Sweatshop Essay

Nowadays, sweatshops are becoming more and more obvious all around the world, especially in the developing countries. In the article “Two cheers for sweatshops”, Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn note that sweatshops play an important role not only in people’s daily life but also in the national economy, even though there are some shortages of them. However, Tom Hayden and Charles Kernaghan give their idea in “Pennies an hour and no way up”, that the conditions of workers in sweatshops should be improved and the wages should be increased. 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. More importantly, sweatshops benefit