Economic Effects Of Labor Abuse

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.

Sweltering heat, long hours, unfair working conditions are a few descriptive words that Americans use to describe a sweatshop. I believe our judgment is being misguided by the success of our nation, and it is imperative we redefine the word “sweatshop”. Individuals that endure life in third world countries know hardships that Americans could not imagine. If we were to recognize these economical differences it may shine a light on why these workers seek sweatshop jobs. In many of these cases, children must work to aid in the family’s survival. If these jobs are voluntary and both parties agree to working conditions, it results in a mutually beneficial arrangement. One of the worst things we can do as outsiders, to help these impoverished

The fast-food workers are expressed as a pond in a bigger game. They have to deal with their low pay in order to ensure low prices by these franchises. Jencunas concerns go on to represent the beginning of a bigger chain effect. Briefly, he states that, “The average fast food store would go from profitable to unprofitable overnight. Some would close immediately, leaving their workers worse off than they were when working for $7.50 an hour, while others would raise prices and try and remain in business, hurting consumers” (“Don't Deserve Any More, or Less”). Evaluating his reasoning we see that if fast-food workers ask for a higher minimum wage, they will in return influence the profit margin and actually increase unemployment rate in this industry. The researchers go on to inform us that if their minimum wage increases the industry won’t be able to afford the change in their profit margin and result in bankruptcy. However, Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, which supports the fast-food strike states a different claim:

According to Raj Patel (2010), Wal-Mart employs “2.1 million greeters, stock clerks, and logistics officers working at its 8,416 stores ... [and] ranks among the largest employers worldwide--only China's army has more people on its payroll.” (para. 1). That is 2.1 million people who chose to work for the company, who were employed despite whatever setbacks there were holding them back from a “real” job. While Wal-Mart is definitely not the dream job, it is better than no job, and in fact does not pay that much below the retail average of $11.86/hour (EAE Alberta, 2011, p. 4). In this economy, it is unrealistic to believe that any retail job will lead a new fancy car every year, or pay much further than the necessities. The high cost of living with a low minimum wage goes beyond Wal-Mart’s business structure. However, it is a job that is helpful in employing students who need to pay for their education, and in assisting in immigrants making money when they first move to North America. It employs those hard to employ people and gives them the experience needed to move on to a better job with higher pay. Also missed in Parmar’s article is the fact that when employing two million people, there is a much higher chance of the company having an issue with employees. Due to its immense amount of employees, it is 5,500% more likely that a bad event will happen at Wal-Mart as opposed to smaller companies such

Sweltering heat, long hours, and unfair working conditions are a few descriptive words that Americans use to describe a sweatshop. I believe our judgment is being misguided by the success of our nation, and it is imperative we redefine the word “sweatshop”. Individuals that endure life in third world countries know hardships that Americans could not imagine. If we were to recognize these economical differences it may shine a light on why these workers seek sweatshop jobs. In many of these cases, children must work to aid in the family’s survival. If these jobs are voluntary and both parties agree to work conditions, it results in a mutually beneficial arrangement. One of the worst things we can do as outsiders, to help these impoverished

A majority of the clothing worn and purchased today in the United States has been manufactured overseas in sweatshops. Since the beginning of factories and businesses, owners have always looked for a way to cut production costs while still managing to produce large quantities of their product. It was found that the best way to cut costs was to utilize cheap labor in factories known as sweatshops. According to the US General Account Office, sweatshops are defined as a “business that regularly violates both wage or child labor and safety or health laws”. These sweatshops exploit their workers in various ways: making them work long hours in dangerous working conditions for little to no pay. Personally, I believe that the come up and employment of these sweatshops is unethical, but through my research I plan to find out if these shops produce more positive than negatives by giving these people in need a job despite the rough conditions.

Rex Huppke, a journalist for the Chicago Tribune, deftly discusses the pros and cons of raising the minimum wage in the last of a two-week series in “In the Minimum Wage Debate, Both Sides Make Valid Points”. Although I am for raising the minimum wage, Huppke’s presentation of the opposite argument does make one think beyond the gut reading that everyone deserves more money. Huppke’s argument that a large number of minimum wage earners are student of the elderly leads me to believe that a tier of wages would take care of the issue. For example, anyone working less than 35 hours a week would be paid at a certain rate; with full time getting an increase. I am not concerned by the argument that a higher minimum wage leads to lay-offs or price increases when most products sold in America are manufactured by cheap foreign labor. There is already a huge profit margin that could sustain such an increase. Rather than give discounts on goods and services, thus preventing employees from exercising the right to shop, stay or eat wherever the employee chooses, these employers trap workers into giving back the very money they have “slaved” for.

