Janu Akther's Oppression Of Sweatshops In Bangladesh

Exciting and stirring, February of each year brings a new wind to colleges all around US, promising another successful baseball season to come. While the efforts of college students and their coaches are highly appreciated, no one might acknowledge the great contribution of people like Janu Akther, a 22-year-old man who works in sweatshops in Bangladesh to produce American collegiate apparel―an indispensable part of the game. An $18 baseball cap can be a joy of many American people to wear but a dirty exploitation device in Akther's mind. As a sweatshop laborer, he works every day from early morning until late night in miserable conditions of heat and dangerous machine. Each hour laboring takes away much of his sweat but barely gives him anything
For that reason, more and more American companies move their “manufacturing operations” to those countries. Sweatshop violated many groups of protecting labor rights, so these groups want to get rid of sweatshop, and improve working conditions and wages. However, a fact that lots of product which owned by “best-known American companies” are made by sweatshop labor. Big American companies like sweatshop because of cheap-labor source. “While Nike pays its U.S factory workers $11 an hour, its Indonesian workers earn about $2 a day” (John 2). On the other hand, some ideas state that sweatshop is bringing opportunities for jobs in poor countries. “By setting up shop in Indonesia, for example, Nike says they bring that poor country much needed jobs and billions of dollars in investments” (John 2). Disagreeing with that, some critics says if those companies want to give occasion for developing countries, they even can pay higher for poor labors to be able to support their families. At the end, the statistic graph shows there is a big disparity of hourly wages among countries. For instance, in East Asia, the hourly wages in Japan is $16.29 while China is
On World Socialist Web Site, October 2nd, 2012, Louis Zou, a socialist states that many giant brand names typically Apple uses sweatshops to exploit Chinese people, especially students. In China, the government requires students to participate in Foxconn as workers to earn their internship; otherwise, they cannot receive any diploma. The working condition, however, doesn't go along with the goal of an internship, which is to give students chances to take experience. Not only that they are unable to absorb much necessary skill for their future careers, but they also receive very low wages which hardly match the tremendous efforts being spent. “During the work hours, if you want to go to toilet, you must pay attention to his [the supervisor’s] face. If you have a bad supervisor, even going to toilet is not allowed,” a student, Yu said (Zou). Moreover, some of workers were underage but they had to work as adults “11 hours a day, 26-28 days a month—and getting just 70 percent of adult pay” (Zou). Due to that, Zou thinks that sweatshop is a brutal exploitation more than helping to cure poverty in the Third World