Sweatshop

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Sweatshop is a pejorative term often used to describe a manufacturing facility that is physically or mentally abusive, or that crowds, confines, or compels workers, or forces them to work long and unreasonable hours, as would be the case with penal labor or slave labor.

History of sweatshops

Photo taken during a sweatshop inspection in Chicago, Illinois, USA 1903.

While many workplaces through history may have been relatively crowded, dangerous, low-paying, and without job security, the concept of a sweatshop has its origins between 1830 and 1850 as a specific type of workshop in which a certain type of middleman, the sweater, directed others in garment making (the process of producing clothing), under arduous conditions.

Prior to 1830, fine clothing had been an expensive, custom item produced primarily by male members of the organized tailor's guild [4]. But between 1830 and 1850, as the Industrial Revolution gave way to the Second Industrial Revolution, sweatshop production of inexpensive clothing displaced members of the tailors guild, and replaced them with lower-skilled workers performing piece work at lower wages and in inferior conditions. The trend away from tailors was accelerated by the advent of a practical, foot-powered sewing machine in 1846.

The terms sweater for the middleman and sweating system for the process of subcontracting piecework were used in early critiques like Charles Kingsley's Cheap Clothes and Nasty, written in 1850. The workplaces created for the sweating system were called sweatshops, and variously comprised workplaces of only a few workers, or as many as 100 or more.

In the sweatshop of 1850, the role of the sweater as middleman and subcontractor (or sub-subcontractor) was considered key, because he served to keep workers isolated in small workshops. This isolation made workers unsure of their supply of work, and unable to organize against their true employer through collective bargaining. Instead, tailors or other clothing retailers, would subcontract tasks to the sweater, who in turn might subcontract to another sweater, who would ultimately engage workers at a piece rate for each article of clothing or seam produced. Many critics asserted that the middleman made his profit by finding the most desperate workers, often women and children, who could be paid an absolute minimum. While workers who produced many pieces could earn more, less productive workers earned so little that critics termed their pay starvation wages. Employment was risky: injured or sick workers would be quickly replaced by others.

Between 1850 and 1900, sweatshops attracted the rural poor to rapidly-growing cities, and attracted immigrants to places like East London, England and New York City's garment district, located near the tenements of New York's Lower East Side. Wherever they were located, sweatshops also attracted critics and labor leaders who cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rat infestations, since much of the work was done by many people crowded into small tenement rooms.

In 1900, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was founded in an effort to improve the condition of these workers.

Criticism of garment sweatshops became a major force behind workplace safety regulation and labor laws. As some journalists strove to change working conditions, the term sweatshop came to describe a broader set of workplaces whose conditions were considered inferior. In the United States, investigative journalists, known as Muckrakers, wrote exposés of business practices, and progressive politicians campaigned for new laws. Notable exposés of sweatshop conditions include Jacob Riis' photo documentary How the Other Half Lives and Upton Sinclair's book,The Jungle about the meat packing industry.

In 1911, negative public perceptions of sweatshops were galvanized by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City. The pivotal role of this time and place is chronicled at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, part of the Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site.

While trade unions, minimum wage laws, fire safety codes, and labor laws have made sweatshops (in the original sense) rarer in the developed world, they did not eliminate them, and the term came to be increasingly associated with factories in the developing world.

In a report issued in 1994, the United States Government Accountability Office found that there were still thousands of sweatshops in the United States, using a definition of a sweatshop as any "employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers’ compensation, or industry registration" [5]. This recent definition eliminates any historical distinction about the role of a middleman or the items produced, and focuses on the legal standards of developed country workplaces. An area of controversy between supporters of outsourcing production to the Third World and the anti-sweatshop movement is whether such standards can or should be applied to the workplaces of the developing world.

Sweatshops are also sometimes implicated in human trafficking when workers have been tricked into starting work without informed consent, or when workers are kept at work through debt bondage or mental duress, all of which are more likely in cases where the workforce is drawn from children or the uneducated rural poor. Because they often exist in places without effective workplace safety or environmental laws, sweatshops sometimes injure their workers or the environment at greater rates than would be acceptable in developed countries. Sometimes penal labor facilities (employing prisoners) are grouped under the sweatshop label.

Sweatshops have proved a difficult issue to resolve because their roots lie in the conceptual foundations of the world economy. Developing countries like India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Honduras encourage the outsourcing of work from the developed world to factories within their borders in order to provide employment for their people and profits to their employers. The shift of production to developing countries is part of the process known as globalization, but may also be described as neoliberal globalization to emphasize the role that free market economics plays in outsourcing.

Sweatshops controversy

Arguments for sweatshops

Jeffrey Sachs, an adviser to developing nations and an economist, has said, "My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few."[1] Sachs and other proponents of sweatshops cite the economic theory of comparative advantage, which states that international trade will, in the long run, make most 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 have had. Developed countries will be better off because of the decreased cost of producing various goods will drive down prices at home. Also, developed countries can specialize in the areas in which they do best.

