Slavery Evolved: A Minority Control A Majority of The Wealth 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.

On the 24th of April 2013, a tragedy occurred in Dhaka, Bangladesh, resulting in the deaths of more than 1000 people and the destruction of a nine-story garment factory “Rana Plaza” (Manik& Yardley, n.d.,). However, the unsatisfactory condition of the building was known to employees. The day before the tragedy, several cracks were noticed, yet the owner of the factory ignored the warning by police to suspend the factory. In addition, workers were physically intimidated which shows, illustrating the power of society and the desperation of financial condition as individuals (Hossain, 2013). 80% of the workers at the Rana Plaza were female; this was because their labor was the cheapest in the world, with the minimum income BDT being 3000 taka per month (the equivalent of 37 Australian dollars) (Burke, 2013). This industry represented the international fashion labels in Europe, America, cosmopolitanism and progressive brands such as Benetton etc. Most of the factory’s textile products were internationally exported, earning foreign currency and allowing it to become the largest industry in Bangladesh. The “Rana Plaza” was one of the main industry, which maintained the economy and society as individuals in Bangladesh. The power of capital at the Bangladesh level is the arrangement of dominance transnational businesses at the global level, which is a smaller rate of powerful

Starting from a slave’s birth, this cruel process leads to a continuous cycle of abuse, neglect, and inhumane treatment. To some extent, slave holders succeed because they keep most slaves so concerned with survival that they have no time or energy to consider freedom. This is particularly true for plantation slaves where the conditions of slave life are the most difficult and challenging. However, slave holders fail to realize the damage they inadvertently inflict on themselves by upholding slavery and enforcing these austere laws and attitudes.

Slavery, especially in America, has been an age old topic of riveting discussions. Specialist and other researchers have been digging around for countless years looking for answers to the many questions that such an activity provided. They have looked into the economics of slavery, slave demography, slave culture, slave treatment, and slave-owner ideology (p. ix). Despite slavery being a global issue, the main focus is always on American slavery. Peter Kolchin effectively illustrates in his book, American Slavery how slavery evolved alongside of historical controversy, the slave-owner relationship, how slavery changed over time, and how America compared to other slave nations around the world.

In this eye-opening look at the contemporary American scourge of labor abuse and outright slavery, journalist and author Bowe visits locations in Florida, Oklahoma and the U.S.-owned Pacific island of Saipan, where slavery cases have been brought to light as recently as 2006. There, he talks to affected workers, providing many moving and appalling first-hand accounts. This book deserves the attention of anyone living, working and consuming in America.

The issue of slavery has been debated for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It is of undisputed awareness that the act of enslaving another man or women is to strip them of their civil and natural liberties. It is also of uncontested certainty that no man or women would will- ingly chose to be a slave. And although slavery and it’s accompanied hardships are often seen as no less than an ultimate evil, it is also an indisputable fact that humanity has enslaved its brethren since the dawn of mankind1. As rational beings, we must put aside our presumptions, precon- ceived notions, and emotionally biased opinions of slavery and ask ourselves; why? One would think that if enslavement was such an unspeakable evil, it would have no place in our civil soci- ety. Yet, slavery time and time again has appeared as a fundamental part of many of the worlds most powerfull civilizations and societies throughout history. This is because slavery is a power- full tool and a necessary evil. The Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Ottomans, Egyptians, Ghana’s, Mali’s, Songhai’s, and Kanem-Bornu’s (the former four being powerfull African empires) all

Doug Saunders’ article, “Are garment workers’ deaths on our hands? No” is about the sufferings that the Bangladesh garment workers have to experience in the hopes of meeting consumer needs in Europe and North America. According to the tone of the writer, this article presents an argument on ethical concern about the existing business relationship between the developed and the developing countries. Developed countries such as Europe and North America go for cheap markets in countries like Bangladesh but in the process they affect the welfare of these countries. Saunders uses the fire outbreak and a collapsed eight-storey building, as evidence for the suffering of Bangladesh workers. Conversely, Saunders claims that clothing agreements by developed

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

One might wonder how an American living in the 21st century could be subject to slavery. Slavery that comes without physical chains but is omnipresent in every transaction of one man’s life.

