Many of the popular, well known brands including Nike, Adidas, Puma, Asics, FILA and Umbro are supposedly sweatshops. However, these companies do not like to admit to this. The migrants putting all the long hours into making the clothes don’t get recognised in any way for their contribution to the making of the designer clothes sold worldwide. While they’re getting paid an average of $2 - $3 per hour, taking roughly 2 hours per garment and being sold from anywhere between $100 - $1000.…
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 Walter Williams’ essay, “Sweatshop Exploitation” he discussed that the people behind the sweatshop did not care for their employees because of the terrible pay, terrible working conditions and long working hours. To add to that, he discussed that most people prefer the factory job compared to the alternative which involves working in the sun making less money. The factory owners know this and in their own way saves them by giving them a “better” working condition and “better” pay than what they are normally used to being paid. The people running these sweatshops by stating we value life enough to give you something better than the alternative.…
A “sweatshop” is defined by the United States Department of Labor as a factory that violates two or more labor laws. The use of questionable labor practices, popularly knows as “sweatshop labor”, is widespread in the production of consumer goods (Paharia, 2013). Major international brands such as Nike and Apple are some of the high-profile companies that have been exposed to such labor abuses.…
For example, “...New York’s Silicon Alley is known for long working hours, cramped loft workspaces, easily tripped over power cords and non-ergonomic (not safe) keyboards, along with wages that, while “decent are stratospheric” (Olson). The point that this is trying to get across is that people who are forced to work in sweatshops are not only dealing with the nonstop working hours but also with cramped spaces and wages that make the average Mcdonald’s worker’s salary seem incredulously high. Because sweatshop workers are dealing with the extremely low wages, it not only brings the economic situation in third world countries to light, but it also illuminates the fact that American companies are paying their sweatshop employees an amount that is far too low. Yes, it is true- people spend money every day, but the majority of the things they spend money on come from sweatshops. If Americans want to keep people across the globe safe- they need to stop buying sweatshops made products. For instance, “In 1999, authorities raided Auckland (the largest city in New Zealand) sewing shop who's The owner was found to be overworking and mistreating eight of her compatriots…” (Olson). It is important to note that there are many sweatshop owners who typically overwork and abuse their employees. This is obviously not physically or emotionally helpful or healthy. They abuse and hurt their employees partly because they want their employees to be…
In the essay “Sweatshirts from Sweatshops” pertaining Cromwell College sweatshirts, the information gathered was from Cromwell Clarion, the school paper. An “investigation” report was made by the WorldWeave Foundation (a nonprofit organization funded by American garment workers’ union). The first violation of the Universal Intellectual Standards is the accuracy. The statistics of how many minors and females for the company’s total workers is not validated through a non-biased party. UNICEF is a good source to get demographic data in industrial settings and they are more reliable than a union’s statistics. Also, when the author was stating “children who appeared to be as young as eleven or twelve working with dangerous fabric-cutting machines,” that is purely subjective. Nothing was done to verify their ages, they could have been underdeveloped teenaged young people.…
Ravisankar begins his essay by giving us in insight about how people would go to the extreme just to get their hand or to have the opportunity to buy as much as they can for as little as possible especially on black Friday. The problem he identifies in his article, is the high human cost and forced people in sweatshops have to work per week for just pennies an hour just to make the necessary for their survival. Ravisankar assumes his readers know little about sweatshops and furthermore, how difficult and awful conditions are really are. He goes on to say that some of these workers have to be forced to work extremely long 70 to 80 hours per week for little pay, and also, workers are discouraged or intimidated from forming unions. His purpose…
Sweatshops or sweat factories are a work place where people work in similar conditions to those of the farmers. They typically receive low pay for hard labor they work in unbearable conditions and some even have child labor even though there are laws forbidding it. Thanks to sweatshops we get cheaper goods typically clothes but on the other side of the world there may be a child or person who only got paid five cents for making a shoe you paid sixty dollars for. In an encyclopedia it stated, “Brands such as Nike use sweatshops to lower the cost of their products.”(Hickel 3). This shows that even big name brands such as Nike are using sweatshops to lower the cost of clothing, shoes and other merchandise. They pay the workers less incredibly low wages to work for long periods of time reducing expenses but increasing productivity. The poor once again are not being treated with the same rights that somebody in the middle class would get. They are hardworking people just like the farmers but are not getting paid anywhere near what they be earning and that poverty cycle once again will keep going from generation to generation. It states on a reliable website, “A study showed that doubling the salary of sweatshop workers would only increase the consumer cost of an item by 1.8%, while consumers would be willing to pay 15% more to know a product did not come from a sweatshop.”(Hickel 2). This explains that it wouldn’t hurt many people to…
Some workers may work anywhere from eighteen to twenty hour shifts consecutively under hazardous conditions, without breaks for food or water. They work extremely long hours in order to make a wage that isn’t sufficient enough to live on. “Workers work long hours in which they aren’t compensated for, under unsafe living conditions, and women are often sexually harassed”, there isn’t a single characteristic of a sweatshop that is safe or complies with labor laws and regulations. (Snyder,…
