Sweatshops and Free Trade
Published by Yazad Jal November 4th, 2003 in EconomicsHollywood actress Minnie Driver is taking a break from films to work in a sweatshop in Cambodia.
[She is] planning to spend “weeks, perhaps months” toiling alongside factory workers to highlight the issue of free trade. “I hope to make a documentary or at least write a book,” explained Driver. “I will be working alongside other young women for as long as it takes for me to raise awareness of the free trade issue … I hope that doing this will help raise standards, pay and conditions of employment in developing countries.”
If Ms. Driver is serious, she should also spend a few months unemployed in Cambodia (or Honduras or Bangladesh or India). Without her millions, of course. I wonder if she’ll be willing to live on the streets–hungry and poor. Because that is what the alternatives to sweatshops are to many people in “developing countries.” Ms. Driver went to finishing school in France. Perhaps the essay What is Seen and What is Not Seen by French economist Frédéric Bastiat will be apt.
Rapper Sean “P. Diddy” Combs found himself at the wrong end of the sweatshop debate over allegations on ill-treatment to Honduran workers making Combs designer clothing line. Turns out the Hondurans were working in an air-conditioned sweatshop. Here’s the full article. Scroll down to lean more about the dirty tactics of anti free trade campaigners.
Update: A response to this on Smorgasbord. The gist is that corporate social responsibility actually increases shareholder value as S shows in the Nike case.
Hi,
Interesting topic. We did a couple of detailed cases on outsourcing [Nike, Shell] in our Ethics class. I’ll write in detail about those cases in my blog shortly. :-)It is not an open and shut case as I had originally thought and your post makes it out to be. :-)
Obviously neither you nor I know if the allegations are true but as the issue is not whether or not the ’sweatshop’ is airconditioned or not (a very literal definition you have to agree) but the following:
- employees were ordered not to talk during work hours
- needed passes to go to the bathroom and were generally limited to two bathroom visits a day.
- Managers called workers on the loudspeakers if they were in the bathroom more than a few minutes
- Managers often ordered female workers to take pregnancy tests, she said, and if they were pregnant, they were immediately fired to help the company save on medical expenses and maternity leave.
You have conveniently chosen to ignore these allegations (I stress these are only allegations nobody knows if they are true or net yet) and have instead chosen to pick up on the fact that there is airconditioning hence it cannot be a sweatshop.
Quizman,
I agree it’s a complex issue. I feel that fraud should be punished. But to be anti free trade just because there are diffrential wages / working conditions is what I protest against.
Ck,
Read the whole piece at Opinion Journal. Soemtimes loads of allegations are thrown in the hope that some mud sticks. The airconditioning point was an indicator, not a definition.
Good one that. It is true actually that such ’sweatshops’ in third world countries pay no heed to human rights and the like. ..that is what the alternatives to sweatshops are to many people in developing countries. this viewpoint is however not analysed thouroughly enough. It may sound perfectly logical on cursory analysis however may I point out that the alternative is also to have better sanitary and hygenic conditions?
Doesnt this remind you of the old Indian sahukars who used to make women & children work in similar conditions as they owed them money. Providing monetary relief is no excuse for exploiting.
Of course there will be plenty counter arguments for this, its never in black and white.
- Aniruddha
P.S. Read your previois post. I have linked to it on my blog if you dont mind.
Don’t confuse bonded labour with sweatshops.
with all the sweatshops in the world, its good to know that there are alternatives in the good ol’ USA. The only way to combat sweatshops without working in one is to promote sweatshop free companies, many of which exist today. here are a few!
www.neighborhoodies.com
www.urbanruby.com
www.greenpeople.org - listings of organic and sweatshop free companies.