Sweatshops: Good or Bad?
"In China, workers at Wellco Factory making shoes for Nike are paid 16 cents/hour (living wage for a small family is about 87 cents), 11-12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, 77-84 hours per week; workers are fined if they refuse overtime, and they’re not paid an extra rate for overtime hours."Yet American companies still operate low-wage factories "sweatshops" in developing countries. Developing countries then compete for the business of these companies by lowering labor standards -- minimum wages and workplace safety requirements. Western workers lose, when factories in the U.S. close down, and migrate overseas in search of laborers willing to work for poverty wages. Often children go uneducated because they must work in factories, 9 hours a day, six days a week.
In third world countries the people are used to low wages and long hours. They know that there is no other way for them to support their families. Third world countries cannot afford to pay their workers more and give them the benefits that Americans enjoy, so "sweatshops" are the best they have to offer to the uneducated majority. In most cases immigrants, in America, do not object to poor working conditions and low wages because it is far better than what they had before and they are just glad to have a job.
In a way I believe that sweatshops are good, for the fact that it’s all people in developing countries have to live on. It’s much better than being unemployed and not making anything. If you think about the U.S. started with people working long hours in factories and farming in the 1800s, for low wages, and we later prospered into an industrialized nation. Now developing countries are trying to do the same thing. I understand that wealthy countries want to produce goods at the cheapest price, but sometimes minimum wage offered in developing countries is unbearable. I also don’t agree on some of the conditions associated with sweatshops. Such as the long overtime without pay, girls forced into prostitution, the harsh environment with inadequate ventilation, workers being abused physically, mentally, or sexually, and the harsh and unsafe working conditions. This I feel is very inappropriate and should be stopped. If we want cheap labor, at least provide a safe environment for the workers. It’s the least that we can do.
Sweatshops: Good or Bad?
posted by Anonymous @ 2/10/2006 08:53:00 PM
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