In recent discussions of economics, a controversial issue has been whether sweatshops should be shut down in foreign countries. On one hand, some argue that sweat shop labor should cease to exist in foreign countries because of the poor conditions in which these employees work in including the following; working 10 hours a day seven days a week for less than a dollar an hour, being denied vacation time and bathroom privileges and being required to work when sick and or injured. On the other hand, some argue that sweatshops should be shut down because a lot of American jobs are being out sourced to foreigners due to American companies building more sweat shops in third world countries. My own view is that sweat shops should not be shut down in foreign country because our economy, as well as theirs, depends on this cheap labor.…
As far as I am concerned, although there is a lot of negative news toward sweatshops, they have their own specific value that we should face up to their existence, which is essential to the global economy. The most issue that people focus on is the low wages. People keep on complaining on the low wages which are paid to the sweatshop worker. However, as long as you look deeply, you will notice that is not necessarily the case. According to “Sweatshops in Bangladesh Improve the Lives of Their Workers, And Boost Growth”, Benjamin Powell tells us that “workers at the much-demonized Bangladeshi sweatshops average more than $2 a day. Granted, that’s not a lot. But it’s more than they would earn elsewhere”. There is no agreed definition of the “low wages” since wages should be analyzed within specific life status and nation strength. For example, the minimum hourly wage of the United States is $7.25 while this standard in many developing countries is the medium level of wages. In the past, the 《New York times》 reported the sweatshops in China with low wages, largely because they directly copied the American’s higher working and living standards. Also in many developing countries like China, those accused of sweatshops pay workers the average wage is two times or more of the average income level of the local. Obviously, lower labor price is relatively just compared to the developed countries.…
Have you ever wondered where your clothes are coming from? In what conditions are they made? When you are buying an expensive Nike shirt, do you know that your t- shirt was made in a sweatshop In China, where the minimal wage is 55 cent per hour.1 Some Chinese companies routinely shortchange their employees on wages, withhold health benefits and expose their workers to dangerous conditions. For example, the PBS documentary “China Blue” shows what life is like for Chinese workers who make your clothes. “ They live crowded together in a cement factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets”, reports the film website.2 Let’s take a look what the law is saying. Section VII of the Code addresses working conditions: "The factory does not engage in or permit physical acts to punish or coerce workers. (Section A) The factory does not engage in or permit psychological coercion or any other form of non-physical abuse, including threats of violence, sexual harassment, screaming or other verbal abuse. (Section B) The factory complies with all applicable laws regarding to the working conditions, including worker’s health and safety, sanitation, fire safety, risk protection, and electrical,…
Often when people, Americans in particular, think of sweatshops with the vision of ten year old workers exhausted from working long hours, children struggling to keep up the pace needed to satisfy the manufacturer’s quota for the day, and then after a hard day of work only ending up $3.00 for their time and effort. But do people consider how vastly the economical differences vary from country to country. Sweatshops are absolutely beneficial to third-world countries because there are very few other means of survival and anti-sweatshop activist fail to realize that banning these workplaces would ultimately leave workers worse off.…
”It is illegal to sell garments made in domestic sweatshops, but many retailers will turn the blind eyes and feign ignorance of labor problems in their supply chain” (Tarver-Wahlquist). Retailers’ primary goal is to make money, and because of this many companies regret to consider the conditions in which people work in their factories overseas. Instead, these companies outsource to the cheapest place possible so they can provide consumers here in the United States a better deal on products which in turn benefits them because consumers will purchase more of their products. So retailers ultimately benefit from sweatshops as they can produce for a cheaper price and continue to make money in their home country by reducing prices for consumers. This is harmful because we continue to buy these cheap products knowing they are made in sweatshops, and these products are so cheap because of the small wages these people are being paid in other countries. For example a big retailer H&M sells cheap clothing and many people buy from this company because of the cheaper prices, but what most people don’t know is many of their factories in different countries have lockable doors that might prevent workers from leaving the factory in an emergency, and these doors are…
Outworkers live in disgusting, unhygienic living conditions because of their incredibly low income, while Australian teenagers are oblivious to this and the story of the person behind the machine who has made their clothing. A sweatshop is a manufacturing facility where workers endure poor working conditions, long hours, low wages and other violations of labor rights (Oxfam, 2012). Sportswear brand Nike illegally forced people in Vietnam to work 65 hours per week, for 15cents per hour, Nike publicly denies violating the legal minimum wage of $45 per month, but their own secret studies prove otherwise, as do pay stubs. Nike’s Dartmouth study naively trusts factory managers instead of examining pay stubs (Lormand, E, 2012). A survey conducted at Carmel College Thornlands revealed that students were shocked about the low wage of outworkers; while 2 out of 3 teenagers were concerned about outworkers (Refer to Appendix A) 3 out of 3 teenagers would still buy products from Nike knowing the poor income outworkers receive. It is possible that Australian teenagers do not realized how lucky they are, immigrants Katheran and Tina Tran have been outworkers since they were ten, at the moment they go to school during the day and spend all night…