Essay on Globalization: The WTO is Killing People

Modern sweat shops are problems. After researching the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in Manhattan ,New York and the 2013 Rana Plaza building collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Both industrial suburb, I notice very little change in the business practice, morals, and ethics that fuel the sweatshop motif of cheap labor to keep profits high and costs low. Both incidents involved garment factory who’s employed mainly young working 12 to 14 hours days in an unsafe building. In both incident the dangerous working condition and safety violations that led to mass casualties. In the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, workers

Proponents of free trade have remained silent in the face of anti-trade claims about job losses and a "race to the bottom." They have allowed misplaced fears about globalization to spread by default. Trumpeting the prospect of increased exports by U.S. multinationals simply isn 't responsive to those fears; indeed, it actually plays to suspicions that the WTO is a front for big corporations that seek to profit at the expense of ordinary Americans.

"Since 2006, more than 500 Bangladeshi workers have died in factory fires, according to Clean Clothes Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group in Amsterdam. Experts say many of the fires could have easily been avoided if the factories had taken the right precautions. Many factories are in cramped neighborhoods and have too few fire escapes, and they widely flout safety measures. The industry employs more than three million workers in Bangladesh, most of them women.

This article addresses how working conditions of garment workers in global South have merely changed after Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 and struggles on implementing corrective action plans in factories due to companies’ apathetic actions towards this approach. This collapse is widely known as killing thousands of people at Rana Plaza, an eight-story factory located in Bangladesh’s capital city that consisted several factories manufacturing clothing for multinational brands such as Walmart and Joe Fresh. In the wake of this disaster, companies, trade unions, and worker’s rights group decided to make the buildings safer and improve working conditions for employees in factories across Bangladesh, which meant adding sprinkler systems and

Nike, Victoria’s Secret, GAP, Levis, Nordstrom, Calvin Klein. Other than their status as large fashion retailers, they all have one thing in common: the International Textile Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation condemns their use of overseas sweatshops. Goods manufactured in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and many other Asian and African countries are often made in less-than-ideal conditions for low wages. While opponents of overseas labor champion stricter trading laws, this form of supply-and-demand economics remains a vital part of the global economy, as it enables prices to remain low in developed countries and employs many individuals in distant, poorer areas.

The factory fire in Bangladesh occurred in November 2012. It was a garment factory and a lot of young women worked there. The woman worked over hours. They had low wages and unsafe conditions. The woman died because the boss told them to ignore the alarm and keep working. The fire killed some. The fire also caused another building to collapse killing people as well. Others jumped to safety some did not. 11 of the workers were culpable homicide. There was 112 woman killed the day of the fire.

For example, according to the LA times there were no emergency exits at the factory fire in Tazreen Fashions in November 2012. Workers who survived the fires claimed that the fire extinguishers did not work and their bosses refused to open the doors and sent them back to work. Because of the lack of proper safety procedures in these factories there have been multiple fires in recent history like the Ali Enterprises fire in Pakistan in September 2012, the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh in April 2013, and the Kentex factory fire in the Philippines in May 2015. All these preventable disasters combined killed about 1600 people in less than 3 years. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution when people were starting to move to cities to work in factories, factory working conditions were very similar to conditions in modern day sweatshops. Despite being over 300 years ahead, workers today still work in dirty environments and with dangerous outdated machines. They also work over 12 hours a day and get little pay. Also, children are still mistreated and overworked just as they were in the 18th

From an average American's perspective, globalization is a win-win situation for everyone involvedt. But we fail to see the other end of this situation, where lower-class families around the world are faced with troubles. In countries such as Indonesia and India, American companies purposely set up factories and take advantage of the population by giving them wages below minimum wage to manufacture their products. Families are forced to send their children to work in these factories in order to make enough money to survive. When there is only enough money to put food on the table, living conditions are poor and necessities such as clean water are not as available as they are for us Americans. In other countries such as Colombia, the drug

Globalization has been in existence for the past hundreds of years; it has exercised control over the transformation and development of the trade world as we know it. It has impacted trade in a good way, and overall as a positive force. Globalization has given rise to the job market and increased trades of many products. Without trade, the world would not have been able to further its economy as it has. When deciphering between what could be seen as a positive and negative force, different definitions come to mind. When I think of a positive force as it comes to the economy, I think of an upward moving building block as the world went through globalization by increasing the worlds organization of economies. Resulting in the growth of trade of goods, services, and international capital. This was also accompanied by a new spread of technologies and global international trade.

When regulations and labor standards fall under a proper and correct standard, workers easily become more at risk of potential dangers. This also leaves the public unaware of the poor labor conditions some of these companies enforce. Especially due to the large amount of workers located in the same area, the level of endangerment of such concerns elevates quickly. Working in an average sweatshop factory, manufacturers often times employ more than 40,000 people, in which a large number of the employees are mainly immigrant women and children. Working from 10 to 12 hour shifts a day, workers automatically fall into the exposure of incidents when operating on the job without any safety precautions (Kornberg). In addition to these concerns, the vast need for sweatshop workers has also driven manufacturers into trafficking laborers. The victims of forced labor oftenly come from ethnic and racial groups such as China, Vietnam and Mexico (Free the Slaves). This shows the inhumane and cruel intention of clothing suppliers as they can willingly undergo any circumstance to recruit workers. Such actions are only executed to keep production costs low, even if it means conveying on illegal

There have been many awful accidents at sweatshops around the world but one of the worst incidents involving a sweatshop was when the factory in Bangladesh collapsed in April 2013. Over 1000 people were killed in this disaster with another 2500 being injured. There were over 3000 workers in the building at the time that it collapsed. The building collapsed because it was built on unsafe ground, on top of a pond. Three additional floors were built on top of the original building and

“Hours are long. Wages are pitiful. But sweatshops are the symptom, not the cause of shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means - as hard as it is to believe - that whatever their alternatives are, they are worse. They stay there too; turnover rates of multinational-owned factories are low, because conditions and pay, while bad, are better than those in factories run by local firms,” Tim Harford, English economist and journalist, said. International buyers search for cheap labor and find it in countries like Bangladesh; people desperately need jobs in these countries, but the factory employees undertake appalling conditions and little pay.

Within 2013, one thousand employees within a manufacturer within Bangladesh passed away once the manufacturer flattened, however the organization carried on the creation in the same manner through transferring to another website (Halliwell, Electronic. 2013). Sweatshop somewhat perform assist the actual economic climate of those building nations by giving work as well as “one might suppose the actual anti-sweatshop action might gentler financial development whilst nonetheless creating minimal advantaged best. However the basic ethical cause in order to are at odds of it really is it damages people who may minimum pay for to become hurt” (Powell W., Zwolinski M). The reason why associated with exploitation, bad monetary development as well as breach associated with work regulations the actual sweatshops ethically

In foreign countries with more of an unjust government it is common that child labor and sweatshops are in operation. It is easy to have unknowingly purchased clothes made by an 8-year-old girl in a cold factory at 1am. For instance, Asia is very commonly afflicted with sweatshops and it is hard for the U.S. to keep up with other countries issues. Sweatshops and what they stand for are detrimental to the health and safety of the worker’s everyday life. These conditions need to be stopped and reinvented. There are many alternative ways and small tweaks that in the long run can make a tremendous difference to the lives of these workers.

There are a large amount of social and environmental problems within the global apparel industry.