Labor Practices: The Ugly Truth
Patrick Owen
PHL/320
July 27, 2015
Laura Lewis
Labor Practices: The Ugly Truth
When it comes to the decision of a business making more in profits while costing less on manual labor and material it is often at times associated with word sweatshops. Sweatshop is a word that not too many businesses want to throw around for it is a mark against the reputation, but at the same time they gain profits for having them.
Sweatshop labor is still a popular and common way for these companies around the world to become leader in their supplies, which make the successful. It consist of making employees work in poor working conditions, while paying them unfair wages, as well as working unreasonable hours. Another big form of sweatshop labor is child labor.
It is estimated that 168 million children, between the ages of 5 and 14 are forced to work in these sweatshops1. The reason for these children to work in such poor conditions are so they are able to provide their families with a profit of income for them to live on. What some people taken for granted such as, cloths, shoes, rugs, chocolate, etc. are just a few examples of what these children are making in the sweatshops.
Child labor is one thing that most companies do not want their names tied to if found out by the general population of consumers. It is said that child labor is very common in agriculture farms (59% of child laborers work in argicutlure2). The majority of child laborers are found in Asia and the Pacific while sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence, which is estimated to one in five children in child labor3.
Sweatshop labor is an unfair and unethical way of doing any type of business. Most businesses will not associate any type of material made overseas, or even within the same country with the sweatshop. The main question is to ask is it ethical for the company to take credit for something they didn’t brand then? The...