It’s that time of year again. For some, it’s time to buy presents. Deals are popping up everywhere and it’s a wonder companies can provide for such a high demand, yet sell products at such low prices.
According to Gregory Elich, author and frequent contributor to globalresearch.ca, the answer to this riddle is sweatshops.
Globalresearch.ca is a website that publishes articles on global issues that take place all over the world. In his Global Research article titled “Sweatshop Manufacturing: Engine for Poverty,” Elich writes that workers in the four largest sweatshop countries — China, Thailand, Honduras and Bangladesh — will be opening their eyes to work a 10-15 hour shift while the rest of the world opens presents this holiday season.
Elich explains that in a typical plant in Honduras, workers sew 1,200 sleeves to shirts in a single shift. Isabel Reyes is one such Honduras sweatshop worker Elich talked to.
Reyes said she battles painful carpal tunnel syndrome from her seemingly never-ending cycle of work. “There is always an acceleration,” Reyes said, commenting on the production that is expected of her. “The goals are always increasing, but the pay stays the same.”
The National Labor Committee, an American Human rights advocacy group that focuses on the promotion and defense of worker rights, reports sweatshop workers in China assemble Christmas lights, clothes, jewelry and more, all solely for Wal-Mart customers in first world countries.
About 70 per cent of all goods carried and sold by Wal-Mart are produced in sweatshops, according to an article written by the NLC in 2007. Wal-Mart has a reputation of being the cheapest place to buy practically everything, and in order to maintain this standard, the company needs to go to extremes to procure cheap goods. By using sweatshops, Wal-Mart achieves this extreme.
Sometimes, big companies don’t realize the factories being used to create goods are treating workers unethically.
A recent example of this was in 2007, when clothing company The Gap found out one of their factories in New Delhi, India was accused of using child labour, according to a CNN world news report.
The Gap shut down the Indian company immediately upon discovery. Marka Hansen, the company’s president, was quoted by CNN saying “It’s deeply disturbing to all of us. I feel violated and very upset and angry with our vendor.”
Not all companies and corporations rely on sweatshops. American Apparel, a Los Angeles-based clothing company, is an example of one such company.
According to Apparel’s website, garment sewers work in a factory in Los Angeles, and are paid above standard minimum wage — $12.00 per hour — and workers overseas are paid at least the U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
It’s understandable why most people buy sweatshop goods. Sometimes they don’t know their sweater is being made in a sweatshop, but most of the time it comes down to the fact that cheap goods are hard to pass by.
For those who are more globally aware customers however, their ethcical purchases this holiday season will serve as a message to their gift recipients.