Talk:Sweatshop/Archive 1

Sweatshop picture
What's up with the sweatshop picture? I was expecting to see people SWEATING and being beaten. That looks better than the some of the place I've worked. RJII 07:25, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey! I just found something. I've never added a photo before. I'm paranoid about copywright laws. -deadmissbates I like to wear flowers in my hair, i like to dance with socks and i want to kiss all the boys.

Sweatshops and Slavery
Someone's replaced the original text there with "Homo", or was the text initially there and this is just me? It looks suspicious at any rate. Thank you.

Chris.

It was just replaced again with all sorts of HTML gobbledegook. Fixed it. Ethan Mitchell 01:21, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The "are sweatshops good or bad" discussion and its POV baggage seems to be creeping up into this section. I'm cutting it back out. Ethan Mitchell 01:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Ethan, I think that the issue of sweatshops and slavery represents a decent transition from the definitional/historical part of the article to the pro/con part of the article. I think that it is fair to say that the abolitionist sentiment against sweatshops is both very old and yet recourse to "slavery" charges is too like recourse to "Hitler" comparisons (used to close discussions prematurely). As such, the Slavery issue has too much baggage to be addressed up in the History section, and yet too historical to be relegated down to the pro/con section. Whether you agree there or not, I think you have to agree that the article cannot be simply left with the strange fragment in this section, and the general linkage of sweatshops, human trafficking, and slavery has to be addressed somewhere here.KevinCuddeback 04:26, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Why is that? There is no connection between the concepts of sweatshops and slavery.  Salvor Hardin 06:54, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I disagree. It seems to me that slavery is on the far end of a continuum of worker/"employer" relationships, on which sweatshop is toward that end but not quite as far as slavery.  I am talking about sweatshops as a meaningful term, not the common usage where sweatshop is simply a pejorative the user invokes to condemn things of which he doesn't approve (for example, describing Silicon Valley employers as sweatshops because the person despises having to work 10-12 hours a day, no matter that they are working in an air-conditioned office and making a 6 figure income).  Still, slavery should remain a minor part of the article, though not so minor as Salvor Hardin just made it ;~) Ehusman 15:45, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Kevin, I think the new placement makes a good deal of sense. The point that I think is worth capturing (and I think it is watered down a bit here) is that sweatshops played an important role in the abolition movement's ultimate inability to come up with a working definition of slavery.  They were one of several "limit cases" for labor exploitation, and arguably the most important one.

Salvor- I am aware of and am fairly sympathetic to the argument that sweatshops can be a positive force. There are also arguments that slavery can be a positive force. But those are all POVs. The fact is that the definitional boundary between slavery and certain kinds of 'voluntary' labor is in dispute, and always has been in dispute, and the article needs to reflect that. Ethan Mitchell 01:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Folks, my personal POV is that sweatshops are a force for good when and if freely chosen, but I also believe that there are plenty of "employers" who are essentially using impressment and debt bondage to staff their sweatshops, and the free marketeer in me recoils from both the pro movement when it overlooks the (limited) cases of involuntary servitude, and the anti movement when they end up driving kids to prostitution and rock-crushing. It really had me wishing there was an entry on Free to Choose (the book), and not just Free Will. With that, I've just completed another stab at keeping all the slavery history (right down to informed consent) without having it in a separate section where it always seem to scream "Sweatshops are Slavery" no matter how it was written. It seems to me that it belongs as an underbelly caveat as the History section ends. I also worked it back in in the Anti-movement part.  I also really like the way that Ehusman put it above. The anti-sweatshop movement has a rich and varied history that, I think, really helps explain what sweatshops are, what perceptions are, and why the whole subject is "important." KevinCuddeback 04:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd say there are two types of people in the world: those who see the difference between an employee and a slave as an qualitative difference, and those who see it as purely quantitative. I'm afraid I'm not sure what the best way to express this in the article is. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 06:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello there I love you good points!!

