In order to keep companies check book balance, big businesses like Nike’s, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney Company, and the Gap made unethical business decisions with manufacturing facilities located throughout the world to produce its products. Nearly 800,000 people work in these factories, called sweatshops, located primarily in Asia. However, these big companies dictate the term to the contractors about the design, the materials and the price it will pay to produces the products. Sweatshop is a working environment considered to be unacceptably or dangerous, part curly by industrialized nations with high standards of living. Sweatshops are also sometimes implicated in human trafficking, many workers have been tricked into starting work without informed consent, or when workers are kept at work through debt bondage or mental duress, all of which are more likely in cases where the work force is drawn from children or the uneducated rural poor. Workers are subject to extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or benefits, poor working conditions, and arbitrary discipline, such as verbal and physical abuse. Since sweatshop workers are paid less than their daily expenses, they are never able to save any money to improve their lives. They are trapped in an awful cycle of exploitation. Because they often exist in places without effective workplace safety or environmental laws, sweatshops sometimes injure their worker or the environment at greater rates than would be acceptable in developed countries.
The Term Paper on Sweatshops Workers Work
... something to help out these workers. Companies should be getting penalized for making workers, work in these conditions. Many sweatshop factories claim that they made ... good enough for an adult to work in and children should not be working there either. Sweatshop workers do not get benefits, which ...
The origins of sweatshops began between 1830 and 1850, specific type of workshop which a certain type of middleman directed others in garment making under arduous conditions. Between the 1850 and 1900, sweatshop attracted the attention of poor immigrations, in the rapidly growing cities around the world. Woman and children had to work long days in cramped rat infected quarters; they were physically and sexually abused by their supervisors. Workplace injuries and exposures to toxic chemicals also pose a daily risk to the sweatshop workers. To prevent worker from stealing the items they are producing, managers sometimes lock the factory plant doors and windows, creating a fire hazard. In many sweatshop factories workers are not given masks to put over their nose and mouths, exposing them to tiny cloth fibers that are flowing in the air. These cloth fibers get into the lungs of the worker which causes serious health issues. In 1900, workers formed the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) to organize against low wages and unsafe working conditions. In November 1909, ILGWU organized the first garment workers’ strike, known as “The Great Revolt”. The protest brought 60,000 New York City garment workers to the streets to fight for their rights. Women and children on the picket lines were beaten or targeted with guns. Yet, ILGWU prevailed, winning wage and hour standards and impartial arbitration of disputes
To keep labor costs low, apparel shop owners usually pay workers a “piece rate.” That means workers don’t get paid by the hour. Rather, their wage is based on the number of items—shirts, shoes, sock—they complete in a shift. If workers hope to earn a decent income, they have to work hard, and they have to work long. Basically, they have to sweat.
Economists view sweatshops from an exchange perspective in which both workers and employers gain when they voluntarily enter into a labor contract—no matter how low the wages may seem to external observes. From William (2004) on the right to Krugman (1997) on the left, economists across the political spectrum have defended Sweatshops in the popular press. 1 one economist critical of sweatshop even observed, that most economists opinion is “as simple as this:” ‘Either you believe labor demand curves are downward sloping, or you don not ‘as a neoclassical colleague said to me of course, not to believe that demand curves are negatively sloped would be tantamount to declaring yourself an economic illiterate” (Miller, 2003: 107).Sweatshop is a working environment considered to be unacceptably or dangerous, part curly by industrialized nations with high standards of living. However sweatshops may exist in any country. Sweatshop workers often work long hour for unusually low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or minimum wage. Since wages are unusually low and working conditions poor, the incentive for owners to invest in modern, possibly economically low, and nonviable technology is less.
The Term Paper on Department Of Labor Workers Sweatshops Corporations
... large, brightly lit factories can be the sites of rampant labor abuses. Sweatshop workers report horrible working conditions including sub-minimum wages, no benefits, non ... girls forced to work until midnight seven days a week, or in a sweatshop by workers paid 9 an hour The sad fact ...
We can also compare apparel industry earnings to the extent of poverty in these countries. The World Bank’s estimate of the percent of the population who lives on less than one dollar and two dollars per day. In most of these countries, like Vietnam and China, more than half the population lives on less than two dollars per day. Yet, in nine of ten countries, working ten-hour days in sweatshop lifts employees above and often far above the two dollars per day threshold. Sweeping national legislation was finally enacted in 1938 when President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
This law – enforced to this day – sets a minimum wage, requires overtime pay after 40 hours a week, and prohibits child labor and industrial homework. It brought protection and relief to tens of thousands of people working in factories. Heart &Minds (1997-2007)
In the first two year two years that Nikes was in Vietnam, one factory official of convicted of physical abusing a worker , another filed the country during a police investigation of sexual abuse charges and a third was under indictment for abusing workers. By the 1990, disturbing stories were coming from many of the Nikes factories throughout the world, describing child labor, wages well below the poverty level and forced overtime on the workers on the workers. Workers were exposing to bad work condition, dangerous chemicals and poor air quality. Anti-globalization activists and environmentalists also deplore transfer of heavy industrials manufacturing to the developing world. These unethical decisions that were made by the factory owners drew the attention to these stories, hoping that pressure from the public could bring about change. Groups such as Education of justice, Global Exchange and the sweatshop Labor led the effort against Nike.
The Term Paper on Working Class Workers Unions Conditions
19 Th Century Working Conditions In England Essay, 19 Th Century Working Conditions In England The Transformation of The Conditions of The Working Class in 19 th Century England The pace in the Lancashire Cotton Mill is frenetic as cotton is transformed into cloth. In a picture of the female workers at the mill in 1900 a women sits just feet from the camera, her eyes gazing down at her hands as ...
In 1997, more then 10,000 workers from Nike’s Indonesian factories went on strike to protest law and unpaid wages while 1300 workers in Vietnam went on hoping for a raise of one cent per hour. The next year 3,000 Nike’s workers in China protested dangers working conditions and low wages. These protests took place in spite of the fact that these sorts of worker strikes are illegal in these countries. Today, tremdous progress is being made, the National Labor Committee (NLC) a human rights organization base in New York is in the vanguard of exposing labor abuse. Due to public outrage over sweatshop conditions, many clothing manufacturers now hire outside companies to inspect working conditions in their factories. This third-party monitoring has become a growth industry. The concern is that manufacturers might influence their monitors to present an overly favorable picture to consumers.
Big businesses has made improvement to the condition of sweatshop workers, the now monitors and investigates the working condition in the factories they do business with. Many companies has develop a Code of Conduct to all its factories, regulating the conditions and safety requirements that work should be conducted by. Thank to
