Global Labor Standards

There is often a hidden story behind many of the items we use and take for granted each day. From the simple T-shirt to the complicated car, there is a tale to be told for the amount of labor and human resources involved in its mass production. There are issues regarding labor rights, factory conditions, commodity chains, and company and government standards that go unseen by the consumer. These issues often change geographically on an enormous scale due to globalization. Sometimes rights and standards can vary and sometimes the issues are much far more complicated than how we perceive them in The United States. In this essay, I will be evaluating the standards of labor regarding Nike shoes and sweatshop accusations towards them. I will also compare labor standards of the United States to labor standards of countries overseas. The United States has a strong code of labor standards and the citizens are able to live in a productive society mostly free from poverty and lack of employment. Largely this is due to the Industrial Revolution that completely changed our way of life as well as our way of labor. Never before in history had we seen children being employed on such a large scale and never before had laws regarding labor been tailored to specifically protect the rights of the laborer. However, in developing countries often this is not the case. It is in this way of contrasting labor standards that we can see differences in labor among developed and developing nations. We can compare common standards of labor and governmental policies that dictate labor laws and economic policies. The labor standard debate is one entrenched in a countries economic stability. Labor standards in developing countries are often vastly different from standards in developed ones. For instance in the United States we have policies that help to protect the laborer from being exploited and abused by the employer. However, in countries such as Cambodia where there are numerous