The Problems With Sweatshops
The biggest problem raised is the lack of basic human rights for the workers of sweatshops. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists 30 rights that all humans are entitled to simple for being a human being. Sweatshops violate some of the human rights including workers rights, and the right that nobody has the right to hurt any human being. Workers rights state that workers must have the right to a fair wage, which in the case of sweatshops is not followed as workers are paid starvation wages. For example the average wage of a sweatshop worker is roughly $200 per year instead of the many thousands of dollars that a worker in a developed country would be paid. More simply, they are not paid enough to sustain themselves and their families, contributing to their lack of sustainable prosperity. The workers also often work multiple hours of overtime each week, yet they are not paid for it. When they ask for the wages they are owed, they are physically and verbally abused by their employers, violating another basic human right. The violation of these human rights comes at the benefit of the transnationals corporations who reap the rewards of the sweatshop workers being paid starvation wages. But what many people forget is that when transnational move their production of products overseas there are many employees in countries such as the United States that are fired because their job has been taken over by sweatshop workers in foreign countries. The more jobs that are moved overseas to developing countries in favour of cheap labour means more workers in the developed countries will lose their jobs. However unless there is a dramatic drop in labour costs in North America, which is very unlikely, transnational corporations will continue to use sweatshops in foreign countries for their production. As a result of this, there is not much hope of preventing a loss of jobs in the developed countries, therefore we should focus on improving the basic human rights of the workers in the sweatshops. This is the biggest problem with sweatshops and also the problem that has the greatest potential for change to be made.