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Impacts of sweatshops
The effects of sweatshops
The effects of sweatshops
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Sweatshops are considered to be a thing in the past, but the truth is they are more common than people would think. Many companies use sweatshops as a way to produce more products for little money. To some companies, their labels have become more of a priority than the workers who made it all possible.
The ‘made in Italy’ label is very distinguished, yet how the products are made may not be as celebrated as its name. People are “being trafficked into Italy” (Addelman 2012) to work in factories for very little pay and hard working conditions. The little money earned is spent paying off bills of coming into the country. People working in these shops are being paid barely half of the minimum wage in Italy. Some work days can last seventeen hours.
Not only is the pay and work hours bad, the jobs are dangerous too. One man lost two of his fingers in a machine and after being taken to the hospital, his boss furious for having to pay for the bill, is expected to go back to work in excruciating pain to pay off the medical bill (Lee-Potter 2007). In a Chinese sweatshop in Italy a fire broke out and killed 7 people. Because of all the dust and fabric on the floor, the fire spread quickly trapping workers inside due to iron bars on windows to keep them in (Aloisi 2013). The reason for those 7 workers to still be at the factory is that they were sleeping in “cardboard cubicles” (Aloisi 2013). Most workers cannot afford to have homes outside of the factories and sleep where they work. When factories are shut down, its inhabitants are
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forced to find refuge elsewhere. That often means being deported back to their homeland since many have not been able to pay the costs due to being trafficked into Italy.
Brand names like Gucci and Prada p...
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... health and safety standards…” (Background of Sweatshops). In hindsight, the US is no better in labor conditions than any other country.
Some companies have made strides in abolishing sweatshops in their business. Fruit of the Loom is one of those companies taking the strides. They are “the fourth college-logo apparel company to sign the Bangladesh Safety Accord, an agreement between unions and brands that will transform the Bangladesh garment industry from deathtraps to safe work places” (Fruit of the Loom). Adidas is another company who signed the same deal. Even though Fruit of the Loom is no Gucci or Prada, hopefully people will start to realize that some companies are taking the extra step to help people while others are merely taking advantage of those less fortunate.
People want to avoid companies that use sweatshops as a form of labor, but do not know how.
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. We can’t control and tell what you can buy or what you can’t because that’s up to the person...
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.
Look down at the clothes you're wearing right now, chances are almost every single thing you are currently wearing was made in a sweatshop. It is estimated that between 50-75% of all garments are made under sweatshop like conditions. Designers and companies get 2nd party contractors to hire people to work in these factories, this is a tool to make them not responsible for the horrendous conditions. They get away with it by saying they are providing jobs for people in 3rd world countries so its okay, but in reality they are making their lives even worse. These companies and designers only care about their bank accounts so if they can exploit poor, young people from poverty stricken countries they surely will, and they do. A sweatshop is a factory
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.
Sweatshops are similar to factory or workshop where workers work for long hours at very low wages and are forced to work in a poor working condition. Sweatshops have also been known widely in the world for its ethical issues. Although it seems to be lucrative by paying low wages to the workers, it still violates the fundamental requirements of the workers’ welfare and working condition. From the perspective of the businesses, paying low wages means reducing the cost of production and increasing in the profits.
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 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
Many people in our society today are constantly asking, "Why do sweatshops exist?" The answer to this question is that companies like Nike and Wal-Mart use sweatshops to produce their goods for a much cheaper rate, to reduce the cost of their products. The problem with sweatshops is that the workers are subject to hard work in often times poor conditions for minimal pay. But although many people may condemn sweatshops, there are some advantages that many people overlook when arguing against sweatshops and their practices.
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...
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
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
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.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight, and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived, and died in cotton fields, and sweatshops.”- Stephen Jay Gould. Sweatshops exploit people, and children. They take advantage of their poverty, and there need, for a better life. Sweatshops are one of the worst things that ever happened to the business world, and poor people around the world. Sweatshops should be stopped, and ended.
Imagine a worker receiving their paycheck after excruciating hours of hard labor and discovering that they have only made enough for their rent. This is an event that is repeatedly lived and witnessed by those who work in sweatshops. Globally sweatshops, which are factories in which workers are paid low wages for extensive hours, have been seen as a nightmare which is justified. Sweatshops are the industrialized slave labor with abuse, exploitation, and government neglect.The only way to confront this practice is awareness.