--

Greetings all. One glaring error on this page is in the following sentences:

"Defenders would cite purchasing power parity studies in defense of sweatshop wage levels. 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."

This flatly not true. Using the purchasing power parity method, the $0.15 U.S. that a Honduran worker makes to produce the shirt would be equivalent in purchasing power terms to about $0.45 cents in the U.S., not anywhere near $3.00.

Clean Up
This article needs to be cleaned up. It's been edited several times (I've added some needed material on the history of the prospect) but it still needs to have a better flow and more clarity.


 * True that. However, I don't see much chance of this article ever becoming NPOV. After all, the title itself is a pejorative, which gives the game away. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 04:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

What would you prefer to call it? The name "sweat shop" would only be a pejorative if it weren't an accurate description. Same goes for "puppy mill," or "slaver." Exploding Boy 04:42, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The article currently defines a sweatshop as "a factory in which people often work for a very small wage or doing piece work." I would call that either a "low-wage factory" or a "piece work factory". However, in the former case, it's still not a very good title, because we aren't given any context in which the wage is considered very small. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 04:47, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

So it's a content problem, not a naming problem. It could be fixed by finding a better definition of "sweatshop" and rewriting the article accordingly. Exploding Boy 04:51, 1 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, if the definition is wrong, that's the first thing that should be fixed. - Nat Krause(Talk!) 05:07, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Sweatshop was coined as a pejorative to describe the piecework factories of the pejoratively-named sweating system. I'll try to rework the opening. However, as of this date, this article seems entirely captive to the current campaigns against the garment sourcing practices of famous US brands, rather than an NPOV examination of the causes, history, and effects of sweatshops. I've fixed one specific ahistorical reference (to the Industrial Revolution, instead of the Second Industrial Revolution). Any cleanup should adress the ahistorical tone of the whole article. Please see the article on piece work for a historical treatment that maintains an NPOV (if I do say so myself). KevinCuddeback 15:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I have undertaken a major reorganization and NPOV attempt. Please discuss here or have at it with your own edits. KevinCuddeback 18:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the article is now approaching Wikipedia standards. If someone seconds that, I'd encourage them to remove the cleanup block.KevinCuddeback 13:31, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Kmart
could someone please edit the section or add a *clear* foot note to the section that says kmart supports Sweetshops? Because there are other stores by the same name in other countries, eg Kmart in Australia is a owned by Coles Group lmt. Which obvioly have differnt policies to the US. If no one has commented on this by the time i view this page again (could be a few weeks) I'll just plain remove it, citing this explanation. m'kay? Oxinabox1 10:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

the sweatshopwatch.org link in the external links section
when i clicked on this link, a virus (downloader) was caught by norton antivirus protection

furthermore, if you google this site you will see that the google search engine identifies it as a website that can be harmful to your computer

i suggest this link -- sweatshopwatch.org -- be removed immediately so as to prevent the further spread of this malware!

thanks Farichard 02:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Bias
link1 link2 ink3 link4 lik5 link6 link7 AND LINK IS THE BEST DOG IN THE WORLD!!!!!! While I agree that overseas labor in developing countries can be good in some instances (for the reasons you've described), and anti-sweatshop protesters have sometimes misunderstood the issue, to so dramatically downplay the human rights abuses that go on there seems absurd. Also, you wrote: "On three documented occasions, well meaning but ignorant anti-sweatshop activists have unintentionally caused increases in childhood prostitution." This is quite a leap in ethics and logic! You're placing the blame for the sweatshops closing squarely on the shoulders of the protesters--whose goal was not to have the plants closed down, but to have the workers treated decently. The companies refused. If you are going to call anti-sweatshop protesters "ignorant", why not call the factory owners "greedy"?

The paragraph on debt bondage and human trafficking is necessary and informative, but again, I notice that this paragraph is buried. Overall, I would like to see the bias taken out of this article; if there is going to be an "Arguments for Sweatshops" section, to be fair, there has to be a corresponding section titled "Arguments Against Sweatshops". Otherwise, this reads like a PR piece from Disney that is making only the most essential concessions on the "sweatshop" issue. Angry seraph 13:48, 12 October 2007 (UTC)Michael HI!!!


