Sweatshops

Sweatshops are working environments that are generally very dirty and dangerous. They are hazardous to workers health and the workers have little to no rights. They work long shifts doing tedious work with little to no pay. Child labor laws as well as laws regarding overtime and minimum wage are usually ignored. Children of all ages are exploited in these sweatshops. Sweatshops produce anything from clothing to sneakers to furniture to pencils to coffee to bananas. In my opinion, sweatshops are degrading and horrible. Sweatshops are generally found in less economically developed countries aka third world countries. However, sweatshops can exist in an country, really. Those who support sweatshops say that these people choose to work in them and that they are aware of the conditions ahead of time. However, this is not the case in my situations. Sweatshops exist in third world countries due to outsourcing in developed nations. Developed nations outsource jobs to countries like Haiti and China because these countries have no laws or non-enforceable laws regarding exploitation. It is ironic because the sweatshop workers can not even afford to buy the products they make. They are able to make the products for ½ percent of what they are sold in the stores for. Sweatshops now are similar to the muckrakers movement during the early 1900’s when they exposed the horrors of working in the meatpacking industry. Although I believe globalization and free trade are great because it gives countries around the world more access to products they would not have if globalization did not exist, I do not believe that sweatshops are great. Sweatshops have been on the rise as globalization continues to occur. Stores like Victoria Secret, Gap, Old Navy and Disney have all drastically changed their policies to reduce or end their uses of sweatshops. I find sweatshops to be degrading and unnecessarily exposing humans to horrible conditions. Environmentally and morally, sweatshops are not good. There has to be another way to get things manufactured so that the environment is better protected and so that young children are not working 16 hours a day to make a shirt that they can not even afford to buy. Sweatshops allow corporations to become richer and richer because they are able to manufacture their products for a lot less by using sweatshops.

The international community needs to pull together and demand a drastic change in policies towards child labor and the use of sweatshops in manufacturing clothing. There are numerous resources available to find out if a product is ethically traded and if sweatshops were used in the manufacturing of that product. If the product was manufactured in a sweatshop I would consider writing to the head of the company urging them to change their policies and look to alternative sources for manufacturing.