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 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 no work at all.[2][3] This is the case since most under-developed countries have weak labor markets and little (if any) economic growth. They also often lack sufficient infrastructure, education and unemployment insurance. The absence of the work opportunities provided by sweatshops can quickly lead to malnourishment or starvation.

Wages in sweatshops are clearly below nominal wage rates in other countries. For example, in 2003, Honduran factory workers were paid $0.15 to make a Sean John-brand t-shirt that cost its U.S. bulk importer $3.65 and sells at retail for $40.00[4] Critics point out the irony that sweatshop workers don't 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. However, defenders of such practices respond that critics of sweatshops are comparing wages paid in one country to prices set in another. Although the wages paid to workers in Honduras would hardly be enough to live in the United States, it could very well be enough to live in Honduras, where prices are much lower. For example, the $0.15 that a Honduran worker might be paid to produce a designer-brand shirt, is comparable, in terms of purchasing power, to $3.00 in the United States. (For more, see the purchasing power parity article.)

Writer Johan Norberg, a proponent of market economics, points out the irony that "[Sweatshop critics are] saying: 'Look, you are too poor to trade. These countries won’t get rich without being able to export goods."[5]

Defenders of sweatshops cite a 1997 UNICEF study to show that any alternatives to such labor are far worse.[6]. The study estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 Nepalese children turned to prostitution after the US banned that country's carpet exports in the 1990s, and that 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." The UNICEF study found these alternative jobs "more hazardous and exploitative than garment production."

Anti-sweatshop movement

Some of the earliest sweatshop critics were found in the 19th century abolitionist movement that had originally coalesced in opposition to chattel slavery, and many abolitionists saw similarities between slavery and sweatshop work. As slavery was successively outlawed in industrial countries between 1794 (in France) and 1865 (in the United States), some abolitionists sought to broaden the anti-slavery consensus to include other forms of harsh labor, including sweatshops. As it happened, the first significant law to address sweatshops (the Factory Act of 1833) was passed in the United Kingdom at about the same time that slavery was outlawed there (1834), and the anti-sweatshop movement drew from much the same reservoir of supporters and social thinkers. Similarly, once the United States had ended slavery during the American Civil War, the reconstruction period saw social reformers turn their attention to the plight of the urban workforce.

Ultimately, the abolitionist movement split apart. Some advocates focused on working conditions and found common cause with trade unions and Marxists and socialist political groups, or progressive movement and the muckrakers. Others focused on the continued slave trade and involuntary servitude in the colonial world. For those groups that remained focused on slavery per se, sweatshops became one of the primary objects of controversy. Workplaces across multiple sectors of the economy were categorized as "sweatshops." However, there were fundamental philosophical disagreements about what constituted slavery. Unable to agree on the status of sweatshops, the abolitionists working with the League of Nations and the United Nations utimately backed away from efforts to define slavery, and focused instead on a common precursor of slavery — human trafficking.[7]

Those focused on working conditions included Friedrich Engels, whose book The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 would inspire the Marxist movement named for his collaborator, Karl Marx. In the United Kingdom the Factory Act was revised six further times between 1844 and 1878 to help improve the condition of workers by limiting work hours and the use of child labor. The formation of the International Labour Organization in 1919 under the League of Nations and then the United Nations sought to address the plight of workers the world over. Concern over working conditions as described by muckraker journalists during the Progressive Era in the United States saw the passage of new workers rights laws and ultimately resulted in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, passed during the New Deal.[8]

More recently, the anti-globalization movement has arisen in opposition to corporate globalization, a process by which multinational corporations move their operations overseas in order to lower their 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. The movement charges that neoliberal globalization is similar to the sweating system. They assert that outsourcing and subcontracting of manufacturing has made abuses of sweatshop workers more likely, and that the companies show the same disregard that was shown by past clothing retailers. Furthermore, they argue 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.

Anti-globalization activists and environmentalists also deplore transfer of heavy industrial manufacturing (such as chemical production) to the developing world. Although chemical factories have little in common with sweatshops in the original sense, detractors describe them as such and claim that there negative environmental and health impacts (such as pollution and birth defects, respectively) on workers and the local community.

Various groups support or embody the anti-sweatshop movement today. The National Labor Committee brought sweatshops into the mainstream media in the 1990's when it exposed the use of sweatshop and child labor to sew Kathie Lee Gifford's Wal-Mart label. United Students Against Sweatshops is active on college campuses. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit [9] 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 people in the developing world and that companies will move jobs from the United States elsewhere in order to capitalize on lower costs. For example, the American labor union UNITE HERE, which represents garment workers, has only approximately 3,000 garment workers remaining in its base, because larger garment making operations have already been transferred overseas. The only garment production facilities that remain in the US are small, disconnected workplaces.

