Criticisms More recently, the
anti-globalization movement has arisen in opposition to corporate
globalization, the process by which
multinational corporations move their operations overseas to lower costs and increase profits. The anti-sweatshop movement has much in common with the
anti-globalization movement. Both consider sweatshops harmful, and both have accused many companies (such as the
Walt Disney Company,
The Gap, and
Nike) of using sweatshops. Some in these movements charge that
neoliberal globalization is similar to the
sweating system, arguing that there tends to be a "
race to the bottom" as multinationals leap from one low-wage country to another searching for lower production costs, in the same way that
sweaters would have steered production to the lowest cost sub-contractor.Various groups support or embody the anti-sweatshop movement today. The
National Labor Committee brought sweatshops into the mainstream media in the 1990s when it exposed the use of sweatshop and child labor to sew clothing for Kathie Lee Gifford's Wal-Mart label. United Students Against Sweatshops is active on college campuses. The
International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of workers in China, Nicaragua, Swaziland, Indonesia, and Bangladesh against Wal-Mart charging the company with knowingly developing purchasing policies particularly relating to price and delivery time that are impossible to meet while following the Wal-Mart code of conduct. Labor unions, such as the
AFL–CIO, have helped support the anti-sweatshop movement out of concern both for the welfare of workers in the developing world and those in the United States. Social critics complain that sweatshop workers often do not earn enough money to buy the products that they make, even though such items are often commonplace goods such as T-shirts, shoes, and toys. In 2003, Honduran garment factory workers were paid US$0.24 for each $50
Sean John sweatshirt, $0.15 for each long-sleeved T-shirt, and only five cents for each short-sleeved shirt – less than one-half of one percent of the retail price. Even comparing international costs of living, the $0.15 that a Honduran worker earned for the long-sleeved T-shirt was equal in
purchasing power to $0.50 in the United States. In countries where labor costs are low, bras that cost US$5–7 apiece retail for US$50 or more in American stores. , female garment workers in India earned about US$2.20 per day. Anti-globalization proponents cite high savings, increased capital investment in developing nations, diversification of their exports and their status as trade ports as the reason for their economic success rather than sweatshops and cite the numerous cases in the East Asian "Tiger Economies" where sweatshops have reduced living standards and wages. They believe that better-paying jobs, increased capital investment and domestic ownership of resources will improve the economies of sub-Saharan Africa rather than sweatshops. They point to good labor standards developing strong manufacturing export sectors in wealthier sub-Saharan countries such as Mauritius. Anti-globalization organizations argue that the minor gains made by employees of some of these institutions are outweighed by the negative costs such as lowered wages to increase profit margins and that the institutions pay less than the daily expenses of their workers. They also point to the fact that sometimes local jobs offered higher wages before trade liberalization provided tax incentives to allow sweatshops to replace former local unionized jobs. They further contend that sweatshop jobs are not necessarily inevitable.
Éric Toussaint claims that quality of life in developing countries was actually higher between 1945 and 1980 before the international debt crisis of 1982 harmed economies in developing countries causing them to turn to IMF and World Bank-organized "structural adjustments" and that unionized jobs pay more than sweatshop ones overall – "several studies of workers producing for US firms in Mexico are instructive: workers at the Aluminum Company of America's Ciudad Acuna plant earn between $21.44 and $24.60 per week, but a weekly basket of basic food items costs $26.87. Mexican GM workers earn enough to buy a pound of apples in 30 minutes of work, while GM workers in the US earn as much in 5 minutes." People critical of sweatshops believe that "free trade agreements" do not truly promote free trade at all but instead seek to protect multinational corporations from competition by local industries (which are sometimes unionized). They believe free trade should only involve reducing tariffs and barriers to entry and that multinational businesses should operate within the laws in the countries they want to do business in rather than seeking immunity from obeying local environmental and labor laws. They believe these conditions are what give rise to sweatshops rather than natural industrialization or economic progression. In some countries, such as China, it is not uncommon for these institutions to withhold workers' pay. Furthermore, anti-globalization proponents argue that those in the West who defend sweatshops show double standards by complaining about sweatshop labor conditions in countries considered enemies or hostile by Western governments, while still gladly consuming their exports but complaining about the quality. Labor historian Erik Loomis claims that the conditions faced by workers in the United States in the
Gilded Age have been replicated in developing countries where Western corporations utilize sweatshop labor. In particular, he compares the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911 New York to the
collapse of Rana Plaza in 2013 Bangladesh. He argues that the former galvanized the population to political activism that eventually pushed through reforms not only pertaining to workplace safety, but also the
minimum wage, the
eight-hour day,
workers' compensation,
Social Security the
Clean Air Act, and the
Clean Water Act. American corporations responded by shifting production to developing nations where such protections did not exist. Loomis elaborates:
Support In 1997, economist
Jeffrey Sachs said, "My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few." Sachs and other proponents of
free trade and the global movement of capital cite the economic theory of
comparative advantage, which states that
international trade will, in the long run, make all parties better off. The theory holds that developing countries improve their condition by doing something that they do "better" than industrialized nations (in this case, they charge less but do the same work). Developed countries will also be better off because their workers can shift to jobs that they do better. These are jobs that some economists say usually entail a level of education and training that is exceptionally difficult to obtain in the developing world. Thus, economists like Sachs say, developing countries get factories and jobs that they would not otherwise. Some would say that this situation occurs when developing countries try to increase wages because sweatshops tend to just get moved on to a new state that is more welcoming. This leads to a situation where states often don't try to increase wages for sweatshop workers for fear of losing investment and boosted GDP. However, this only means average wages around the world will increase at a steady rate. A nation only gets left behind if it demands wages higher than the current market price for that labor. When asked about the working condition in sweatshops, proponents say that although wages and working conditions may appear inferior by the standards of developed nations, they are actually improvements over what the people in developing countries had before. It is said that if jobs in such factories did not improve their workers'
standard of living, those workers would not have taken the jobs when they appeared. It is also often pointed out that, unlike in the industrialized world, the sweatshops are not replacing high-paying jobs. Rather, sweatshops offer an improvement over
subsistence farming and other back-breaking tasks, or even prostitution, trash picking, or
starvation by unemployment. Sweatshops can mentally and physically affect the workers who work there due to unacceptable conditions which include working long hours. Despite the hardships, sweatshops were a source of income for their workers. The absence of the work opportunities provided by sweatshops can quickly lead to malnourishment or starvation. After the
Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in the US, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment industry jobs in Bangladesh, leaving many to resort to jobs such as "stone-crushing, street hustling, and prostitution".
