Sweatshops

In this day and age, multinational corporations control the market, the time of the local taylor and mom-and pop stores are over. While these companies sell goods in 1st world countries, their produce comes from sweatshops primarily in developing nations. Sweatshops are not legal; they are defined by the US Department of Labor as factories that violates 2 or more labor laws. The government of these third world countries and the corporations are at fault. While they line their pockets, their workers toil for over twelve hours a day, earning roughly $5.00, barely enough to make meets end.

Multinational corporations are constantly competing with one another. In order to avoid paying high wages and providing benefits for workers, companies
Creating manufacturing plants will not sustain development. It leads only leads to the suffering of the people, environment, and culture. Originally, the people living in these lands were able to make a comfortable living off of subsistence farming, but then foreign companies were welcomed into the land and the subsistence farmers were bought out and forced off their land. They are essentially forced into working for the companies locating themselves locally in order to procure food. This led to drastic increases in poverty. For example, as of 2014, in Guatemala, a third world banana land, over 65% of the population lives in poverty. These companies are also destroying the environment and the government is doing nothing about it. Over 2.2 trillion dollars worth of damage have been caused. Instead, if these government attempted to create a self-sustainable and local economy, the development process would be much more
Most of them buy goods from these corporations without acknowledging where they are made. By spread awareness, selectively purchasing sweatshop-free goods, and supporting anti-sweatshop pledges, consumers can encourage the market to follow a morally just system. For example, pressure on H&M because of the collapse of the Rana plaza factory has forced them to improve the working conditions.

The only group that isn’t to blame for these conditions are the workers. Unions are illegal. When workers attempt to unify and fight for better wages and conditions, management would often react violently. Those who strike will be fired. If enough workers protest such production would be no longer possible, these manufacturing plants just relocate. The laborers can not afford to lose their jobs. Most of them are desperately trying to feed their families. While the customers do have carry some of the blame for sweatshop conditions, Multinational corporations and the governments of these foreign countries are primarily at fault.
The companies are taking advantage of the lack of regulation, and the government is encouraging the companies to continue to exploit the people. Raising awareness is only a small part of the solution to ending sweatshops. In order for that to happen, companies to follow an ethical code, and governments need to strictly regulate foreign