Sweatshop
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded[1] workplace with very poor or illegal working conditions. The manual workers are poorly paid, work long hours, and experience poor working conditions. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, or uncomfortably/dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.[2] The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US.[3] The U.S. Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors."[4]
For other uses, see Sweatshop (disambiguation).Use of the term[edit]
The phrase sweatshop was coined in 1850, meaning a factory or workshop where workers are treated unfairly, for example having low wages, working long hours, and in poor conditions. Since 1850, immigrants have been flocking to work at sweatshops in cities like London and New York for more than one century. Many of them worked in tiny, stuffy rooms that are prone to fire hazards and rat infestations. The term sweatshop was used in Charles Kingsley's Cheap Clothes and Nasty (1850) describing such workplaces create a ‘sweating system’ of workers.[5] The idea of minimum wage and Labour's union was not developed until the 1890s. This issue appears to be solved by some anti-sweatshop organizations. However, the ongoing development of the issue is showing a different situation. The phrase is still used in current times due to the fact that it is still used in a variety of countries around the world.[6]
Industries using sweatshop labor[edit]
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.[19] According to a recent report published by SACOM, Uniqlo’s suppliers were blamed for "systematically underpaying their labour, forcing them to work excessive hours and subjecting them to unsafe working conditions, which included sewage-covered floors, poor ventilation, and sweltering temperatures".[20] According to the 2016 Clean Clothes Campaign,[21] H&M strategic suppliers in Bangladesh were reported for dangerous working environments, which lacked vital equipment for workers and adequate fire exits.
The German sportswear giant Adidas was criticized for its Indonesian sweatshops in 2000, and accused of underpayment, overtime working, physical abuse and child labour.[22] Another sportswear giant, Nike, faced a heavy wave of anti-sweatshop protests, organised by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and held in Boston, Washington D.C., Bangalore, and San Pedro Sula. They claimed that workers in Nike's contract factory in Vietnam were suffering from wage theft, verbal abuse and harsh working conditions with "temperatures over the legal limit of 90 degrees".[23] Since the 1990s, Nike was reported to employ sweat factories and child labour. Regardless of its effort to turn things around, Nike's image has been affected by the issue during the past two decades. Nike established an independent department which aimed to improve workers’ livelihoods in 1996. It was renamed the Fair Labor Association in 1999, as a non-profit organisation which includes representatives from companies, human rights organizations, and labour unions to work on the monitoring and management of labour rights.[24] To improve its brand image of being immoral, Nike has been publishing annual sustainable business reports since 2001[25] and annual corporate social responsibility reports continuously since 2005, mentioning its commitments, standards and audits.[24] Similar stories are still heard in the fashion industry in the past decades. Brands such as Shein, Nike, H&M, Zara, Disney, Victoria's Secret to name a few examples, are still using sweatshops.[26]
In 2016, the United States Department of Labor investigated 77 garment factories in Los Angeles that produced clothing for the aforementioned brands, and found labor violations at 85% of the factories it visited.[27]
