Title: Boycotting Sweatshops Name: Guangzhen Lyu Student Number: 300772748 Professor’s Name: Catherine Boote Date of submission: Nov 28, 2014

Boycotting Sweatshops!

The sweatshop is like a juicer exploiting cheap labor. At present, going with the development of economy, cost of manufacture is increasing rapidly; many companies are building factories in developing countries. Because it can help them to reduce the production costs. Unfortunately, some factories are sweatshops. And what is sweatshop labour like?
Sweatshop laborers generally work 60-80 hours per week and are not paid enough money to put food on the table; they sometimes receive only pennies a day for their labor. Often, the sweatshop environment is unsafe – workers are harassed, intimidated, forced to work overtime, and made to work in dangerous and unhealthy environments, even while sick. Workers handle toxic chemical paints, solvents, and glues with their bare hands. (Michael Conlan, 2010)
And the workers of sweatshops are working in terrible working environment, enduring the huge working pressure, and losing legal rights. One of the reasons why do we against sweatshops is they usually with the uncomfortable and unsafe environment. Firstly, sweatshops can not provide complete basic facilities. Sweatshops are places that do not put people’s health in first place, for the owners all they care about is the money that they are profiting from. Secondly, sweatshops do not have effective emergency system. Since sweatshops don’t care much about the health of people that work there, their emergency systems are not effective or life-saving if they have any emergency situations. In addition, sweatshops can also be extremely dangerous for their employees. The conditions the workers work in are extremely bad in terms of safety and legally, if these shops standards were to be compared with Canadian safety standards, they would not even get close. Terrifyingly, this means putting the lives of thousands of workers at risk. Working in sweatshops is very stressful. “These workers are denied their basic working rights and work ridiculously long hours for less pay than you’d get for a night of babysitting the neighbor’s kids.” (Life & Style, 2012). This is an ironic comparison, but it is true. There is a gap between sweatshops workers’ wages and developed countries’. The sole purpose of sweatshop is to be like a juicer, squeezing everything out of a worker with minimum input. In general, the workers just do same work with no technology content repeatedly. Sweatshop workers are required to perform tedious tasks throughout their career which is physically demanding and may cause bodily harm in the future，such as arthritis, lumbar spondylitis. What is more, the workers are under threat of unnatural death. As sweatshops workers tend to work long hours that are extremely laborious, and not mentally stimulating, it causes the mind and physical abilities to deteriorate. In “Naked Economics’, the author claims “sweatshops provide easy-to-perform jobs to the millions of people in many impoverished countries. They can help poor countries move out of poverty”(Charles Wheelan, April 19, 2010). In my mind, sweatshops move the countries and people into poverty completely, because they destroyed the workers’ health, in other words, sweatshop is a sign of poverty. So, sweatshop wages need to be increased as the jobs is intensely straining. Workers can not gain the human rights they are supposed to have. Sweatshops employers do not care for the people who work in them. Sweatshops tend to offer a lower pay for the amount of labor that workers face. In fact, “sweatshops employers could afford to pay their workers more, but they do not because it benefits them to pay as little as possible. (Rubi Garyfalakis. 2015). The pursuit of maximum profit is their target. Unfairly, the workers can not enjoy ordinary public welfare. Workers do not even get welfare even if they are laid off because their job is labor intensive so even the government can’t support them. In fact, sweatshops do not purchase insurance for workers. In case of accidents, workers need to rely on their own resources to pay for the medical bills; workers who cannot afford medical assistance would stay home and just rest or go back to work the next day because they get paid so little with no job security. The worst thing is children are employed in sweatshops. It almost stands for their lifetime would be impacted or even destroyed. All in all, sweatshops are only an advantage to the owners who make a profit; workers even can not get the due rights. In conclusion, sweatshops should provide just and favorable working conditions, including a limited number of hours a human should have to work each day, higher wages, and normal human rights. With these elements, sweatshop workers’ life would be better, and sweatshops will become sweetshops.

References
Garyfalakis, R. (2015). No sweat? In S. Norton, B. Green & R. Dynes (Eds.) Essay essentials with readings. (pp. 301-304). Toronto: Nelson Education.
Mayer, Robert. “Sweatshops, Exploitation, and Moral Responsibility.” Journal of Social Philosophy 38.4 (Winter): 605- 19. Print.
Wheelan, C. (2010, April 19). Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science. New York: W.W.Norton & Company.
Michael, C. (2010). Background of Sweatshops. Retrieved Nov. 27, 2014, from https://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/background-sweatshops#
Sweatshops: Are There Pros And Cons? (2012). Retrieved Nov. 27, 2014, from
http://www.anfocal.ie/lifestyle/6800/sweatshops-are-there-pros-and-cons