Gender and sweatshops

Arguments that suggest that sweatshops provide skills and a boost to the economy are sometimes criticized for not taking into account the gendered nature of sweatshop employees. Because of the relatively higher value placed on male education, young women are often encouraged by their families to leave school and migrate to urban areas or Export Processing Zones (EPZ) to work in the garment industry. As outsiders in a new community, these young women lack the legal or family support they might receive in their own community and therefore, have to spend a larger amount of income on supporting themselves. Consequently, these young women who are no longer receiving an education often find it hard to earn enough money to send back to their family.[10]

The division of labour in sweatshops is gendered because the vast majority of workers are young women. The problems faced by many workers are also gendered because gender-based notions of what is acceptable inform working conditions. Thus medical or maternity leave, employer / employee relations and the right to organise can all become gender biased. Consequently, the negative aspects of sweatshops have a disproportionate impact on women. This would suggest that efforts to combat the poor working conditions in sweatshops should focus more on empowering women. Although company-led attempts to improve the working conditions in sweatshops such as the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) have had some successes, they have been accused of being ‘gender-blind’. One of the strengths of the anti-sweatshop movement is that it combines notions of a living wage and trade unions with a feminist understanding of sweatshops which makes these grassroots approaches more sustainable because they better understand the nature of the problem.[11]

Current status of sweatshops

Some companies have acceded to public pressure to reduce or end their use of sweatshops. Such firms often publicize the fact that their products are not made with sweatshop labour; a number of organizations publish lists of companies that pay their workers a living wage.

In the United States, shoemaker New Balance is notable for changing its policies after intense pressure from campus anti-sweatshop groups. Clothing retailer Gap Inc. – which includes Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Forth & Towne brands – has significantly changed its policies. Gap Inc. has developed a Code of Vendor Conduct [6] which applies across all of its brands based on internationally accepted labor standards. Walmart and Nike are two of the largest corporate sponsors of sweatshop labor, but believe that they have safeguards in place to avoid using the worst sweatshops.

The World Bank estimates that today, 1/5th of human beings live under the international poverty line.[12] This percentage is better than it has probably ever been in history. World poverty has become better due in a large part to the economic success of China and India, the two countries with the largest number of workers in sweatshops. Against this progress in the developing world, one should also note that economic inequality between the richest and poorest has never been so large.

"The income gap between the fifth of the world's people living in the richest countries and the fifth in the poorest was 74 to 1 in 1997, up from 60 to 1 in 1990 and 30 to 1 in 1960. Earlier the income gap between the top and bottom countries increased from 3 to 1 in 1820 to 7 to 1 in 1870 to 11 to 1 in 1913."[12]


Some recent political action has been taken against sweatshops by U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), who introduced a bill to ban the import and sale of sweatshop made goods in the U.S., but as of summer 2006, the bill has not received co-sponsors and is awaiting review.[7]

But whether sweatshops ultimately exacerbate inequalities or are an appropriate tool for raising in living standards remains a hotly-contested question.

See also

  • SA8000 - Social Accountability Certification Scheme for Manufacturing Industry
  • Child labor
  • Contingent work
  • Corporate abuse
  • Exploitation
  • Export processing zone
  • Fair trade
  • Free trade
  • Game sweatshop
  • Globalisation
  • International Labor Rights Fund
  • Maquiladora
  • National Labor Committee
  • Precarity
  • Slavery
  • Sweating system
  • Trafficking in human beings
  • Dependency theory
  • United Students Against Sweatshops
  • Assembly line

References
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Notes

  1. ↑ Meyerson, Allen R. "In Principle, A Case for More 'Sweatshops'", The New York Times, June 22
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ [2]
  4. ↑ Sean John's Sweatshops. Retrieved 2006-04-19.
  5. ↑ Poor Man's Hero, an interview with Johan Norberg (author of In Defense of Global Capitalism), Reason magazine, December 2003.
  6. ↑ UNICEF. The State of the World's Children 1997. Retrieved 2004-04-19.
  7. ↑ Miers, Suzanne (2003). Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. Alta Mira Press, Walnut Creek, CA. 
  8. ↑ [3]
  9. ↑ Jane Doe et all v. Wal-Mart Stores, International Labor Rights Fund. Retrieved Dec 30, 2006.
  10. ↑ Feminists against sweatshops, Feminists Against Sweatshops.
  11. ↑ Made by Women, Clean Clothes Campaign. Page retrieved 30 November 2006.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 The Institute of Governmental Studies (2001). Global Poverty: The Gap Between the World's Rich and Poor Is Growing, and the Dying Continues. Public Affairs Report 42 (2).

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