These booming national and international chains affect the treatment and aspirations of low wage workers because since these low paid workers are so easy to replace they end up getting no say in their working conditions or wages. If they argue with their employers, then the risk getting fired simply because it is easier for them to fire the employer then to have to give the worker any rights. This puts a really large limit on what these low paid workers can acquire. They end up not being able to have good working conditions or proper jobs. We've created a society of cheap consumerism, a cheap economy, cheap cities, cheap buildings, and cheap lives. In order to drive this system, we need cheap labor. Those corporate profits don't come from a genie in the bottle. The wages that they earn are insufficient to obtain life's basic necessities. Everything costs money, your shelter so you can rest and go to your job, your clothes so you can go to your job, your food so that you can survive to go to your job, to earn the money needed to pay for your clothes, your shelter, and buy your food, so that you can

However, this could not be more wrong. First off, all of the employees in other nations who flock to Wal-Mart’s factories have the choice to do so. Even though the wages paid in third world nations is inconceivable in United States, those wages will still increase the employee’s income, which in turn increases the employee’s standard of living. The increases in standards of living will lead to economic innovations and increased productivity/efficiency. This process of evolving mirrors that same steps that the United States went through in its early beginnings as well. Secondly, critics want Wal-Mart to enforce labor laws in its overseas factories that are consistent with United States. However, Vedder refutes this demand stating, “We have no more right to expect Wal-Mart to enforce Chinese labor laws than the Chinese have the right to enforce ours” (Vedder). Clearly, this criticism is without reason and impossible. In addition, the regulations and laws in third world countries are not kept up to date as well as in America, not everyone has a birth certificate or passport proving their age. It is unreasonable to assume that Wal-Mart would be able to verify the ages of every single employee in Indonesia or China. (Vedder)

Barbara Ehrenreich is an American author and some could even say a journalist for her work that was done for her novel called Nickel and Dimed. This novel is based on an experiment that was done by Ehrenreich in which she abandoned her job and left to another state to live off of minimum wage to answer her question “ How does anyone live on the wages available to the unskilled”. A simple answer that Ehrenreich came to, is that they don 't. A person does not live on 7$ an hour, they survive on it. She has the argument that huge corporations have been victimizing their workers, they only care about the work itself rather than the person doing it. The corporations see their workers as replaceable and they use this against their workers,

Price then realized that since it was the workers that were making these productivity gains, their minimum wages should increase. As a result, he cut his own salary to fund a company-wide increase of the minimum wage to seventy-thousand dollars (Keegan). Price’s actions reflect the importance of workers and their contributions to a firm. These gains should be going to the workers since they are the source of the productivity gains. CEOs can implement a program or buy technology to increase rates of production, but it is up to the employees as a collective mass to actually execute this action. Disbursing these productivity gains would contribute to increasing the minimum wage, inherently moving families up closer to or above the poverty line. Ranks show that forty percent of Americans between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-six will spend one year below the poverty line and fifty-four percent will spend a year at or near that line (Kiernan 182). For workers to still live in poverty is because without them, there would be implementation of the good or service a CEO is trying to provide. Employees are the basis of production and should be valued more than the current minimum wage. Increasing the minimum wage would also prevent people from working nonstandard hours to earn more money, which would increase the living standard. Workers that have nonstandard hours tend to be single mothers with children, who are then forced to leave their children alone

corporations to use cheap overseas labor” my first thoughts were yes because of my personal beliefs. But upon further thought and through discovery, I realized that from a business point of view we as a nation should still help promote economic globalization. In order to do so we need to outsource production and encourage trade. However, because we are fiscally involved in another country’s economy that doesn’t give American corporations the right to implement our laws and standards into other countries’ business practices and laws. Just because we see child labor, unfair wages, and violating overtime as immoral, doesn’t mean that the host county does. However global labor standards need to be unified.

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

Currently there are 168 million child laborers in the world. More than half of them, 85 million, employed at hazardous jobs, according to the International Labour Organization. In the article “In Praise of Cheap Labor Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all”, Paul Krugman Professor of economics at MIT, explains that child labor cannot just be wiped away like so many other distasteful practices. That it takes a perfect storm of economic success and low child labor numbers for a full transition to labor laws that ban it. Employers will agree to follow the law; similar to what happened in the U.S. in the 1930’s when Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This Act established standards for the basic minimum wage and overtime pay. It restricts the hours that children under age 16 can work and forbids the employment of children under age 18 in certain jobs deemed too dangerous. Krugman believes that many developing countries are not at a point where they can support a full ban on child labor. He gives the example of countries like “Indonesia [who are,] still so poor that progress is measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat” (Krugman 4). Professor of economics at Yale university, Christopher Udry, in his article “Child Labor” provides a definition of child labor as “ the sacrifice of the future welfare of the child in exchange for additional income” (243). The causes of Child labor are not as simple as cultural or economic reasons, and a

Although, if people keep agreeing to work for minimum wage then these higher wages will never be set because the economic marketplace knows that it can increase its profit margin by paying workers less which is what it will always try to do. Looking at the article, it can be seen that if Wal-Mart were to raise there minimum wage to the acceptable amount of twelve dollars ($12.00) an hour, the corporation would take a $3.21 billion dollar hit to their checkbooks. Even if immigrants were the ones who were always sweeping the market to its lowest paying profit margin they are still providing a benefit to corporations which is therefore providing a benefit to everyone who interacts with that corporation and should it be a corporation like that of Wal-Mart a plethora of people are receiving the benefits while much fewer are being harmed.