“Sweatshops are work environments that possess three major characteristics: long hours, low pay, and unsafe or unhealthy working conditions” (Childress, 2014). Sweatshops have been scrutinized around the world and have been around for a very long time. For a period of time it was called slavery because even some skilled slaves earned some money. Sweatshops are still thriving, even in today’s global economy. It is the corporations, stakeholders, and a global responsibility to ensure sweatshops go away forever, but is it possible? Toyota was accused of such practices back in 2002 and today claim that they no longer practice voluntary overtime.
Corporations have a responsibility to the stakeholders. Their primary stakeholders are the companies’ employees, suppliers, customers and their owners. The companies’ first priority is to take care of these stakeholders. Toyota was trying to address all the stakeholders’ needs. First, Toyota needed to make sure they have a safe work environment for their employees. However, Toyota did not seem to do this very well. According to one article, “stripped of their passports and often forced to work – including at subcontract plants supplying Toyota – 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being paid less than half the legal minimum wage” (Abowd, 2008). The tragedy was in 2002 when a man actually collapsed and died on the floor of the Prius plant Tsutsumi. “Kenichi Uchino, 30, died while working at the “green” Tsutsumi plant that assembles the Prius. During the 13th hour of a routine 14-hour day, Uchino collapsed on the shop floor of the internationally lauded “sustainable” factory…A Japanese court ruled that Uchino’s death was caused by exhaustion from overwork” (Abowd, 2008). Even th...
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...to enter the moral free space to find a win-win situation for the company, its stakeholders and global responsibility.
Works Cited
Abowd, Paul (July 16, 2008). The Dark Side of the Toyota Prius. In These Times. Retrieved from http://inthesetimes.com/article/3796/the_dark_side_of_the_toyota_prius
Beamer, L., & Varner, I (2010). Intercultural communication in the global workplace. Retrieved from the Western International University eBook Collection database.
Childress, Boyd (2014). Sweatshops. Retrieved from http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Str-Ti/Sweatshops.html
Toyota (2014). Toyota Code of Conduct. Retrieved from http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/pdf/chapter1.pdf
Wise, J. W. (2009). Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Retrieved from the Western International University eBook Collection database.
Scholarly intrigue and a hunger for knowledge led Kelsey Timmerman to write the book "Where Am I Wearing". "Where Am I Wearing" is a compilation of both Timmerman's thought-provoking questions: questions about wear the clothes we wear come from, about who makes our clothes, about the working conditions of the people who make our clothes, and the stories that he gathered during the many journeys that he went on while writing the book. Through his tales of travel Timmerman introduces his readers to the harsh realities of globalization, poverty, child labor, and sweatshops.
...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.
Most objections to anti-sweatshop action stem from the idea that sweatshop jobs are the best opportunities available to people living in poor conditions. “They keep coming back day after day, so they must want these jobs.” Trying to make the jobs better will simply me...
Ting-Toomey, Stella., & Chung, Leeva C. (2012). Understanding Intercultural Communication. Oxford University Press. 43, 159-160.
2.Goodpastor, Kenneth. Nash, Laura. de Bettignies, Henri-Claude. Business Ethics: policies and persons 4th edition. Mcgraw Hill Irwin Publishers. Pages 396-405
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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.
Lawrence, A. T. & Weber, J. (2011). Business and society: Stakeholders, ethics, public policy (13th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
For this essay my topic is globalization and economics, specifically sweatshops. I am focusing on the major effects that sweatshops have on the economy and the world as we know it. I am showing how sweatshops can both be positive and negative. In each of my body paragraphs I am identifying multiple different reasons on why it is both good and bad.
When we hear the word sweatshop images of children and workers hunching over a desk, working many hard and long hours in restricted spaces with ill-treating supervisors and with pay barely to sustain them another day pop into the mind. This statement is important because all that is being said in it is true. Workers do get paid less, child labor is real, and workers are not treated well by their supervisors also workers get trapped by their supervisors. According to China Labor Watch an organization that is out to stop unfair labor say, sweatshops are real to today and many people are forced to work in them some of their will but some without. Sweatshop workers are taken advantage of because not educated enough
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Intercultural communication is an evolving discipline that occurs between individuals from contrasting backgrounds. It include...