 * There are two sections, one in favor of sweatshops, and one against sweatshops. However, the section in favor sweatshops presents factual evidence that sweatshops make the workers better off, while the section against sweatshops is about the feelings and emotions of people who live thousands of miles away from the sweatshops. I found dozens of sources that compared the wages of sweatshop workers to the wages that they were paid at their previous jobs, and in every single case, the sources showed that the sweatshops paid higher wages. That's why the article is the way it is. The article reports verifiable facts. That's how wikipedia works. Grundle2600 (talk) 02:38, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I think this page is a little partisan, too. Just look at the amount of supporting facts in the pro part and the con part. Anyone who reads this article would convert themselves into pro-sweatshop-ism.Rttrt (talk) 00:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I am the person who added most of the supporting facts to the pro-sweatshop section. I did a huge amount of research on this subject, and I found many dozens of sources. Every single source that I found, which compared the pay of the sweatshop workers to the pay that they had received at their previous jobs, showed that the sweatshops paid higher wages. I could not find even one source that showed the sweatshops paid lower wages. Given that I found dozens of sources, and they all said the same thing, I am inclined to believe those sources. Grundle2600 (talk) 02:08, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * After all this time, no one has been able to find any sources that prove that sweatshops make people worse off, compared to their previous jobs. The article is supposed to reflect the evidence and the sources. It is not my fault that all the evidence and sources prove that sweatshops make people better off, compared to their previous jobs. Apparenlty, you want me to find evidence and sources that do not exist. I can't do that. Wikipedia does not allow imaginary sources. Grundle2600 (talk) 12:42, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

No, it's because no one other than you has cared enough to edit this article since The 15th of February. It's such a contentious issue it's difficult to find articles that aren't vehemently for or against sweatshops.--BLaafg (talk) 08:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

POV?
How was my edit POV? It was mostly just a rearrangement of what was already there plus the addition of them being in developing countries, which, as far as I know, is true. Ben davison 16:32, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The original version gave purely factual information in the first sentence, and then added that it carries negative connotations in the second. Your edit simply stated those connotations as a clear-cut fact.  Subtle, but POV. I've reviewed your changes and re-implimented some of the good ones, like the wikification of certain words. --Icarus 04:58, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

'Subtle'? So subtle that even I didn't notice! Just to confirm, I am not in the business of POVing articles on purpose. Hey ho, back to work...Ben davison 22:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I figured it was probably unintentional. POV-pushers are usually anything but subtle! --Icarus 06:14, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

The POV seems to be that these terrible industries are "out there" or there may be one in your neighborhood, and they must be erradicated. There's other points of view on the issue. Like, for example, some poor countries have started factories and compete with very rich people in the U.S., and the very rich people say "those are sweatshops!" -- but really, they just want to get rid of the competition. There must be some way to tell the balanced story... I'll have to give this some pondering. SecretaryNotSure 22:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I have deleted the reference to Bangladesh. I looked at the article and it said nothing about sweatshop labor. This article seems pretty biased in favor of sweatshop labor in general. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neerurocks (talk • contribs) 21:23, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Added POV tag
Half-way through the article I started questioning the apparent slant, especially when sardonically referring to "sweatshops", including quotations as if such a thing does not exist.

(Mealkman (talk) 13:48, 22 February 2009 (UTC))

cant we all just get along
I have noticed some massive edits in the history log here... and most of them do not even state the reason for the edit. I feel kind, of, you know, sad, and depressed, about this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Decora (talk • contribs) 05:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I completely agree. This article reeks of bias. I'm not purporting for sweatshops one way or the other, I was just puzzled there was no mention of the controversies surrounding sweatshops. Any 'con' arguments were quickly countered by a 'pro' that proved that the con was actually ineffectual. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.189.85.102 (talk) 05:43, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

What History?
SecretaryNotSure wrote:
 * ===history===
 * The history section is pretty long and detailed but doesn't tell us the important things. Like, when did people start using the term, and why?  :SecretaryNotSure 22:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

but there's no history of any kind here -- It's all contemporary. Surely this article vitally needs a history section? Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 18:22, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I have gone back and found the history section SecretaryNotSure was referring to. It looks pretty good, although it could use better referencing. I don't know why it was ever removed, and if there was any explanation on this page I missed it. So I have reposted it into this article. I strongly recommend keeping a history section.Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 18:35, 29 March 2009 (UTC) [Insert non-formatted text here]Link title but the cow was able to get rites.


