Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Race and Ethnicity in Sweatshops in the World



Ben Oliveri
9/22/2014
Blog Post 1
Professor McCormack
Sweatshops in the World
The sad and unfortunate truth about sweatshops is that not only do they still exist to this day, but they are becoming more and more prominent. That means more young children working, more families working tirelessly to not even be able to bring food home to their families, and worst off- more cases of death and suicides. As defined by dictionary.com, a sweatshop is “a shop employing workers at low wages, for long hours, and under poor conditions.” Clearly, there is not much that is positive about sweatshops. These horrible institutions somehow continue to exist, and it is scary because giant corporations like Nike and Apple are only increasing their profit margins, but despite this these poor workers continue to earn little to nothing under awful conditions.
`           To put it into perspective of how much these companies are making and how little the workers are making at the same time, I want to share a fact that I read from an article back when I took an economics course that was about sweatshops. The shop of the National Football League, where most football fans buy their equipment, charges very expensive prices for their apparel because it is considered authentic gear. This authentic gear is manufactured in sweatshops, mostly in Asia and Africa, by young children working twelve hours a day. The NFL shop is selling Nike's licensed team jackets for $139.99 each, which is equivalent to two months’ pay for a Nike sweatshop worker located in Cambodia.[i] These big name companies choose to employ laborers in countries like China, Cambodia, Indonesia, and many African countries because it is significantly cheaper to have them work for the company rather than having American employees. Where race comes into play is when you look at where a majority of these sweatshops are located- many are countries in Asia, Africa, and South America. Not coincidentally, these are countries that are stricken with poverty, so it makes sense economically for companies to employ workers from these poor nations, since a really bad job is better than no job at all and starving.
            Sweatshops and the people running them are truly disgusting and it is shocking that they are still a huge part of society. If I had to compare them to something we have discussed in class, I would say it is an extremely severe form of institutional discrimination. We defined institutional discrimination as the denial of rights or opportunities that result from the normal operations of society. These people are not only being denied the normal rights and operations of society, but they are being degraded to working ridiculously long in factories with unsafe conditions and terrible bosses who are relentless towards the workers and have absolutely no care for their personal well-being. It is also an example of stratification because it is a part of structured social inequality- and the bizarre part of it all is that it is being structured by huge corporations that are already making huge profits and could clearly afford to pay these workers more.
            In developing countries, an estimated 250 million children in between the ages of 5-14 are sweatshop laborers. Furthermore, a study showed that doubling the salary of sweatshop workers would only increase the consumer cost of an item by 1.8%, while consumers would be willing to pay 15% more to know a product did not come from a sweatshop.[ii]  For more shocking statistics on sweatshops, please visit https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-sweatshops.


[i] Iacobucci, Liz. "People's World." Race to the Bottom for Sweatshop Workers » Peoplesworld. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.
[ii] "11 Facts About Sweatshops." DoSomething.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2014.




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2 comments:

  1. Baffling to see how such large successful corporations, that dominate the public sector, such as Nike, can practice such immoral tactics. To see the difference between what it costs to make their products, and then how they sell them for the price of luxury goods is somewhat sickening.

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  2. Really interesting read.I really liked the way you covered sweatshops from the different regions in the world. I wonder what role globalization plays in the many themes you covered in your blog

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