The opposition to sweatshops
Opposition to “sweatshops” originated with the socialist movement and the first labor unions, and these groups remain their most vocal critics today. For labor unions, sweatshops are both competition and evidence that unions are not needed to raise wages and improve working conditions. For socialists, sweatshops are their last, best hope, that somewhere, somehow, capitalism is causing suffering. Here are some of the loudest arguments against sweatshops:
Sweatshops pay low wages and subject workers to harsh conditions
It is ignorant and misleading to hold businesses in the developing world to the same standards as those in the West. Multinational companies face entirely different challenges and expenses than in the West: oppressive, unpredictable, and corrupt governments, long distances, language and cultural barriers, lack of a skilled or educated workforce, primitive infrastructure, and labor activists back at home.
Consider the condition of third world countries before the multinationals arrival. The majority of people live in the same state as they have for all of human history – in a permanent state of near-starvation, with no jobs and no future to look forward to other than the backbreaking labor of subsidence farming. Everyone works from almost from the time that he or she can walk, and most children die young from starvation or malnutrition. If they are lucky, they find work as scavengers, farm hands, prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, or trash collectors.1
Sweatshops” offer a considerable improvement from this state: Sweatshop wages are more than double the national average in Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras. In Honduras, where almost half the working population lives on $2/day, “sweatshops” pay $13.10/day.2
Sweatshops use child labor
Child labor is necessary in the developing world because given the low productivity of their parents, the alternative is starvation. According to a 1997 UNICEF study, 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the US banned that country’s carpet exports in the 1990s, and after the Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as “stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution.” The UNICEF study found these alternative jobs “more hazardous and exploitative than garment production. The only way to eradicate child labor is the same as in was eliminated the West – by raising the productivity of adults sufficiently to feed their families.
Sweatshops are coercive environments
Workers in sweatshops are free to quit or look for another job anytime, but they remain because they consider it the next best alternative. Their pay and working conditions seem low to us, but they are an economic step forward compared to subsistence farming. Real slavery exists today not due to economic development, but due to totalitarian regimes that do not recognize basic human rights such as North Korea, Cuba, and the Islamist militias of Sudan.
Sweatshops destroy local cultures
One criticism with a kernel of truth, is that globalization obliterates local cultures by exporting Western values. Capitalism does encourage certain values such as productivity, rationality, independence, and equality of opportunity, which are incompatible with the fatalism, tribalism, caste-based discrimination, and misogyny of most primitive societies. Rather than condemn these values, we should recognize that they are responsible for the tremendous material success of Western civilization and urge their adoption worldwide.
References:
- UNICEF: State of the World’s Children 1997
- Ben Powell and David Skarbek: Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat? Journal of Labor Research; Spring 2006.
Further Reading:
- Robert W. Tracinski: The “Sweatshop” Scam
- Thomas DiLorenzo: How “Sweatshops” Help the Poor
- Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek: Don’t get into a lather over sweatshops
- Wikipedia: Sweatshop
#1 by shannon - December 15th, 2008 at 04:57
#2 by bryan - February 9th, 2009 at 23:50
you should read up on some modern anthropological theory, dude.
#3 by J - April 18th, 2009 at 00:55
“Workers in sweatshops are free to quit or look for another job anytime”
Where’s your citation for this claim? Or don’t you think you need one?
You make a straw man out of the arguments of the antisweatshop movement (which refers to workers in countries around the world as well as solidarity activists in developed and developing countries).
#4 by Andrew - April 18th, 2009 at 11:36
@J
What citation could possibly be needed for that statement? It is a fact. No reference is needed.
Every worker, whether they work in a sweatshop in Thailand or a marketing firm in NYC has the freedom to quit their job if they do not like the terms and conditions on which their employment is based. Employers and Employees choose to work together because of mutual consent to mutual benefit. A plant manager wants to purchase labor to operate his machinery, and benefits from the people who are willing to sell their labor to him.
Both parties get what they want. The plant manager gets labor, and the workers get wages.
#5 by Pete - May 21st, 2009 at 21:45
sure it is better than the next best thing but does that make it alright? prostitution is bad and terrible prob worst than sweatshops but does that mean that we have to settle for that? can we not work harder for a higher level of living for them? if we all paid an extra dollar for a tee shirt that a worker was paid 0.20 cents for, they could have a 6 fold income increase. is that not a good thing?
“Workers in sweatshops are free to quit or look for another job anytime, but they remain because they consider it the next best alternative. ”
is that trying to justify the abuse some go through? when can a child forced into sweatshops given a choice? there is none
its not about being better than what they have, but about giving civilized human standards
dont ban the jobs but simply improve them
#6 by james - February 26th, 2010 at 12:34
i support sweatshops! 100%