 * One reason the history section was so long is because other sections were combined into it. I restored that info into their respective separate sections. Grundle2600 (talk) 19:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Trying to improve the anti-sweatshop section
I added a tag that says it needs more sources.

Also, this section doesn't have any sourced examples of sweatshops making workers worse off, compared to their previous jobs. Instead, the entire section is about the feelings and emotions of the people who oppose sweatshops. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be about facts, not about feelings and emotions. Where is the evidence that sweatshops pay workers less, instead of more, than what the workers made at their previous jobs? Where is the evidence that adopting sweatshops made any country poorer, instead of richer? The article doesn't have any. Grundle2600 (talk) 23:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I noticed that the section is very cohesive, and jumps back and forth between talking about legal sweatshops in other countries, to illegal underground sweatshops (and does so deceptively). I think we should make two section, arguments for and arguments against sweatshops. Austin512 (talk) 23:02, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. The article did previously have separate sections for that, but someone has since moved all that info into the history section, which caused that section to dominate the article. I have just restored the separate sections. Grundle2600 (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to all who added citations. I have just removed the citation tag. Grundle2600 (talk) 19:37, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Rewrite from the Source, not an Opinion Page from Fox News.com
The Radley Balko opinion page was the source for this: " In additionieatbabies", sometimes when anti-sweatshop activists were successful in getting sweatshops to close, some of the employees who had been working in the sweatshops ended up starving to death, while others ended up turning to prostitution. [3]" Radley writes: "One German company buckled under pressure from activists, and laid off 50,000 child garment workers in Bangladesh. The British charity group Oxfam later conducted a study on those 50,000 workers, and found that thousands of them later turned to prostitution, crime, or starved to death." We should have Oxfam's account as the source. And considering that Oxfam's views on sweatshops are actually these:

"Fewer than half of the women employed in Bangladesh’s textile and garment export sector have a contract, and the vast majority get no maternity or health coverage – but 80 per cent fear dismissal if they complain. " http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/papers/downloads/trading_rights_summary.pdf

...one should insist on get the sourced information. This 'report' from Oxfam has been picked up by the Hoover Institute and pro-sweatshop blogs, but the report itself... I haven't found it anyway. And who is the "one German garment maker"?

The other links provided within the opinion piece (like the UNICEF 1997 Report) don't lead to anything with validates the claims. Radley's piece reads: "UNICEF reports that an international boycott of Nepal’s child-labor supported carpet industry in the 1990s forced thousands child laborers out of work. A large percentage of those child laborers were later found working in Nepal’s bustling sex trade."

He is willfully obscuring the summary of the report.

This is what you can find in the report titled "THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN": "Nepalese carpet factories, where 50 per cent of the workers are estimated to be children,are common sites of sexual exploitation by em- ployers as well as recruitment centres for Indian brothels."

