Sweathop Research Paper

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 earliest use of sweatshops labor can be traced back to the time of Spanish conquistadors and the colonization of South America. In Ecuador, the native people were forced to work under terrible conditions in mills that produced garments, cloth, and various other textile goods. Moving forward on the historical timeline to Europe’s Industrial Revolution, sweatshops became increasingly more common. In 1889 the British government launched the first investigation into the terrible conditions under which sweatshop workers, namely women and children,

The working conditions of the new arrivals were hardly any better, as employees of factories were often overworked, underpaid, and penned up in dangerous conditions. Perhaps the horrors of these conditions can be highlighted by the devastating 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. Tragically, over one hundred young women lost their lives in the fire, as there was no way to get out, and the doors were locked, trapping the women inside. Safety was not the only problem, as workers initially were not given the right to organize into unions, essentially doomed to the repetitive motions of factory operation. This meant that they had no way to protest against child labor, wage slavery, and unhealthily long working hours. Eventually, with their growing clout and ever-present industrial dependence on their labor, workers organized and demanded reform along all aspects of hazardous working conditions.

Time and time again, there have been opposing views on just about every single possible topic one could fathom. From the most politically controversial topics of gun control and stem cell research to the more mundane transparent ones of brown or white rice and hat or no hat—it continues. Sweatshops and the controversy surrounding them is one that is unable to be put into simplistic terms, for sweatshops themselves are complex. The grand debate of opposing views in regards to sweatshops continues between two writers who both make convincing arguments as to why and how sweatshops should or should not be dealt with. In Sweat, Fire and Ethics, by Bob Jeffcott, he argues that more people ought to worry less about the outer layers of sweatshops and delve deeper into the real reason they exist and the unnecessariness of them. In contrast, Jeffrey D. Sachs writes of the urgent requirement of sweatshops needed during the industrialization time in a developing country, in his article of Bangladesh: On the Ladder of Development. The question is then asked: How do sweatshops positively and negatively affect people here in the United States of America and in other countries around the world?

Cambridge dictionary defines sweatshop as a small factory where workers are paid very little and work many hours under bad conditions. People working there are deprived of any kind of worker’s benefit. Child labor is very common in sweatshops. Workers in sweatshops are often missing key pieces of safety equipment such as face masks to ensure safe breathing or work in environments with insufficient means of emergency exit since employers may lock the doors and windows to prevent theft during working hours (Hartman ). The workers are abused, beaten, kicked, and shoved, even if they are sick or pregnant. Sweatshop is nothing but a modern form of slavery, because the workers are forced to work in harsh condition for a little wage, and they are denied any fundamental human rights .

Sweatshops date back to as far as the 16th century, but were first exposed in Britain in 1889. Around the 1830s-1840s, immigrants started coming to the United States and organized sweatshops in tenement buildings. Despite poor health problems and disease from the harsh conditions, immigrants needed the work and were appreciative. Today sweatshops are often found in slow, developing countries, but many are found around the world. Majority of the workers are commonly women and children, who are usually uneducated. By classifying what a sweatshop is, it is a workplace that violates more than one federal and state labor law and their employees work for long

From the minute Chinese citizens began to work for outside companies, they were exploited and taken advantage of. (Miller 2013) Once sweatshops were outlawed in North America and Europe in the mid 1900s due to their inhumane practices, foreigners were quick to flock to developing countries that did not have the same laws in place. Firms sought out manufacturers in poorer nations that could provide the highest quality product at the cheapest cost and Chinese migrants were easy prey for manufacturers who paid small wages and offered poor working conditions. Meagre social and economic conditions in developing China resulted in a great amount of people willing to accept any wage and management systems that neglected the workers. Multinational textile firms soon grew to rely on foreign subcontractors for their production needs. (Pugatch 1998) The system estranged corporations from the production process, and in turn resulted in the estrangement of the consumers from the production process, which encouraged and continues to encourage the ignorance that fuels the sweatshop system. The relationship between corporation and producer was only further separated as agents arranged subcontracting for companies, allowing these companies to have the goods they were selling produced in factories they had never seen. The subcontractors were met with severe corporate deadlines and targets in order to stay in business, leaving workers as the sacrificial

Sweatshops are any workplace in which workers are subject to extreme exploitation. This means that laborers are operating in poorly kept workplaces, working long hours, being abused in their workplace, and barely making enough money to buy clothes, food, have shelter, and have health care. The term “sweatshop” came about during 1892 when people started to speak out about the poor conditions American garment workers were working under.

