China 's Lack Of Effective Enforcement Of Labor Laws Essay

Sweatshops have been around for centuries, beginning around the late 1880’s. Sweatshops are classified by three main components, long work hours, very low pay and unsafe and unhealthy working environments. Sweatshops are usually found in manufacturing industries and the most highlighted production is clothing corporations, who take full advantage of the low production costs of their products. Many may think sweatshops are a thing of the past but they are still affecting many lives across the nations. There are many ways sweatshops affect lives, but a recent article titled “New study finds ‘more sweatshops than Starbucks’ in Chicago” explains that there are many low wage industry jobs that are violating labor laws in the United States alone. The article also reports how employees who are working in such conditions won’t speak up in fear of the retaliation employers will implement. Analyzing Sweatshops through the lens of the Sociological perspectives will help us better understand the illegal conditions of workplaces that still exist today.

• The enormous surplus of labor in China imperils workers worldwide as international competition puts incessant downward pressure on wages and working conditions, leading the apparel and textile industries to favor the cheapest and most Draconian producers.

With the elimination of U.S. government subsidies, cotton textile manufacturers will pay more for cotton. As the leading buyer of cotton, the Chinese apparel industry’s profitability will be reduced due to their inability to pass on increased cotton prices to their buyers. China’s manufacturing costs had already increased by as much as 40% due to higher market wages and costs with complying with worker and environmental protections. Although China has substantial labor and is accused of utilizing sweat shops to keep their costs extremely low, their increasing manufacturing costs have opened the door to other countries with cheap labor such as Vietnam and Pakistan.

By definition a sweatshop is a “negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay in horrible conditions, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay and or minimum wage”. Many corporations in the United States use sweatshop labor in countries over seas such as China to produce their products at a lower cost. As entailed in the letter from a man born in China, many citizens on these countries resort to factory labor to support themselves to escape other sources on income such as prostitution. Without these corporations usage of oversea sweatshops these employees would be forced to return to self-demeaning jobs such as these.

In the twenty-first century, it is not a secret that many American companies are actually setting up factories in foreign countries, with the majority located in Asia. Notable examples of this include athletic shoe companies such as Nike, Adidas, and Reebok Additionally, most people know the reason these companies make their products overseas: “cheap labor.” However, what exactly does the term “cheap labor” entail? Moreover, how are international politics and the global economy affected by this outsourcing? While it may seem like a simple question with a simple answer, the cause of such a relationship and its effects on international commerce are deeply complex and morally questionable.

In these sweatshops, workers are generally offered low wages with little nonwage benefits. In certain factories, workers have been denied of a “living wage” as their take-home pay have been insufficient to satisfy basic standards of living. Typically, in these countries, the minimum wage laws were violated and workers were weakly unionised to bargain for higher wages. For example, a typical Chinese worker earns a wage of Rmb$250-$350 while the minimum wage was supposed to be Rmb$350.

Foxconn and the Industrial Revolution of Great Britain Foxconn is probably the most famous company you have never heard of. Foxconn is an electronics company based mostly in the developing country of China. However, what many don’t know is Foxconn produce over 90% of the world's electronics! A considerable customer of Foxconn is Apple, however, to keep their costs to a minimum Apple can pay Foxconn a fraction of the costs they would pay for U.S. manufactured goods.

China is one of our biggest labor competitors. The reason many US companies go to China for outsourcing is again, because of their workforce’s willingness to operate at low costs. Michael Zimmerman describes this as a disparity in worker “tolerance”. Where the low wages found in China are “far lower than U.S.

Imagine only seeing your family for one day once a year. Having to compete for a ticket home with millions of other workers in order to see your family that you haven’t seen in a year. This is the life of 130 million migrant workers in china. These workers make most of the things we own. Most of us don’t think about the people who make our clothes, our phones, our computers; items that we use everyday. Our way of life revolves on mass consumerism, where we value the article more than the person or persons who made it. Mass media and multi million dollar industries keep the conditions on how these people work as a total mystery. Some brands have been exposed for sweatshop and

In America a full time job is a 40 hour week, with time and a half pay for any overtime hours. Our minimum wage in New York State is six dollars an hour, and that is soon to be raised to $6.75 an hour on January 1, 2006. We are provided, for the most part, with healthy and safe working environments. In Chinese society it is nothing like this. Since the difference between the rich and poor is a lot greater in China than it is here, many of the poor jump at the opportunity to work in a factory or sweatshop job. They are very low paying and are not provided with a safe and healthy environment to work in. Often times the terrible environment is accompanied with abuse provided by the managers. It is not getting any better either because

Sweat shops has been a known epidemic in China for a while now, with public revealing of sweat shops making products for popular

Labor relations in China have become more and more complex, labor conflicts have occurred frequently, and thus labor disputes have been growing with a rate much faster than that of the development of GDP in the past decade. They could become a potential obstacle to the economic development if not appropriately managed. The paper studies the condition of labor relations, and probes the profound reasons for it, and compares it across the world in order to give a description for it.

China is home to one of the largest manufacturing sectors in the world and remains a central part when it comes to manufacturing goods. Despite the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, 36 percent of the working population earn less than two dollars a day. The documentaries China Blue (87 minutes in length) and Mardi Gras: Made in China (74 minutes) outlines and showcases the working conditions of employees in these Chinese factories.

For this essay I chose to focus on my favorite shirt, a black crop top with daisies, from Target. Like many articles of clothing, this shirt was made in China, most likely in exploitative conditions by a low wage worker. I bought this shirt secondhand for $5 and this shirt is no longer available on Target’s website. However, by looking at similar shirts from the same brand, it seems likely that this shirt would have cost the original purchaser anywhere from $15-$20. On their corporate website, Target states that they are focused on retaining “ethical standards” and that they “only work with vendors and suppliers who share [their] commitment.” They even post a list of their factories, organized by country, city, and factory name. This list is 78 pages long, and in just China alone, Target lists 1337 factories which translates to around 45% of the total number of factories.

In our society, almost all of us buy clothes unaware of the labour that actually goes into making them. But what is the true price of even something as simple as a pair of jeans? The unfortunate reality of what life is truly like working in a sweatshop is investigated in Micha Peled’s documentary China Blue. It follows Jasmine Lee, a sixteen-year Chinese girl who leaves her village in hopes of improving her family’s life and her own by finding work in the city. She manages to get a job in the city of Shaxi as a thread cutter at Lifeng factory, which produces jeans, but has to deal with its harsh conditions, long hours and abysmally low wages. The most prevalent theme of this documentary is that developed countries are part of