UNICEF's 1997 ''State of the World's Children'' study found these alternative jobs "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production". As Nobel prize-winning economist
Paul Krugman states in a 1997 article for Slate, "as manufacturing grows in poor countries, it creates a ripple effect that benefits ordinary people: 'The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise.' In time average wages creep up to a level comparable to minimum-wage jobs in the United States." Writer
Johan Norberg, a proponent of
market economics, points out an irony: Heavy-handed responses to reports of child labor and worker rights abuses such as widespread boycotts can be counterproductive if the net effect is simply to eliminate contracts with suppliers rather than to reform their employment practices. A 2005 article in the
Christian Science Monitor states, "For example, in Honduras, the site of the infamous
Kathy Lee Gifford sweatshop scandal, the average apparel worker earns $13.10 per day, yet 44 percent of the country's population lives on less than $2 per day... In Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, the average wage paid by a firm accused of being a sweatshop is more than double the average income in that country's economy." Journalist
Radley Balko reported in 2004 that on three documented occasions during the 1990s, anti-sweatshop activists apparently caused increases in
child prostitution in poor countries: in Bangladesh, the closure of several sweatshops run by a German company put Bangladeshi children out of work, and some ended up working as prostitutes, turning to crime, or starving to death; in Pakistan, several sweatshops closed, run by
Nike and
Reebok, which caused some of those Pakistani children to turn to prostitution; and in Nepal, a boycott of Nepal's carpet industry forced thousands of child laborers out of work, resulting in "a large percentage" of them turning to prostitution. A 1996 study of corporate codes of conduct in the apparel industry by the U.S. Department of Labor has concluded that corporate codes of conduct that monitor labor norms in the apparel industry, rather than boycott or eliminate contracts upon the discovery of violations of internationally recognized labor norms, are a more effective way to eliminate child labor and the exploitation of children, provided they provide for effective monitoring that includes the participation of workers and their knowledge of the standards to which their employers are subject. Arguably, the United States underwent a similar process during its own industrialization where child labor and the suppression of worker organizations were prevalent. According to an article in Gale Opposing Viewpoints in Context, sweatshops became prevalent in the United States during the Industrial Revolution. Although the working conditions and wages in these factories were very poor, as new jobs in factories began to appear, people left the hard life of farming to work in these factories, and the agricultural nature of the economy shifted into a manufacturing one because of this industrialization. However, during this new industrialized economy, the labor movement drove the rise in the average level of income as factory workers began to demand better wages and working conditions. Through much struggle, sufficient wealth was created and a large middle class began to emerge. Workers and advocates were able to achieve basic rights for workers, which included the right to form unions, and negotiate terms such as wages, overtime pay, health insurance, and retirement pensions; and eventually they were also able to attain legal protections such as minimum wage standards, and discrimination and sexual abuse protections. Furthermore, Congress set forth to ensure a minimum set of safety standards were followed in workplaces by passing the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) in 1970. These developments were able to improve working environments for Americans but it was through sweatshops that the economy grew and people were able to accumulate wealth and move out of poverty. In contrast, similar efforts in developing nations have not produced the same results, because of corruption and lack of democracy in communist nations such as China and Vietnam, worker intimidation and murder in Latin America—and corruption throughout the developing world. These barriers prevent creation of similar legal protections for workers in these countries, as numerous studies by the International Labour Organization show. Nonetheless, a boycott approach to protesting these conditions is likely to hurt workers willing to accept employment even under poor working conditions, as a loss of employment would result in a comparatively worse level of poverty. According to a November 2001
BBC article, in the previous two months, 100,000 sweatshop workers in Bangladesh had been put off work. The workers petitioned their government to lobby the U.S. government to repeal its trade barriers on their behalf to retain their jobs. Defenders of sweatshops cite Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan as recent examples of countries that benefited from having sweatshops. In these countries, legislative and regulatory frameworks to protect and promote labor rights and the rights of workers against unsafe and exploitative working conditions exist, and studies have shown no systematic relationship between labor rights, such as collective bargaining and the freedom of association, and national economic growth. A major issue for the anti-sweatshop movement is the fate of workers displaced by the closing of sweatshops. Even after escaping the sweatshop industry the workers need a job to sustain themselves and their families. For example, in Bangladesh, a country with one of the lowest minimum wages in the world, of $68 per month, the Rana Plaza a known sweatshop that hosted garment factories for retailers such as Primark, JC Penney, Joe Fresh and Benetton, collapsed as it was visibly not structurally sound. After the incident many of the workers were displaced as not only did the Rana Plaza close down but the government also called for safety checks of many factories that were then shut down as a result of not being up to code. Although this may seem like a positive consequence many of those workers were then unable to get jobs and support their families. The garment industry in Bangladesh is worth $28 billion. == Literature ==