Remove the Fox News.com opinion link and provide uncorrupted sources that promote sweatshops, not Oxfam and UNICEF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shamharush (talk • contribs) 10:12, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Etymology
take a look at this: http://www.sweatshop.co.uk/ does this store have anything to do with the etymology of the term? or was the founder an oblivious idiot?

history
The history section is pretty long and detailed but doesn't tell us the important things. Like, when did people start using the term, and why? SecretaryNotSure 22:18, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

The whole meaning of the term can be found by dissecting the word "sweatshop" into sweat(perspiration) and shop: .There is a clear intention that the term sweatshop might have been coined by the same people who work in this pretty crowded and exhausting places found close to main shop where the items produced are sold. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.2.117.223 (talk) 19:31, 21 November 2009 (UTC) ---

I am a new user here, and I thought I could help out a little, I've written the initial entry about sweatshops. This has almost immediately been seriously improved by other volunteers :)

roan 12:59 Oct 10, 2002 (UTC)


 * We all have our talents. Those who cannot contribute original material often spellcheck, punctuate, copy-edit, link and so on. Cheers! --Ed Poor

Question: the text now contains "pay their workers a living wage. ". Shouldn't this be "a decent living wage", or is my English not good enough? roan

Oops: living wage, n. : A wage sufficient to provide minimally satisfactory living conditions. Also called minimum wage. roan

Pro sweatshop bias
The second paragraph is considerably biased, taking the sting out of unhealthful conditions, and breaking minimum wage and child labor laws.

The problem is that laws against sweatshops have an element of protecting people against exploitation, protecting them against their own poorly informed decisions. The idea that in the short term everybody would like to have enough money for food ignores that sweatshop workers, in the long term, may be driving themselves and their family into difficult situations — when they are older, when their health has failed.

Subsequently, the article drifts into many interesting side issues, pro and con. But it shouldn't start with an extended one-sided paragraph that in essence maintains, "It's ok to violate the law when it makes economic sense." I've trimmed this para:


 * "Meanwhile, defenders of sweatshops, such as Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof , and Johan Norberg , claim that people choose to work in sweatshops because the sweatshops offer higher wages and better working conditions compared to their previous jobs of manual farm labor, and that sweatshops are an early step in the process of technological and economic development whereby a poor country turns itself into a rich country. Economists are focused on "trade offs" and when it comes to sweatshops, they ask whether the alternative of unemployment or even worse employment is better. Sometimes when anti-sweatshop activists close sweatshops, employees suffer dramatically. "

Piano non troppo (talk) 05:09, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Low pay?

 * Sweatshop (sweat factory) is a working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous...Sweatshop workers often work long hours for unusually low pay

This makes no sense, assuming people choose their jobs. If the conditions are worse than their other opportunities then people wouldn't take the jobs unless it were higher paying than their other opportunities (unless there's some other perk such as better future opportunities). Poor conditions is a necessary part of the definition, and it pretty much precludes 'unusually low pay'. Unusual for first-worlders, sure, but it must be exceptionally high for the workers in question. -- General Wesc (talk) 23:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Wal-mart
This article says that Wal-Mart is a major retailer of sweatshop products (at least, that what it implies). I saw a Radio Canada documentary which seemed to claim that Wal-Mart has a policy which precludes the sale of sweatshop products. Can anyone verify this? Srnec 22:47, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Penn & Teller: Defending Sweatshopshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjsshqyAFh8&NR=1&feature=fvwp —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.10.63.226 (talk) 19:15, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Here is an article about Wal Mart sweatshops in China. It says, "Between 1990 and 2002 more than 174 million people escaped poverty in China, about 1.2 million per month. With an estimated $23 billion in Chinese exports in 2005 (out of a total of $713 billion in manufacturing exports), Wal-Mart might well be single-handedly responsible for bringing about 38,000 people out of poverty in China each month, about 460,000 per year." Grundle2600 (talk) 12:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism
someone vandalized this page, i am trying to revert it Hrneo0 (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I think sweating system and sweatshop cover the same ground. Since Wikipedia articles are about things, not words, having two separate articles is a form of content forkery. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 18:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * don't agree. b- 노동착취는 기업의 죄악인데, 사회 제도나 분위기나 상황 탓으로 돌리는 데 시스템이라는 말을 쓸 수 있기 때문이다. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.144.228.222 (talk) 13:02, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Can you use English? Google Translate isn't giving me a good translation. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:54, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * merge I found an article on the "sweating system" in the 1905 New International Encyclopedia, and it includes "sweat shop" as a synonymous term. The term "sweating system" seems to have died out, but should be mentioned. The NIE information is now included in the sweating system article, and both it and the Nuttall article are available in Wikisource. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  18:08, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Definitions first
Having been through this debate before, and now having married someone who has seen real actual sweatshops, I think that the very first thing needed is a frank discussion about the definition. There are several activist organizations, NGOs, and government agencies that have proposed a number of definitions. Some of these, like the GAO definition used for the 1994 report, are so ridiculously wide open that nearly every place of employment would meet the criteria (though, as usual, they seem to have concentrated their "search" in the garment industry). In fact, I would bet that given some time and unfettered access to the GAO offices, I could show that they are a sweatshop by their own definition. Therefore, I think that the History section should be followed by a Definition section, facing up to all of the controversy surrounding terms like "living wage", though that can be partially shunted to the appropriate page.

