect of our actions. Industrialization and technology has become the most necessity for humanity. We produce, we sale, we make money and we produce even more. Though Earth’s resource is abundant, because we fail to use our resource wisely, we are facing sparse. Industrialization
Sweatshops increase the standards of living for the workers and their communities. The comparison between working conditions in the United States against
Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn are Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalists who spent fourteen years in Asia doing research on the country as well as the sweatshops of that country. In their article "Two Cheers for Sweatshops" they sum up clearly the misunderstanding of sweatshops by most of the modern world. "Yet sweatshops that seem brutal from the vantage point of an American sitting in his living room can appear tantalizing to a Thai laborer getting by on beetles." The fact of the matter is that sweatshops in the eyes of the actual workers are not as bad as they are made out to be, by many activists. Though many organizations that oppose sweatshops and their labor practices try to make the point that sweatshops do not have to exist. But one must consider the fact that, the companies that use sweatshops are creating at least some type of jobs for people that gladly accept them.
Americans do not realize the amount of clothing we wear on a daily basis is actually made in Cambodia, such as Adidas and even the Gap. The women that work for these sweatshops in Cambodia sew for 50 cents an hour, which is what allows stores in America, such as H&M to sell inexpensive clothing (Winn, 2015). The conditions these Cambodian workers face are a noisy, loud, and extremely hot environment where people are known for having huge fainting attacks. When workers were on strike a year ago, authorities actually shot multiple people just because they were trying to raise their pay. There is plenty of evidence of abuse captured through many interviews of workers from different factories, and is not just a rarity these places see often or hear of. Factories hire children, fire pregnant women because they are slow and use the bathroom to much, scream at regular workers if they use the toilet more than two times a day, scam hard working employees with not paying them their money they worked for and more, and workers are sent home and replaced if 2,000 shirts are not stitched in one day. Expectations are unrealistic and not suitable for employees to be working each day for more than ten
Should Sweatshop Labor be abolished? A Sweatshop or sweat factory is defined by the US Department of Labour as a factory that violates two or more labour laws. Sweatshops often have poor working conditions, unfair wages, unreasonable hours, child labour, and lack of benefits for workers. In developing countries, an estimated 168 million children ages 5 to 14 are forced to work.
Workers should be entitled to increased wages, normal working conditions, and be given worker rights. They should not have to work as much and be assured of their safety. Numerous people want to dismantle sweatshops altogether, but I think that countries will return to their deprived state without them due to the nonexistence of jobs. I think a solution is to somehow stop big companies from being so dependent on sweatshops, possibly by boycotting. I do agree that sweatshops are a big problem and something should be done to stop the horrible conditions. Sweatshops have the potential to become something great and offer great benefits to developing countries once all of the harsh problems are
The thesis statement of this essay is that the use of sweatshops is a complicated and complex issue with no right or wrong answer. In paragraph 2, the topic sentence is that the definition of sweatshops confirms her opinion that the use of sweatshops is unethical. The author also uses Uzbekistan as an example to support her first main topic “thousands of children must pick 10 to 40 kg of cotton per day, earning a wage of 38 cents for their efforts” she also explains how these children carry pesticides in plastic bottles resulting in skin burns when the toxins splash onto their skin. In paragraph 4, the topic sentence is that the issues involving sweatshops are not easy issues to form a solid opinion on, as there are more than one side to the debate.