How+Soon+Will+They+All+Be+Forgotten+Again?

Name: Hui Jie Chee Student Number: 8661588 Tutor: Steven Badman



=THE ARTEFACT= In this editorial cartoon, a man clothed in bank notes is blocking a door locked with money, preventing the women inside who are dying of smoke and flame from escaping. This editorial cartoon was one of the many published after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Factory fire on 25 March, 1911 in New York, killing 146 workers. Trapped in the upper floors of a ten story building, the workers, mainly young immigrant workers and teenage girls, were burned alive or forced to jump to their deaths to escape the inferno that consumed the factory in just 18 minutes (Cornell University, 2011).

=PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE= Most of the deaths were preventable as the victims died simply because of the neglect of safety measures such as locked doors and inadequate fire prevention measures due to the high levels of corruption in the garment industry and city government (Levy, 2011). The incident highlighted the dangerous sweatshop conditions of garment factories which ultimately led to changes in America’s Unions and labour laws to better protect the workers’ safety (Cornell University, 2011). However, a century later, such incidents continue to occur. At least 50 garment factory fires have occurred in the past 10 months (Paige, 2013) and the collapse of Rana Plaza, a garment factory in Bangladesh, this year killed more than 1100 people (Ahmed & Lakhani, 2013). Therefore, there is a serious and pressing need todelve deeper into this issue to identify the reasons for the existence of sweatshops, its longevity and widespread distribution across the world in order to prevent the suffering and deaths of more innocent workers.

=LITERATURE REVIEW= Driven by journalists such as Jacob Riis, the public first identified sweatshops as a social problem at the end of the 1880s and the issue continuously resurfaced in different time periods from then on (Soyer, 1999). Today, more than a hundred years later since the problem arose, sweatshops continue to violate our notion of morals and ethics and yet continue to exist and flourish.

Though often thought to be a thing of the past, a shocking number of companies still use sweatshop labour where, although the conditions vary, they are regularly horrendous. Commonly located in developing countrieslike India, China, Philippines and Bangladesh, sweatshops produce clothes for many international and well-known brands such as Gap, Mango and Benetton (International Labour Rights Forum, 2009). Even some of Australia’s biggest brands have come under the spotlight for their involvement in sweatshops, including Coles, K-Mart and Target (Four Corners, 2013).

Some of the common conditions in sweatshops are long working hours, unsafe work environment without basic safety measures and very low pay. Hazardous materials may be found and poor quality infrastructure and overcrowding are also common. Sexual abuse and punishment for low quality work are rampant. Children, as young as 8, can be found working the factories. Not only has poverty and slave labour impacted negatively on the health of the workers, the unsafe conditions also resulted in many accidents which led to suffering and deaths that could have otherwise been prevented (Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights). Thus, it is an important public health issue that needs urgent improvement and should ultimately be eliminated.

Brisson, C., Vézina, M., FRCP, & Vinet, A. (1992)
 * Employment status || Number of workers with no disability || Number of workers with slight/moderate disability || Number of workers with depression symptoms ||
 * Garment workers || 199 || 65 || 263 ||
 * Workers in other occupation || 340 || 55 || 239 ||

Many students, activists and some scholars were quick to condemn sweatshops and the multinational enterprises (MNEs) that use them when the problem is raised. However, these criticisms are due partly to moral panic rather than sound reasoning which led many economists to jump to the defence of sweatshops.

While everyone might agree that poor working conditions are unfortunate and undesirable, defenders of sweatshop labor argue that they provide the best available employment alternative for some workers and the best chance at economic development for many low and middle income countries and is therefore mutually beneficial (Snyder, 2010; Kristof & WuDunn,2000).

Research has shown that both find that multinational firms pay higher wages than domestic firms in Third World countries ( Aitken, Harrison, and Lipsey,1996; Lipsey and Sjoholm, 2001). They also improve the lives of workers by increasing the demand for labour which is supposed to drive wages up (Feenstra and Hanson, 1997). Budd, Konings, and Slaughter (2001) find that as multinational profits go up, multinational firms share gains with Third World workers. According to Karl Marx, exploitation is typical of capitalism and every employment can be considered to be exploiting workers to some extent.

However, this contradicts data which shows that over the past decade, wages for garment factory workers in many countries has not increased. For example, a report found that senior sewing operators earn just one tenth as much as the Triangle workers did in 1911 100 years ago (inflation taken into account) (Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, 2011). Scholars such as Dennis Arnold (2003), Laura Hartman (2003), Jeremy Snyder (2010) and John Miller argues against sweatshops. They contend that the economic theory economists use is inappropriate for sweatshops in the real world for a numerous and condemn sweatshops for violating the laws of the countries in which they operate. Sweatshop labour, even if mutually beneficial, is nonetheless often or necessarily coercive or exploitative. Although the workers may have consented to the pay, and may even be happy to get a job in a sweatshop as opposed to being unemployed, this does not mean that employers is right to pay such low wages (Mayer, 2007). When employers take advantage of unfair situations and drive hard bargains against desperate workers, they undermine the autonomy of these workers who have no other realistic options (Meyers, 2007). According to Meyers (2004), exploiters are morally obliged to stop exploiting even when the exploitation is not harmful and is mutually beneficial.

