The problem with sweatshops–there are too few.
Jeffery Sachs , in an article in the New York Times entitled “In Principle, A Case for More Sweatshops” (Allen R. Meyerson, The New York Times, June 1969), was quoted as having stated, “My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few.” Now, to give you a perspective of who Jeffery Sachs is: He earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard. He is currently a professor of Economics at Columbia, and is best known for his work as an economic advisor to Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia and Africa. And as a much less-experienced individual myself, I agree whole-heartedly with Dr. Sachs’ statement.
The truth is that sweatshops exist because the alternatives–usually agricultural work or prostitution–are worse environments. And as for the usual conditions of sweatshops–which seems to be the basis of the argument against sweatshops–one cannot expect a company to build a factory overseas and then create conditions to match those found in the US. This is because if a company were required to create a work environment exactly like those found in the US they would simply have all their factories in the US, receive tax benefits, and then the native peoples in third world countries would be left with no alternative to the agricultural and prostitution occupations. Therefore, next time we buy clothes, we need to make sure that the tag reads “made in Guatemala” or “made in Latvia”, and by so doing, we are helping large American corporations put more capital into third world economies.
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March 4th, 2006 at 12:58 am
I think my opinion on this post depends on your definition of the term ’sweat shop’. I can think of two different (or maybe they’re the same, I don’t know) conceptions people have of what exactly a sweatshop is:
The first is any factory, usually in a 3rd world country, where the employees are paid at a lower rate than they would be for doing a comparable job here in the United States.
The second is the horror-story type where you hear of employees being forced to work for 20 hours a day, getting paid next to nothing even in terms of their respective currency, or children being forced to sew soccer balls or something with their bare hands with a needle they had to make themselves.
Help me to better understand what you mean when you say ’sweatshop’.
March 24th, 2006 at 10:10 am
[...] (continuation of the discussion from: “the problem with sweatshops - there are too few”) [...]