There are real sweatshops, but they aren't simply "hot places where people are expected to work hard." Those real sweatshops should be documented in a section devoted to that. It should be followed by a coherent section on international views, where the things that OECD inhabitants consider insufferable should not necessarily be condemned as sweatshops. I see that the article, at present, quotes a man ("This financial crisis in America ...") and says that he works in a sweatshop, but the article does not use that terminology, belying the editor's own views. The "pro-sweatshop" views could be used in this section. However, there is another dimension to this idea that working in a sweatshop is better than subsistence farming or prostitution (as if those were the only choices): it is frequently the case that other options have been taken off the table by outside forces. That is, the Washington Consensus forces foreign governments into policies that make sustainable lifestyles (literally, lifestyles that have worked for millennia) impossible, leaving them with no other option. For example, France at one point imposed taxes on Algerians, and then forbade them from paying those taxes with anything but cash, driving them from their traditional nomadic herding lifestyle into wage employment with imprisonment as the only other option. Given those circumstances, of course a sweatshop would look marginally better. So my suggestion is to rewrite as: lede, history, definitions, evidence of existence in OECD countries, developing countries-pro, developing countries-con. Ehusman (talk) 04:09, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Literature to consider for further information
Collins, J.L. (2002). Mapping a Global Labor Market: Gender and Skill in the Globalizing Garment Industry. Gender and Society, 16(2), 921-940.

Guo, L., Hsu, S., Holton, A., & Jeong, S. (2012). A Case Study of the Foxconn Suicides: An International Perspective to Framing the Sweatshop Issue. International Communication Gazette, 74 (5), 484-503.

Greenberg, J., & Knight. G. (2004). Framing Sweatshops: Nike, Global Production, and the American News Media. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 1(2), 151-175. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Laurenleaf (talk • contribs) 18:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Ross, R.J.S. Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops. University of Michigan Press, 2004.

Laurenleaf (talk) 19:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)laurenleaf


 * Also,
 * Brown, Drusilla K., Deardorff, Alan V., and Stern, Robert M. The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries. NBER Working Paper 9669, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2003
 * Harrison, Ann, and Jason Scorse. Moving Up or Moving Out? Anti-Sweatshop Activists and. Labor Market Outcomes. NBER Working paper No. 10492, 2005
 * Rothstein, Richard. "Defending Sweatshops: Too Much Logic, Too Little Evidence", http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/defending-sweatshops, 2005
 * Powell, Benjamin and Skarbek, David. Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat?. Independent Institute Working Paper Number 53, September 27, 2004
 * Hellmer, Ellennita Muetze. "Establishing Government Accountability in the Anti-Sweatshop Campaign: Toward a Logical, Activist Approach to Improving the Working Conditions of the Poor", http://mises.org/journals/jls/19_3/19_3_2.pdf, Journal of Libertarian Studies Volume 19, NO. 3 (Summer 2005): 33–47 contains surprising anti-pro-sweatshop arguments
 * Ehusman (talk) 17:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Edits for Clarity in History Section
Sweatshops conditions resemble prison labor in many cases, especially from a common found Western perspective. Sweatshops in question carry characteristics such as compulsory pregnancy tests for female laborers and terrorization from supervisors into submission. [3] Workers then go into a state of forced labor, if even one day of work is not accounted for, most are immediately fired.[4] These working conditions have been the source of suicidal unrest within factories in the past. Chinese sweatshops known to have increased numbers of suicidal employees have suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop over-worked and stressed employees leaping to their deaths.[5]

