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"Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have easily been avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods and have too few fire escapes, and they widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, most of them women.
Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes."
From article by Vikas Bajaj published in The New York Times, November 25, 2012
To establish our own point of view on the issues of globalization in
Dhaka, Bangladesh we are obliged to take a look at few things, for
instance definition of globalization, and its both positive and
negative impacts on the capital city, Dhaka.
Dhaka, formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and major city of
Bangladesh with the estimated population of 130 million people. It is
located in the geographic center of the country, and is one of the
world's top rice and jute growing regions. Its industries include
textile and food processing, particularly rice milling, and a range of
other consumer goods are also manufactured here. The Muslim influence
is revealed in the more than 700 mosques and historic buildings found
throughout the city. Dhaka is separated into an old city, the new
city, and many residential and industrial communities. [1]
By the definition globalization represents the increased mobility of
goods, serv...
... middle of paper ...
...
to the United States. [5]
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Bajaj, Vikas. "Fatal Fire in Bangladesh Highlights the Dangers Facing Garment Workers" New York Times November 25, 2012 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/world/asia/bangladesh-fire-kills-more-than-100-and-injures-many.html?_r=0
[1] About Dhaka.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
On March 25, 1911, 146 garment factory workers their lives in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. In less than an hour, these workers died from asphyxiation, burns, or jumping to their deaths in a futile attempt at escape (McGuire, 2011). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory the eighth through tenth floors of New York City’s Asch building, and employed approximately 700 workers, 500 of them young women and girls (McGuire, 2011). A fire quickly broke out on the eighth floor shortly before the end of the work day. Loose fabric was strewn about the floor and stuffed under equipment, providing kindling for the fire to quickly become an inferno. As women attempted to exit, they were met with locked doors and forced to find other means of escape, including jumping from the eight floor windows, climbing down elevator cables, and scampering down the fire escape - each route of escape tragically failed, costing many their lives. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is an example of how quickly dangerous and neglectful conditions can quickly take many lives, but it has also served as the impetus for great changes in workplace and fire safety codes and regulations, including the development of Fire Safety Codes, implementation of state-based worker’s compensation laws, and the formation of New York State’s Industrial Code. The impacts of these changes and many others are still felt today, more than 100 years later. There is, however, still work to be done in the area of workplace fire safety, as evidenced in the Kader Toy Factory fire and the Imperial Chicken Processing Plant fire.
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...
Ravisankar concludes his expository essay by informing his audience about organizations like the University Students Against Sweatshops who are forcing corporations to source their clothes from respectful factories or they will not purchase their products.
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
The documentary strived to show us how factories were corrupt that they couldn’t provide good working conditions for the workers until we lost people. This documentary is about the tragic fire that took place on March 25, 1911 in the Triangle factory. We can clearly see through this documentary that these people didn’t matter to the factory owners because their needs were not met. The documentary shows that the year before the fire took place the workers led a strike asking for better working conditions, but obviously their voices were not heard. After the fire took place this is when factories started improving working conditions. It is sad to learn that it took 146 lives of innocent people in order for factory owners to be convinced that they need to improve the poor working
The injustice that transpires within these workspaces evoke disparate responses from concerned citizens. From reading Bob Jeffcott’s article “Sweat, Fire, and Ethics,” the reader is challenged to urge their governments and educational institutions to condemn the exercise of exploitation of sweatshops be demanding evidence of improvements in working conditions. In Jeffrey D. Sachs excerpt “Bangladesh: On the Ladder of Development,” the working conditions of the women factory workers in Bangladesh is revealed yet the reader is persuaded to support these sweatshops because it is the only opportunity that these women have to gain a better life for themselves and their families. Upon reading both pieces, it is evident that sweatshops do not necessarily need to end completely, yet the business strategies employed within these facilities that negatively affect the workers must be monitored and addressed by the government in order for these companies to abandon labor
The documentary effectively utilizes a logos and pathos approach to highlight the unsafe working conditions of the Bangladeshi garment workers. The positive aspect of this documentary is the firsthand accounts of the hazardous conditions and the focus on what has been done to better the situation, and where the large retailers are still lacking in their ethical responsibility to ensure safe workspace. Thus, CBC’s documentary is an educational piece that brings forth the current state of the Bangladesh garment factory after Rana Plaza, and implores for heightened responsibility from the government and the retailers in
What do we think of when we hear the word sweatshop? Many people associate that word with female immigrant workers, who receive very minimal pay. The work area is very dangerous to your health and is an extremely unsanitary work place. The work area is usually overcrowded. That is the general stereotype, in my eyes of a sweatshop. All if not more of these conditions were present in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. This company was located in New York City at 23-29 Washington Place, in which 146 employees mainly women and girls lost their lives to a disastrous fire. “A superficial examination revealed that conditions in factories and manufacturing establishments that developed a daily menace to the lives of the thousands of working men, women, and children” (McClymer 29). Lack of precautions to prevent fire, inadequate fire-escape facilities, unsanitary conditions were undermining the health of the workers.
