Are you employed? Does your boss treat you fairly? Surprisingly, there are many people who work for popular brands and are mistreated and underpaid. These people work out of the country that is constantly mistreated, face difficult problems every day, do not even have rights. It is obvious to see that this is a form of abuse. How can America participate in this act? Transition: It is appalling how people like us who are no less than us are mistreated and are working for not even a dollar an hour. Body 1. The children and people who work at workshops are constantly mistreated. (a) Many children are abused when they work at sweat shops. They are forced to work in uncomfortable positions or for a long time. It comes to be abuse when the children are not physically able to perform the job correctly because they are too young, and it may damage their bodies. They cannot stop working because they might be threatened for their lives. Some are commanded to work overtime and if they refuse they can lose a day’s worth of pay. Also, they can be literally forced to stay at the sweatshop with armed guards. (Anonymous) They are also verbally abused. Many managers yell and shout to those who think they are not working fast enough. (Anonymous) (b) There are also many children involved in these sweat shops. It is sad to see that these children lose their childhood. As a child, working in sweatshops can be traumatizing and can affect them to think that every working environment would be the same. Many sweatshops focus on hiring children because they typically have small size hands and fingers and it will be easier to maneuver big machines. The consequences of this, is that many children can lose their fingers and become seriously injured. Many ... ... middle of paper ... ...is way and get away with it? We all are human and have rights. We should be treated equally without punishment, only if needed. Even if punishment needs to take place, it should not be physical punishment. What kind of lifestyle is there when you only work 14 hours every day with no breaks? Conclusion: There are many anti-sweatshop groups that protest. However, nothing has been accomplished because there are still many workers out there being mistreated. We are not asking to completely tear down sweatshops. Although we are fighting for the respect we deserve. We are also asking for a reasonable 8 hours of work and breaks in between. Workers shouldn’t have to be abused to work. Also, children should not be neglected an education. All in all, every worker should be given rights that are not violated and that can live a life that is not filled with abuse and penalty.
Various groups support or embody the anti-sweatshop movement today. The National Labor Committee brought sweatshops into the mainstream media in the 1990s when it exposed the use of sweatshop and child labor to sew Kathie Lee Gifford's Wal-Mart label. United Students Against Sweatshops is active on college campuses. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit[20] on behalf of workers in China, Nicaragua, Swaziland, Indonesia, and Bangladesh against Wal-Mart charging the company with knowingly developing purchasing policies particularly relating to price and delivery time that are impossible to meet while following the Wal-Mart code of conduct. Labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO, have helped support the anti-sweatshop movement out of concern both for the welfare of people in the developing world and that companies will move jobs from the United States elsewhere in order to capitalize on lower costs. For example, the American labor union UNITE HERE, which represents garment workers, has only approximately 3,000 garment workers remaining in its base, because some of the larger garment making operations have already been transferred o...
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).
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
As a country, we support the terms “freedom”, “equality”, and “rights”. However, we need to focus on the working citizens of the United States and ensure equal rights for everyone. The wage theft website indicates that wage theft is not stereotypical, and the issue is not primarily in specific work fields. No worker can particularly avoid wage theft, whether it’s good wages or great benefits. Wage theft is more likely to occur in non-union workplaces.
