Plight of Sweatshop Workers
"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work. . .Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social service. " These are excerpts from the Declaration of Human Rights. Written over 50 years ago, the Declaration was created to give, "inherent dignity and. .
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.
The controversial issue of sweatshops is one often over looked by The United States. In the Social Issues Encyclopedia, entry # 167, Matt Zwolinski tackles the issues of sweatshops. In this article Matt raises a question I have not been able to get out of my head since I have begun researching this topic, “ are companies who contract with sweatshops doing anything wrong?” this article goes on to argue that the people who work in the sweatshops willingly choose to work there, despite the poor environment. Many people in third world countries depend on the sweatshops to earn what they can to have any hopes of surviving. If the sweatshops were to shut down many people would lose their jobs, and therefore have no source of income. This may lead people to steal and prostitution as well. this article is suggesting that sweatshops will better the economy by giving people a better job than what they may have had. Due to this the companies contracting with sweatshops are not acting wrong in any way. This was a deductive article it had a lot of good examples to show how sweatshops are beneficial to third world countries. Radly Balko seemed to have the same view point as Matt Zwolinski. Many people believe the richer countries should not support the sweatshops Balko believes if people stopped buying products made in sweatshops the companies will have to shut down and relocate, firing all of the present workers. Rasing the fact that again the worker will have no source of income, the workers need the sweatshop to survive. Balko also uses the argument that the workers willingly work in the current environments.
“Global number of children in child labor has declined by one third since 2000, from 246 million to 168 million children. More than half of them, 85 million, are in hazardous work (down from 171 million in 2000)” (International Labor Organization, 2013). When you hear the word sweatshop you usually think of third world countries and child labor. “A sweat shop is a factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions” (Google, 2014). We must hold corporations responsible and put an end to these illegal actions. When left undetected sweat shops are filled with child labor, physical abuse and threats and intimidation to the ones employed or forced to work.
Over the past few years, many firms and factories have faced protestors protesting the use of sweatshops. Sweatshops are usually classified as places of unemployment that have low pay, poor working conditions, and long strenuous hours. Currently, there are children between the ages of five and fourteens years of age working in just about every third world country, that's about 250 million children all over the world. Most of these children are working long hours for little to no money at all. These children are forced to have no childhood, and usually work up to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. These children work in factories, mines, fields and on the streets. Many of their jobs consist of picking cotton, shinning shoes, making clothes
Third World Sweatshops
Large corporations such as Nike, Gap, and Reebok and many others from the United States have moved their factories to undeveloped nations; barely pay their employees enough to live on. Countries such as China, Indonesia, and Haiti have readily abundant cheap labor. There should be labor laws or an obligation of respecting workers to provide decent working conditions, fair wages, and safety standards.
To begin with, improve their working conditions. Promulgated mental and physical abuses sweatshops don’t delivered alleviate poverty.
Consumers should avoid purchasing products that are made in sweatshops if they are financially able to do so because the multinational enterprises (MNE’s) exploit their sweatshop employees, creating dangerous working conditions. Also, consumers that can afford to purchase products not made in a sweatshop should not out-source their money, but instead keep the money in the American monetary system and purchase products that are made in the United States.
Sweatshops are factories or places that have people working in bad conditions for low pay. Big companies like GAP, Guess, and more own these sweatshops. They do this as a way to save money even though other people will suffer. I think there needs to be an end put to it. Mainly because the conditions and extremely low pay they get. There needs to be something done because peoples’ voices are heard but when an official or some sort of government power tells people about it or does something, then there is usually more done. So, governments need to do something about it.
Prompt #7
In judging the moral permissibility of “sweatshops” in a globalized economy, we must first introduce the framework by which we evaluate “moral” actions. Mill’s articulation of utilitarianism serves as a clearly superior philosophy. In defense of this philosophy, Mills states: “happiness is a good: each person 's happiness is a good to that person, and the general happiness, therefore, a good to the aggregate of all persons.” Moreover, rule utilitarianism provides a more solid framework than act utilitarianism, as rule utilitarianism saves more utility from preventing failings, such as accidents by providing speed limits, than it thwarts, such as from unhappy people late to work.
In sweatshop conditions, workers are denied basic rights. Workers can be denied lunch breaks, access to the bathroom, time off. Management style is top-down and workers are not allowed to suggest ideas or collaborate in decision making. “Majority of workers are female, and often as young as 13 or 14. They are often treated in dominative and abusive ways by bosses, and sexual harassment is common” (Young 165). Building structures are usually dangerous; one structure collapsed in Bangladesh and killed many of the workers. Buildings lack heating and cooling, and general upkeep. Workers cannot form unions and anyone who tries to speak out will be fired, or even killed.