However, after the Rana Plaza Factory Fire, major retailers such as H&M, Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein entered into an agreement with UNI and IndustriALL, two global union federations in order to ensure safety for their workers abroad. The signing of this Accord places retailers and branded corporations at the top of the entities with obligations to its workers below. “This Accord imposes on these buyers substantive obligations – most notably, financial obligations to help suppliers pay for safety upgrades, such as the installation of fire exits, or, in the case of structurally unsound buildings, major repairs while guaranteeing the payment of workers’ salaries for time lost at work.” Anner and his peers find this Accord to be the first of many promising and successful steps towards ending these tragedies. However, I found that contrary to what the media and these retailers may publicize, this accord applies to Bangladesh only. Many of these corporations have factories within India, China, and Pakistan as well that are not affected by this agreement. Although this may be one attempt at solving the problems of global outsourcing, it does not reach far enough.

The New York Times editorial board recently wrote an article about “Bangladesh’s Crackdown on Labor.” The article centers around the 2013 collapse of a garment factory building that killed more than 1100 people which prompted Bangladesh to revise their labor laws, although these laws hardly brought about any change as “the recent crackdown on protesting garment workers is proof that clothing manufactured in Bangladesh is still exacting a terrible price from the people who make it.” (Paragraph 1) Furthermore, the editorial piece is primarily targeted towards western consumers as “it would be a mistake for Western consumers to assume that clothing made in Bangladesh is now produced under safe, fair conditions.” (Paragraph 1) and retailers “the

Strict deadlines have made them become the least ideal situation. Big corporations ask too much when involving their businesses. They demand fast production and for a cheap cost. This creates factories to sprout up everywhere, competing with one another to provide the best, quickest, and cheapest services for the companies. The second largest exporter for clothes was located in Bangladesh known as the Rhana Plaza. In 2013, 1,127 people were killed in the collapse of the Rhana Plaza.2 Most of them were young, single women who worked in the factory. There is much dispute about the cause of the collapse, but the main reason was due to negligence to the structure of the building. One article states, “Yet Mr. Rana and the factory bosses discounted any concerns and ordered their workers into the building the next morning” (Yardley, 2013). If the bosses would have taken more concern to their building then this never would have happened, and 1,217 people would still be living today. The only concern owners have is to make profit. They have no cares for those who work under them. As long as their products are made, they don’t care about the treatment of workers. The amount of deaths from the Rhana Plaza collapse is devastating, and the working conditions the women worked under is even more gruesome. Rarely when I put on clothes do I consider the conditions the people who make me clothes have to

Slavery is immoral. Why? Because we hold this truth to be self-evident: that all men are created equal? Because life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are unalienable rights endowed by our Creator? (“Declaration of Independence.” 1776.) Well, not all men are created equal. At least according to our Founding Fathers, African tribes, 18th century Europeans, the ancient Romans and Greeks, and … the Bible. As a matter of fact, slavery has not been immoral from humanity’s (also to be interpreted as America’s) standpoint but for only 150 years. Why then can we so firmly and undeniably declare that slavery is immoral? The answer lies in the writings of great political visionaries like Solon, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Marx, and Lincoln.

Inexpensive clothing has been the major trend thanks to the cheap laboring in Asia. Though we take granted for inexpensive clothes, we know little about how those clothes are made. In the manufacturing process, sometimes people die in the working environments because of the companies’ neglects on maintaining buildings, providing equipment for better production and improving the working environment. Some factories use children because they can cut more wages. Manufacturing factories with low wage, long working hours and poor conditions that violate human rights are called sweatshops. Since sweatshops violate human rights, they are unethical. Knowing this fact, should companies stop laboring in developing countries? The answer is no. In short, sweatshops are necessity parts of supply chain that fulfill demands and job supplies. Nonetheless, because sweatshops play vital role on offering jobs and inexpensive fashion products, those companies should take responsibilities. Simultaneously, the local government should make strict regulations on child labor and severe working circumstances to protect the citizens and labor rights. We will examine how companies and governments can make improvements on sweatshops controversy with hypothetical analysis on two outcomes of ending and continuing sweatshops.

Developing countries throughout the world have found themselves with a tremendous amount of hardships to be able to have an effective economy while developed countries continue with ease. These developing countries tend to have a mentality to do anything to be part of the global economy and have an influence in the world. Bangladesh is one of these developing countries that are trying to become an influence in the global economy by allowing multinational corporations to build and have garment factories in their countries while profiting by the work these companies create. Unfortunately, the workers in these factories face unfair treatment by their employers and work under unsafe conditions that can eventually cause them to die. In this essay, we will analyze the effects of globalization and how the rise of multinational corporations has innately transformed Bangladesh’s labor. But before we do so, we must understand the way the history of the garment industry has influenced the world.