According to Immanuel Kant’s practical imperative, people are supposed to treat others as ends valuable in and of themselves, not only as means to ends (Radin & Calkins, 2006). Sweatshops go against this universal principle that regulates moral behavior as companies exploit people for their labor to create profit for themselves.

Some anti-sweatshops advocates hold the viewpoint that treatment of garment factory workers should be morally and ethically fair rather than just complying with laws (Radin & Calkins, 2006), which in many of the developing countries that sweatshops are found in, are inadequate. For example, the legal minimum wage in the Philippines is lower than the living wage there (International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation). This brings up the problem of what actually defines a sweatshop and therefore makes it difficult to access the scope of the issue. What is morally correct is difficult to determine. This contributes to the difficulty in solving the sweatshop problem (Radin & Calkins, 2006).

In conclusion, although sweatshops may make sense based on economic theory, I believe that the moral and ethical arguments against sweatshops are still more important areas that ought to be considered. Despite the many research that shows an improvement in wages of garment factory workers, the fact that many are still being paid a pittance far below a living wage and that the terrible condition of the workplace and degrading treatment of workers leads to many health problems is still undeniable and is morally objectionable. Therefore, sweatshops should not be allowed to exist in our societies today. However, both sides of the arguments should still be taken into account when considering this issue. Safety and health of the workers should be considered together with wages. By using moral reasoning, gaps in both sides of the arguments can be filled. Care should be taken in the process of reforming sweatshops so as to prevent the destruction of any economic benefits that sweatshops have brought to the workers currently.

=CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ANALYSIS= Globalisation and capitalism are the key causes of the continued existence and flourishing of sweatshops in many societies. Retailers join manufacturers in the ‘race to the bottom’ where they seek offshore sourcing to find the cheapest labour available so as to maximize profits (Rudell, 2006). They are often located in developing countries as these countries welcome such investment, which is labor-intensive, requires little start-up capital, and boosts exports (Santos, 2006). Competitive bids are easily achieved through starvation wages and substandard working conditions, especially since government regulations are absent, weak, or not enforced (Davies, 2013). Workers are often desperately poor, uneducated, and undocumented and therefore are in no position to negotiate for better treatment (Rudell, 2006). This corresponds with Marx’s criticism of capitalism, that it leads to exploitation and therefore wages will be driven down to subsistence (Skidelsky, 2010).

Driven by consumer demand for low-priced fashion apparel and the profit driven companies, retailers put pressure on contractors and subcontractors, to keep manufacturing costs down. Thus, the retailers, contractors and consumers are all stakeholders in this relationship. This brings up the question of who should bear the responsibility for the horrifying conditions in the garment industry which has always been intensely debated. The manufacturers and large retailers often refuse to be held accountable while contractors argued that they were limited by their contracts with the retailers (Soyer, 1999). Some consumers take an interest in the conditions under which the products they bought were produced. However, due to the great geographic, economic and cultural separation of producers and consumers, most consumers are not even aware of the role they play in this problem.

The garment factory workers are the group most affected by this issue, especially females. As many of them lack a better option, they are vulnerable to exploitation, as an income however meager is better than none at all. According to John Miller (2006), paying decent wages to garment factory workers at the start of the supply chain has little effect on the competitiveness of a company. In a study, it is estimated that for USA and Mexican firms, a 100% wage increase would only require a 2–6% increase in the retail price of the garments. They compare this with polling data that indicated that US consumers were generally willing to pay between 15 and 25% more to ensure that products were ethically made (Pollin, Burns & Heintz, 2004).

Thus, awareness of this issue is important helping to resolve this problem. Anti-sweatshop campaigns have proven to be effective in the past. Consumer awareness campaigns waged against such companies as Nike, Adidas, and Reebok forced these firms to sign codes of conduct pledging to raise wages and improve working conditions in factories producing their products (Harrison & Scorse, 2010). Recent example includes Kmart and Target which became the first Australian retailers to sign on to the Bangladesh Fire and Building Safety Accord after the tragedy of Rana plaza which puts pressure on companies to reveal their manufacturing source (Oxfam Australia, 2013).

=ANALYSIS OF ARTEFACT AND LEARNING REFLECTIONS= The editorial cartoon represents how companies are profit driven and that the safety and welfare of workers are not of their concern. It summarises the main driver of sweatshop labour, capitalism, and the sufferings of the workers and their dreadful plight. In addition, it serves as a criticism to society today, where although many countries appear to have become more developed over the past century, there seems to be a lack of improvement in our humanity. We have become capable of so many things, yet are still unable to improve, not to mention eliminating this public health issue. With capitalism and globalisation and a growing consumers’ market, sweatshop labour has become deeply rooted in many societies, especially in emerging economies where the garment industry forms a large part of the economy. This makes the solution to the sweatshop problem even more complicated than and not as simple as just eliminating them.Karpatkin (1999) proposed that a “fair and justmarketplace” be accomplished through the activities of a triangle of government, citizens, and business, with separate and overlapping roles and responsibilities. Hence, as consumers who are so much more privileged compared to these workers, we should pay more attention to ethical consumerism. And we can start by simply thinking about where the clothes come from the next time we are shopping.

In doing this assessment, I realised the complexities of public health issues. Many different sides of the arguments have to be considered in trying to resolve an issue. There is no straight forward approach to any problem and thus caution should be taken when proposing solutions.



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=Reflection= []

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