Ethical Issues Outside the United States

In business there is a lot of debate on what is ethical and unethical. The United States has passed many laws in order to enforce business ethics in corporations. However, there are still many outside countries that do not have a strict set of laws, and practice unethical business techniques. One major unethical practice that is done in many countries is the use of child labor in sweatshops. In sweatshops workers are subject to extreme exploitation. They are paid at a very low wage rate, do not receive benefits, have extremely poor working conditions, and may even suffer from some physical abuse. These types of workers could almost be compared to slaves, in the sense that they have no opportunity to improve their lives. This is considered ethical, or allowable, in some places outside the United States such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America. A major reason why sweatshops are not seen as an unethical business practice is because countries in these locations do not have respect for human life. A reason for this is the overpopulation that is taking place in these countries. Because of their overpopulation they do not concern themselves with the lives of all their citizens and the harm that they are exposing them to. These countries issue small amounts of human rights to their citizens and are mostly concerned with increasing their economy as much as possible. In order to stay globally competitive they need to produce items at a lower cost than their competitors. They also need to increase their production to bring in a substantial amount of revenue, therefore, they work as many people as they can. A reason why this is not being fought against too hard in these global areas is because of the lack of unions that exist in these