In addition, Pugatch claimed that the most historical sweatshop development took place in New England and New York, where the textile industry thrived during the 1840s. His study notes that at the beginning of the 19th century, using industrial homework became a common practice in sweatshops. Through this practice, workers had to bring home any unfinished work for completion in order for them to meet their quotas (Pugatch, 1992). However, in foreign countries located in Africa, Asia and South America, sweatshops did not form the same way. Anthropologist Jason Hickel explained that sweatshops were the result of government activity to get natives to work in mines, plantations and factories.

Sweatshops have always been a problem in the Unites States, especially during the past century. Unfair working conditions and pay prompted the formation of the Garment Worker

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.

Abstract: Many countries, industries and people are becoming more affected by sweatshops in different ways because of they’re continuous increase in growth. Sweatshops benefit many developing countries as they provide opportunities of employment to the people living in poverty and benefit the community at large by creating an economic infrastructure that utilizes the country’s resources and increases their tax base. These institutions first came into existence in the early 1800’s and were referred to as dwelling houses, which were local factories that generally had the same idea of the sweatshop that we have in today’s society. There

Sweatshops first came into existence in the 18th century in Great Britain. It later came to the United States in the late 19th century, due to a huge increase of immigration in the country. Sweatshops were commonly known in more urban areas. Usually the owners of these factories were people that were rich and were getting richer, while the poor stayed poor. With them staying poor, they could not climb the corporate ladder.(encyclopedia.com) Immigrants were usually employed in sweatshops because coming into this country they would take any job at any wage, it did not matter how low. Due to

Garment sweatshops in the San Francisco area were packed to the rim with Asian immigrant women in the last few decades of the 20th century. Miriam Ching Louie starts off her journal with a primary source of Helen Wong speaking on how she followed all the other immigrant women to the garment shops and found work there. These garment shops had bad conditions with dust flying around and the immigrants working there usually worked very long hours with extremely low pay. The garment industry in the Bay Area is one of the largest industries and ninety percent of the workers are women with a majority of them being Chinese-speaking. They were usually paid by how much they could make and produce so when the industry became globalized and the manufacturing companies moved their companies to Third World countries to minimize production costs, the Asian immigrant sweatshops workers would either lose their job or agree to the extremely low wages the companies were paying the Third World countries to make their products. Louie even lists out facts collected from a survey which mostly concluded that the seamstresses often had low English proficiency and about 60% of them work more than six days a week. A big part of Louie’s journal is talking about the growth of AIWA (Asian Immigrant Women Advocates) that came about due to what the Asian immigrant women were facing in the garment sweatshops. Its objectives is to “focus on the needs of its constituency. Popular

“FORCED TO WORK EXHAUSTING HOURS” - this is the label which a woman who bought a summer dress at Primark found (See figure 1). The message was a cry for help from workers and implies the harsh environment for the people in a sweatshop (Lewin). The word sweatshop was made in the end of 1800s. The definition of the sweatshop is broad but it describes any workplace where people are forced poor conditions and long hours of works with low wages (Annabelle). The US Department of Labor defined a sweatshop as a factory which violates two or more labor laws (DoSomething.org). People in developed countries tend to enjoy buying cheaper products and do not care about the reality of the process they have made. In fact, many women and children are forced to work in sweatshops in developing countries. Some corporations such as NIKE, GAP and Wal Mart have already revealed those facts but the problem has not been solved yet (Bakan). Actually, those are just few of the companies involved in sweatshop labor. By using sweatshops, many corporations reduce their production costs. And millions of people still live with what they get from sweatshops (Solution). Some people say the sweatshop is ethical because it provides better jobs than the average jobs in those