The Foxconn Suicides correlate sweatshop environments to prison labor. Workers feel so over-worked and stressed that there employers place these nets on site to deter their employees from jumping out the windows of the building. The conceptual foundations of the world economy is the next point the article goes on to make. This point then needed some clarity relating to latter points in the article dealing with arguments for sweatshop labor. It opens the other side of the debate as the perspective of the world economy is pertinent to the subject of the current Global Sweatshop condition.

Outsourced work can at times bring some form of wealth to impoverished countries where people struggle to provide for their families, regardless of Western labor concerns, low wages are preferred to none at all in these areas. [6]

Going to try to look for more gaps of information in this article to connect them especially to points that represent the conditions of most sweatshop laborers. Sweatshops simply would not run without the laborers. Management and the force behind the sweatshop industry is only one part of the business that is to be considered. Laborers are simply the most important concern throughout Sweatshop literature.

Laurenleaf (talk) 06:30, 3 April 2013 (UTC)Laurenleaf

Laurenleaf I feel you did a good job explaining the basics of sweatshops. I feel you did a good job on your starter draft. Some minor suggestions include maybe getting a statistic of the suicide rates in the Chinese Sweatshops. This may add intensity to the article and make it known to the readers the severity of the issue. Also, I think you are going in a good direction in regards to closing the gap between the laborers and how the sweatshops are still running. It would be a great connect to see how large of an impact that laborers play in part of the equation for sweatshops. Lynsbrow (talk) 23:17, 20 April 2013 (UTC)Lynsbrow

Reference 5 is a dead link
Source 5 about the nets built around Chinese sweatshops to catch potential suicides no longer links to an article. Someone should track it down and re-source this — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.159.160.251 (talk) 17:34, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Sweatshop. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090521091602/http://web.mit.edu:80/utr/www/consensus.doc to http://web.mit.edu/utr/www/consensus.doc

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shorter sections
I wish the sections were shorted, I felt there was a lot of unnecessary details. If the information was more straight to the point it would be easier to read and understand. I suggest taking a look at the article http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/10/14/sweatshop-child-labor-bangladesh/. It's very informative and gives an interesting look into what it's really like to work in a sweatshop. Also, what are there other companies that are sweatshop-free in America? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:E000:5B10:5000:6C3B:976B:EFB6:1988 (talk) 23:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Child labour
Since when was "sweatshop" defined in its relation to child labour rather than labour in general? LeapUK (talk) 07:58, 30 June 2016 (UTC)


 * I looked in the editing history, it seems as though the introduction was changed to the excessively narrow child labour definition on May 31 by 84.215.169.187 I've reverted it to the previous version. LobsterCan (talk) 16:53, 7 July 2016 (UTC)

Lack of democracy in communist nations
That's certainly not the reason for poor working conditions. The sentences then goes on contradicting itself by mentioning worker intimidation and murder in Latin America. They obviously have democracy. --94.217.99.33 (talk) 23:13, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Change to introduction
If someone has time to read the reports I cited and add additional info, that would be excellent.

The introduction states:

"According to the Fair Labor Association, at least 18 countries are operating sweatshops, including Bangladesh, Costa Rica, El Salvador, China, the Dominican Republic, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Armenia, Brazil, Haiti, Taiwan, the Ivory Coast, Nicaragua, Mexico, the United States and its territories."

This is uncited. It is apparently also incorrect. The 2006 FLA report says:

"Last year, FLA independent monitors conducted 140 unannounced inspections at 99 factories in 18 countries."

Firstly, this report does not say that sweatshops are operating in 18 countries. The report says that factories which wanted to comply with FLA rules were located in 18 countries.