In China, Kelsey Timmerman spent time with a couple who worked at the Teva factory, traveled to the countryside to meet the couple’s son, insert name, who hasn’t seen his parents in three years due to his parents working long hours and it being expensive to take a train ride. In the US, the author visited one of a few clothing factories in the US to talk to the workers about his shorts, and the decrease of American garment factories. Timmerman wants the consumer to be more engaged and more thoughtful when mindlessly buying clothes. By researching how well the brands you want to buy from monitor their factories and what their code of ethics details, you can make a sound decision on if this is where you would want to buy your clothes. The author writes about brands that improve employers lives like SoleRebels, a shoe company who employs workers and gives them health insurance, school funds for their children, and six months of maternity leave. Brands like soleRebels that give workers benefits most factory workers have never even heard of help improve the lives of garment workers and future generations. From reading this book, Timmerman wants us to be more educated about the lives of garment workers, bridge the gap between consumers and manufacturers, and be a more engaged and mindful consumer when purchasing our
Linda Lim, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, visited Vietnam and Indonesia in the summer of 2000 to obtain first-hand research on the impact of foreign-owned export factories (sweatshops) on the local economies. Lim found that in general, sweatshops pay above-average wages and conditions are no worse than the general alternatives: subsistence farming, domestic services, casual manual labor, prostitution, or unemployment. In the case of Vietnam in 1999, the minimum annual salary was 134 U.S. dollars while Nike workers in that country earned 670 U.S. dollars, the case is also the similar in Indonesia. Many times people in these countries are very surprised when they hear that American's boycott buying clothes that they make in the sweatshops. The simplest way to help many of these poor people that have to work in the sweatshops to support themselves and their families, would be to buy more products produced in the very sweatshops they detest.
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
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
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan, New York City on March 25, 1911 was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in the history of the city, and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. Triangle Waist Company was one of the largest blouse makers in New York City. They specialized in making shirtwaists, the very popular women's blouse that had a tight waist and puffy sleeves. Approximately 500 people, mostly immigrant women, worked at the Triangle Waist Company's factory, in the Asch Building. They worked long hours, six days a week, in cramped quarters and were paid low wages. Many of the workers were young, some only age 13 or 14. The source of this fire was due to a lit cigarette on the ninth floor. The women on the ninth floor were not able to escape. The exit doors were locked, and the owners on the tenth floor were able to escape. One recalled, the clawed nails of the women being trapped. The large number of deaths exposed the dangerous conditions in high-rise factories prompted the creation of new building, fire, and safety codes around the United States. Most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The trag...
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
For example, in 2012 a Bangladesh factory producing garments for American and European companies caught fire killing 117 factory workers (Cooper, 2014). Additionally, in 2013 another factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,100 workers, which was caused by foundational issues from the upper floors being built without a permit (Cooper, 2014). These incidents ignited outrage over both unsafe and unfair working conditions as well as the exploitation from MNCs, who had extremely profitable contracts with these factories. Consequently, due to public outcry the formation of enhanced government regulations, oversight, business initiatives, and public efforts have surfaced (Cooper, 2014). Although these issues have not been completely resolved, the question over the extent of which MNCs are responsible for adequate workplace safety remains a controversial topic. However, strategic efforts from these companies indicate the importance and necessity of remaining proactive in a globalized economy. These efforts consist of the formation of minimum workforce standards, compliance regulations, financial support, and long-term contractual