Sweatshop Labour
Sweatshops are manufacturing workplaces which treat its workers inhumanely, paying low wages, imposing harsh and unsafe working conditions, demanding levels of performance that are harmful to the workers and child labour. These are generally formed in developing nations and third world countries where the cost to employ labour is far cheaper than the cost to employ capital. Even though they are extensively used in most industries, they are infamous for their exploitation in the garment industry.
Over the past couple of decades as the textiles and garment industry boomed due to globalization it became one of the largest sources of industrial employment in the world. Sweatshops experienced widespread growth and thus increasing the harm caused to those employed in them, notably being women and children. Children are employed in factories and are forced to endure the same harsh working environment as all other adults. In 1971, it was estimated that in Hong Kong more than twenty-five thousand children worked full time in garment factories. The harsh realities of sweatshops do not only affect children, but also the women, approximately 90% of sweatshop workers in the garment industry are women.
The extremely low wages that are paid to garment workers border close to the wages of slave labourers. The only thing that determines their pay is how fast and how much of a product they are able to produce in a day. The workers are forced into staying and working for a longer amount of time in the sweatshops by having their pay detained for periods over a month, leaving them in no position to quit. Regardless of the contemptible wages the workers are paid, they also work in physically strenuous and unhygienic conditions. In Australia the maximum number of hours is 38, but those in sweatshops are expected to be pulling 80- 90 hour weeks. Such conditions often create serious health hazards such as repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic neck &back problems and
Over the past couple of decades as the textiles and garment industry boomed due to globalization it became one of the largest sources of industrial employment in the world. Sweatshops experienced widespread growth and thus increasing the harm caused to those employed in them, notably being women and children. Children are employed in factories and are forced to endure the same harsh working environment as all other adults. In 1971, it was estimated that in Hong Kong more than twenty-five thousand children worked full time in garment factories. The harsh realities of sweatshops do not only affect children, but also the women, approximately 90% of sweatshop workers in the garment industry are women.
The extremely low wages that are paid to garment workers border close to the wages of slave labourers. The only thing that determines their pay is how fast and how much of a product they are able to produce in a day. The workers are forced into staying and working for a longer amount of time in the sweatshops by having their pay detained for periods over a month, leaving them in no position to quit. Regardless of the contemptible wages the workers are paid, they also work in physically strenuous and unhygienic conditions. In Australia the maximum number of hours is 38, but those in sweatshops are expected to be pulling 80- 90 hour weeks. Such conditions often create serious health hazards such as repetitive strain injury, carpal tunnel syndrome, chronic neck &back problems and