The High Cost Of Cheap Labor

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.

Sweatshops a big issue in today’s society, even though their existence can sometimes stay hidden from the public’s eye. A famous author named Berry states, “ most of us get all the things we need by buying them and most of us know only vaguely, if at all, where those things came from; and most of us know not at all what damage is involved in their production. We are almost entirely dependent on an economy of which we are almost entirely ignorant.” The majority of people in the US have no idea where the clothes they are purchasing are actually coming from. Most people would not support the exploitation of their own race of people. If they were able to see and come to realization about what is actually happening they would have a much different change of heart.

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.

In this paper, I chose to apply the works of Marx to the Nike Sweatshop situation that has been going on for decades. The Nike corporation has been criticized for a long time, ever since there has been evidence linking them to sweatshops that exist in factories all around the world where they have outsourced jobs to for cheaper labor. Individuals who want a job with one of the clothing factories are forced to sign a contract that binds them to work for a certain length of time and forces them to live in the arrangements provided by the factory. In some cases, the workers don’t even know the conditions of their employment as the contracts are written in a different language. The name “sweatshop” has come from the extremely high temperatures that have been reported from inside of the factories that workers are forced to endure every day.

• 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.

By the 1990’s, even though a somewhat large percentage of clothing was still being produced domestically, famous companies such as J.C Penney and Gap Inc., started to slowly decrease the number of clothes being made by them in the U.S. They’d still design and market their own clothes but they decided to outsourced production to factories overseas where their clothes were being made at a fraction of the cost (Vatz, 2013). Companies see offshore production as an opportunity to make their business more profitable. Manufacturing offshore offers the ability to produce huge amounts of orders significantly reducing the cost of production. Hence, the reason why a lot of factories have moved to places where laborers get paid almost nothing for their work and the government doesn’t have laws or regulations to protect workers. For companies, it basically means cheap labor and materials and more money in their pockets; for consumers, this means low retail prices for pieces of clothing of questionable quality; and for the United States, it means a decrease in local-garment making industry and less apparel manufacturing

In the third world countries such as Vietnam, China, South Korea and Taiwan, we are provided with an example of cheap labour. These corporations could now achieve the benefit of the United States consumer market8, while keeping their costs extremely low in offshore production. The working conditions in the United States were poor for centuries, often little to nothing was done unless a tragedy occurred to influence worker rights by the public. This was the issue during the Industrial Revolution and in the late 20th century. In the United states, improvements have been made and these conditions have disappeared, with the privilege in some agricultural areas. Companies from the United States have moved a considerable amount of their factories

• The results of this study are consistent with a 1997 study by the National Research Council, which also found that immigrants’ education level is a key determinant of their fiscal

Although the Chinese apparel manufacturers would lose profitability due to rising cotton prices and competition from emerging countries, they stand to gain the most from the removal of U.S. quotas and tariffs. According to the author, in 2007, 95% of the 20 billion garments Americans made were purchased overseas. Due to U.S. trade barriers, China’s share of the U.S. apparel import was only 30%. Once these barriers were removed, Chinese apparel would flood the American market due to their low cost and dominance in garment manufacturing. Experts predict that China could eventually supply 85% of U.S. apparel. As they increase their market share in the

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

The Sweatshop Watch, established in the year 1995 in Los Angeles, is a syndicate dedicated to advocating for the rights of sweatshop workers. In an article released by the Sweatshop Watch entitled, “Supporting Mexican Garment Workers at the Tarrant Ajalpan Factory,” they delineate the repeatedly ignored endeavors of the sweatshop workers to resist the relentless abuse they endure from the Ajalpan factory in Tarrant, Mexico. The Ajalpan factory, began operation in 1999 and distributes products to numerous brand name clothing companies including Polo Ralph Lauren. On June 10, 2003, as an attempt to ensure that the factory would mitigate the abysmal conditions that they experience everyday, 800 workers stood in protest and refused to work (Sweatshop

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

“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

Today, America only produces 3% of its clothes and instead of 2-3 seasonal clothes there are about 50. It is a very high-pressured industry. Clothes are being made in China, Bangladesh, and many other poorer countries. The issue is that clothes are being made at the cheapest place possible. America chooses the cheapest place so they can buy the clothes for the cheapest price and make a profit off of it. This is hard for the factories; they are squeezing prices as much as possible. With low prices being a goal, there is a lot of competition between the factories. With

  “Intermón claims that pressures on foreign clothing suppliers are smothering employees. […] In  Morocco,  where  Cortefiel,  Inditex  (Zara),  Mango  and  Induyco  (El  Corte  Inglés)  manufacture  their products, a Tangier based textile factory sold a pair of slacks to large Spanish retailers for  3.3 euros three years ago; today, the same item sells for 2 euros. Female factory workers work  12  to  16  hours  a  day  during  the  high  season,  because  orders  from  Spain  demand  six  ‐  day  delivery terms in order to suit shop window change schedules.”    (El País Newspaper, “Mujeres en