Sweatshops
Uploaded by Tiggrr1323 on Dec 17, 2000
Many companies and schools in the United States buy their products from factories that have their workers working in horrible conditions. "That is employing over 50,000 workers to work in these conditions" (Jensen, Davidson 279). They have the workers work from 5 A.M. until nighttime inhaling dangerous chemicals and working in temperatures that get as high as 130 degrees. These high temperatures cause heat stress, burns, and injuries to workers. Many of the factories that the United States buys from are in another countries. In these countries they have horrible working conditions. Working in these places called sweatshops should be banned. Sweatshops are "a shop or factory in which employees work long hours at low wages under poor conditions"("sweatshops").
These factories cause problems for their workers later in the worker's life. Occasionally these problems lead to death. Many workers do not get to see a doctor when they are ill. Workers choose to go work to make money rather than see a doctor. Most do not receive regular vaccinations that help their body fight against "smallpox, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, and diphtheria" (Holland 61). "A sweatshop factory brings visions of dangerous, filthy, and cramped conditions"(Wolcott). Many of these sweatshops do not pay their workers the right amount. "In Bangladesh and Myanmar, they pay ten to eighteen cents; in China, Pakistan, Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia they pay twenty to sixty-eight cents per hour" (Mandle 93). Why do owners pay their workers so little? The wages they give these workers should be different.
Many of these factories hire children who are ineligible to work in these places. About 250 million children between the ages five and fourteen work in sweatshops. Half of these children are working full time and one third of them are working in extremely dangerous conditions. These children do not belong working in such dangerous conditions. "Many of these children begin working before the age of seven, tending to machines in the spinning mills and hauling heavy loads" (Fried 231). To an employer "the purpose of employing a child is not to train them, but to make their profits higher from the child's work" (Freedman 21). The employers do not realize the dangers of child labor. Child labor is "the abuse and misuse of young children at work"(Greene 9). Child labor is exploiting children by giving them low wages or no wage at all, allowing them to work...