History is taught so that we can learn from the mistakes of the past and prevent them from happening again. The Industrial Revolution was a horrid period of time for people of the working class. The Industrial Revolution brought pain, suffering, and deaths to huge amounts of people, and yet, the economists off today have not learned the lesson. Sweatshops are the modern day versions of factories during the Industrial Revolution. Sweatshops and factories of the Industrial Revolution share many similarities in both the way they run and the owners who run them. Both facilities enforce poor working conditions and unfair pay, employ children that are far too young to endure the pace of work employers expect, and the factories belong to economists that must find faulty reasoning to justify their misconduct.
During the Industrial Revolution worker were treated horribly. Workers slaved over their job from beginning to end with little or no breaks in hazardous working conditions where accidents were common. When it was time to go home workers would return to cramped quarters usually inhabited by three or more families at once. And for their labors, workers were rewarded with pay that would only suffice for food and housing, leaving them with little and sometimes no money leftover. Unknown to many consumers, hundreds of American companies-ranging from Walmart to Nike and even to Toys'R'Us-show their support to sweatshops in third world countries and their poor working conditions by continuing to buy goods from them and overlooking shady audits used to conceal truths. In these sweatshops that companies so easily overlook, are poor working and living environments that are unimaginable to those who are protected from ever encountering broke...
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...Its Peoples (Fourth ed., pp. 619-641). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
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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...
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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 increase the standards of living for the workers and their communities. The comparison between working conditions in the United States against
For this assignment video Professor Matt Zwolinski talks about Sweatshops. Sweatshops are traditionally known to have limited regulation when its comes to hours worked and wages. Because of this most Sweatshops are found in domestic economies and third world countries, China, Central and South America, and India contain the majority of the sweatshop industry. The New York Times published an article about Nokuthula Masango, a sweatshop worker in Newcastle, South Africa.
Sweatshops generally have a negative view amongst businesses and citizens in Western society. A sweatshop is a business establishment that forces its employees to work under harsh and often unsafe conditions and pays only minimal wages. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of companies using sweatshops to produce clothing. I will also discuss my opinion of sweatshops and the role they play on society and economics.
Most of these companies have big scandals that correspond to their working conditions, which we already knew. I want to present some examples of working conditions in the factories which are owned by such well-known brands. In a factory in China that makes Levi jeans, women sew for 12 hours a day for less than 12 cents an hour, with only 2 days off each month. Also, they receive no healthcare and no compensation for injury. In a factory in Vietnam that makes Nike tennis shoes, employees work for 65 hours each week, for less than $10 a week.
The most amazing thing about sweatshops is that, the workers cannot even afford what they themselves produce. In the “apple magical factory in China”, ABC news reported that the majority of the workers don’t know how their apple’s products
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.
These concerns typically include the rights of the children, the responsibility of the parents and employers, and the well-being and safety of the children. In Stefan Spath’s “The Virtues of Sweatshops,” it is made very clear that he, like many others, feel that the general public is highly misinformed on what sweatshops are and what they actually contribute to their respective communities. In the eyes of someone from a developed country, sweatshops and child labor that takes place in them seem primitive and are interpreted as simply a means by which companies can spend less money on employers. He states that when labor unions claim that companies which establish operations in developing nations create unemployment in America, they aren’t really explaining the whole story. The author claims that those who are adamantly protest sweatshops are only telling half the story with a claim like this. He points out in this part that the American people can rest assured that high skilled jobs will not be taken over to developing countries because “– high-skilled jobs require a level of worker education and skills that poorer countries cannot