In his article “Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation” Matt Zwolinski attempts to tackle the problem of the morality of sweatshops, and whether or not third parties or even the actors who create the conditions, should attempt to intervene on behalf of the workers. Zwolinski’s argument is that it is not right for people to take away the option of working in a sweatshop, and that in doing so they are impeding on an individual’s free choice, and maybe even harming them. The main distinction that Zwolinski makes is that choice is something that is sacred, and should not be impeded upon by outside actors. This is showcased Zwolinski writes, “Nevertheless, the fact that they choose to work in sweatshops is morally significant. Taken seriously, workers' consent to the conditions of their labor should lead us to abandon certain moral objections to sweatshops, and perhaps even to view them as, on net, a good thing.” (Zwolinski, 689). He supports his argument of the importance of free choice by using a number of different tactics including hypothetical thought exercises and various quotes from other articles which spoke about the effects of regulation business. Throughout the article there were multiple points which helped illuminate Zwolinski’s argument as well as multiple points which muddle the argument a bit.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
The General Accountability Office defines a sweatshop as a “multiple labor law violator.” A sweatshop violates laws pertaining to benefits, working hours, and wages (“Toxic Uniforms”). To make more money, companies move their sweatshop factories to different locations and try to find the cheapest locations with the least regulations (“Sweatshops”). There are not as many sweatshop factories in the United States because the industries have been transferred overseas where the labor is cheaper and there are weaker regulations. In the United States, sweatshops are hidden from the public, with poor immigrant workers who are unable to speak out against the injustices (“Subsidizing Sweatshops”). Workers in sweatshops are forced to work overtime, earn below a living wage, do not earn benefits, and encounter verbal, physical and sexual abuse. Macy’s, JCPenney, Kohl’s, The
This happens all the time in different countries every year, and this can definitely impact a nation economy. It is inhumane from big successful corporations like Nike or Forever 21 to do to their workers. A change definitely needs to be made so that these workers get paid fairly and not only within the U.S, but also in other countries all around the world. NAFTA (North American Trade Organization) is being blamed for sweatshops called Maquiladoras found along the U.S borders on the Mexican side where: “The overabundance of workers enables the factories to pay $50 for a 48 hour week. Yes, that is about one U.S. dollar per hour! If the factory were on the California side of the border, the minimum wage would be $8/hr. (the federal wage would be $6.55)” (Villagran, G. 2009). Clearly, anti-sweatshops laws could be enforced so that every workers have equal rights, benefits, and pay. On the other hand, in countries such as Honduras, people want to work in sweatshops because they are the best jobs available to them and it is their best and only option to be able to make a little money. Sweatshops can be described positively mainly
We have all at one point seen or read an article of young girls and boys being abducted or simply forced into manual labor. Many reasons have been given as to why child labor occurs in these foreign countries such as: poverty, low pay, and unskilled work. These foreign companies or sweatshops find it easy to simply abduct poor and uneducated children, and force them into slavery for little to no pay and horrible working conditions. This is because there is greater demand for low skilled, and low cost labor that employers prefer to fill with child labor, instead of having to deal with more expensive and less flexible adult employees. Throughout the years there has been an increase in the supply of child labor mainly because of young kids in
A survey done every four years says that there has been less child labor in countries such as India and Morocco than in the United States (Barta and others). Some companies overseas have strict policies against child labor; for example, a toy factory in China will not accept children for work because they feel children should not be forced to do hard labor for any amount of money. On the opposing side, in some places child labor is a huge problem such as Africa and parts of Asia. For example, in Bangladesh several under 18 workers were found working in Rana Plaza and a 15 year old worker died in a factory accident in May, according to Kate O’Keeffe of the Wall Street Journal. O’ Keeffe also writes, “There is concern that child labor will go for the worse rather than for better, especially if Western economies rebound stronger.”
Within those two years of the coworker working there, she received a seventy- five cent raise and she doesn’t complain much because at the age she is at, it hinders her from being employed at a high-tip place. This is a prime example of oppression because in order to make ends meet, some family members have to stay with each other because they do not make enough money to afford rent. Also, she is older and she did not mention that she received any benefits such as Medicare or Social Security, therefore she has to continue working to provide for herself and help her
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.
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
By children working in these horrifying situation they are at risk of a lot of things. Child labor put kids at risk of losing hearing, high chemical absorption rate, and also damage to organs and muscle tissues. Studies show “One quarter of economically active children suffer injuries or illnesses while working, according to an International Labor Organization survey of 26 countries. Each year, as many as 2.7 million healthy years of life are lost due to child labor, especially in agriculture. Many of the industries that employ large numbers of young workers in the United States have higher-than-average injury rates for workers of all ages, such as grocery stores, hospitals, nursing homes, and agriculture.” (Baland, J., & Robinson, J (2000). These children are surrounded by numerous diseases and poising. Hilson (2010) said, “Pesticide poisoning is one of the biggest killers of child laborers. In Sri Lanka, pesticides kill more children than diphtheria, malaria, polio and tetanus combined. The global death toll each year from pesticides is supposed to be approximately 40 '000.”(Hilson, G. (2010). The kids are not in factories that are in tip top shape. These factories are not sanitized the kids are sick from the workplace as well. This physical damage from child labor can be long term damage as
Child labor is one of the biggest concerns occurring around the world. Over one hundred million children work in dangerous conditions in agriculture, mining, and other sectors. People around the world are working to end child labor and help them reunite with their families as well get them an education. Child labor violates human rights due to its inhumane actions that result in the amount of casualties, injuries and poverty. This global issue cannot be resolved unless laws and regulations are reinforced strictly.