Secondly, the list countries is incorrect, at least for the 2006 report. Maybe a different year was used? It's uncited whichever year it was.

Thirdly, the statement is missing a citation for both the countries with sweatshops and the list of countries mentioned.

Finally, the US D.O.L. report makes mention of 18 countries which needed more labor inspectors.

So, I've corrected the last line of the introduction to say:

"In 2005, the Fair Labor Association's '2006 Annual Public Report' inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, and the U.S."

I also added an additional line mostly quoted from the US DOL report:

"In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor '2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor' found that '18 countries did not meet the [International Labor Organization's] recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors.'" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.0.181 (talk) 09:32, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 5 external links on Sweatshop. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20061214024856/http://www.laborrights.org/projects/corporate/walmart/WalMartComplaint091305.pdf to http://laborrights.org/projects/corporate/walmart/WalMartComplaint091305.pdf
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111016215708/http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/stop/ to http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/stop/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110927160240/http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1396/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=02_East_Asia_investment.htm to http://www.treasury.gov.au/documents/1396/HTML/docshell.asp?URL=02_East_Asia_investment.htm
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20120904100237/http://www.nlcnet.org/campaigns/archive/chinareport/costoflivingdoc.shtml to http://www.nlcnet.org/campaigns/archive/chinareport/costoflivingdoc.shtml
 * Added archive https://archive.is/20120722173911/http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/46878 to http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/46878

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Globalization
This section is not encyclopedic, not neutral, and lacking citation. Benjamin (talk) 11:13, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

pro-sweatshop movement

 * i like that this part is on the article. maybe it could move to be included with the criticism section, because really the explanation of this movement uses the market criticsism. maybe we could split this page into two sections, a pro-sweatshop and an anti-sweatshop. or something.
 * i think it's great to include arguments against essentially good things like sweatshops, as well. Perhaps you should expand the anti-sweatshop section in light of this fact. It's also clear that wikipedia should simply stop including political discussions as entries until it can allow protected access for individual writers. Hackneyed multi-person perspectives create (surprise) poorly represented political debates. STOP using wikipedia as a source!

(__) (__) \   /   \=/   /|\  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Addi Lubman (talk • contribs) 01:38, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Edit as part of a Wikipedia Course
I have rephrased the following parts and added citations Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers, some employers force them to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.

''Sometimes penal labor facilities (employing prisoners) are grouped under the sweatshop label.[citation needed] ''

I rephrased some words for a what I believe is a better flow and added an example and a citation regards to the suicide nets to make the information verifiable.

''Workers then go into a state of forced labor, if even one day of work is not accounted for, most are immediately fired. These working conditions have been the source of suicidal unrest within factories in the past. Chinese sweatshops known to have increased numbers of suicidal employees have suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop over-worked and stressed employees leaping to their deaths.[citation needed]''

I have linked Boohoo and the Leicester factories to other wikipedia articles and external sources in this paragraph and deleted the second sentence since it was written as an opinion rather than a fact. Recently, Boohoo came under light since auditors uncovered large chain of factories in Leicester producing clothes for Boohoo were only paying their workers between £3-4.[10] There was also criticism of Boohoo's response to the allegations with them highlighting they were going to do unannounced audits of factories, although it appeared the audits carried out by Boohoo were unprofessional.[11] The conditions of the factories were described as terrible and workers received 'illegally low pay'[12]

I inserted a picture for this paragraph. ''World-famous fashion brands such as H&M, Nike, Adidas and Uniqlo have all been criticized for their use of sweatshops. In 2015, anti-sweatshops protesters marched against the Japanese fast-fashion brand Uniqlo in Hong Kong. Along with the Japanese anti-sweatshops organisation Human Rights Now!, the Hong Kong labour organisation SACOM (Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour) protested the "harsh and dangerous" working conditions in Uniqlo's value-added factories in China.''

I am very grateful for the opportunity to edit this article. Please feel free to give feedbacks on my editing. Ivy Mon (talk) 05:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)