I'm an American with a left-wing upbringing and still broadly left-wing politics. When I graduated from architecture school in 2001, I wanted some international experience, so I moved to India. What I saw there utterly transformed my preconceptions of sweatshops -- because I saw it <i>before</i> the sweatshops began opening.<p>One of the projects I was helping to design was a "science city" tech campus. The workers lived in an encampment next to the construction site. They worked from dawn until dusk for 6.5 days per week -- half a day off on Sunday -- every day of the month except for the new moon. Children as young as 6 were working -- moving and sorting materials, but quite dangerous inasmuch as it was on a live construction site. The standard wage was roughly $3 per <i>MONTH</i> (although food and very nominal shelter -- really more like "camping space" -- were provided for free). These were not outrageously abusive labour practices -- they were absolutely bog-standard practice of local industry, preferable to many of the alternatives for these people.<p>Seeing this situation with my own eyes, I realised that if these people had the option to work in one of those $1/day sweatshops I'd heard anti-globalisation activists go on about -- in line with my own sympathies -- it would be an absolute DREAM. Since then, I've been rabidly pro-globalisation. These days, I get incensed when I see people going on about the horrors of globalisation, with absolutely ZERO understanding of the counter-factual. Utter ignorance of how bad it would be otherwise.<p>The one case where I'll allow that sweatshops are problematic is when their owners become so powerful that they corrupt the local politics and take steps to ensure that that the population cannot develop its economy any further. This has happened in some places, creating locked-in populations for whom the sweatshop is not the bottom rung of the ladder, but the top. That's an actual problem, where it has happened -- but in most of the world (eg. India, China, most of the rest of East Asia), that's NOT the story that's played out, and sweatshops have been a vital (but temporary) step in economic development.
Episode 1 - 5 with subtitles. The links are extracted from the mobile version of the site.<p><a href="http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/1416560575076668800-c5989e5b-587c-4ae4-96b1-01769129a2a1-iphone_600kbit_64_480x360_vbr.mp4" rel="nofollow">http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/...</a><p><a href="http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/1416560793016364200-93c4380c-7389-4e8d-8863-d153a8629986-iphone_600kbit_64_480x360_vbr.mp4" rel="nofollow">http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/...</a><p><a href="http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/1416560716079490100-1607549d-d005-4644-8099-06da0f1ef9e7-iphone_600kbit_64_480x360_vbr.mp4" rel="nofollow">http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/...</a><p><a href="http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/1416560802092290500-eb93b63b-ca5f-4ee5-9fc9-ec1dc197d473-iphone_600kbit_64_480x360_vbr.mp4" rel="nofollow">http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/...</a><p><a href="http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/1416560480020584800-40b974e4-5dca-41b2-a92a-8224e873f066-iphone_600kbit_64_480x360_vbr.mp4" rel="nofollow">http://frontend.xstream.dk/ap/resources/content/mp4/2014-11/...</a>
Something that bothers me is the fact that even though they have cried on the show and said that they were going to do something to help, if you search for them on the internet, its clear that they aren't doing anything about it! Even the girl who has a fashion blog, she is still writing about the trademarks that use this kind of abusive job to make their clothes...
The BBC did their own version of this in 2008 called Blood Sweat and T Shirts.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_and_T-shirts" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood,_Sweat_and_T-shirts</a><p>The gimmick was that most of the kids were ludicrous pampered upper middle class fashion students with no sense of perspective, or at least the programme was edited to portray them as such. Much of the entertainment came from watching them subjected to backbreaking labor while their self-contained worldviews crumbled around them.
I really don't understand this problem. Why does everybody think people in Asia are forced to do this kind of work? These people would be incredibly poor if not for western companies. Actually most of them would die being children as a result of their poverty: malnutrition, accidents, preventable diseases such as polio or measles.<p>Go now and check what was China's annual GDP per capita in Mao Zedong times. Just see it. Apparently a lot of people need this kind of basic history education.<p>Yaron Brook has more knowledge on the topic:
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwb8m_ZbU-U&feature=youtu.be&t=33m33s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwb8m_ZbU-U&feature=youtu.be...</a>
Honestly I would imagine those 3 Millennials having an issue with most hard work.<p>I live in Asia, I look though a different lens,<p>- Imagine being loaded on to a truck and brought to factory everyday -- You mean a free ride to work?<p>- Imagine your kids roaming the factory floor -- No child care costs?<p>- Imagine having to working 12 hours a day -- I can pay for my kids to go to school ?<p>- Imagine being stuck in a factory all day -- not under the sun planting rice/corn etc..<p>Obviously there are a lot of macro and micro-economic factors at work, I just saw a truck delivering a automated t-shirt embroidering machine, so that economic switch has tilted, but do you think the talk will be, "we are free!" or "where did the work go?"
It's funny to me that the same HN continually bashing Google for being evil, Uber for being sexist, and startups in general for treating workers like slaves, is the same HN that generalizes and rationalizes this type of behavior.<p>We complain that minimum wage workers here aren't paid enough in the US, and yet we're OK with people making $3/day, pushed to their limit by a boss that might as well be a warden.<p>This may not be slavery, but it is indentured servitude.<p>And I say this as someone lacking a single liberal bone in my body.
Better link: <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/webtv/serier-og-programmer/sweatshopenglish/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aftenposten.no/webtv/serier-og-programmer/sweatsh...</a><p>This one shows the whole thing. One can watch all episodes online with English subtitles.
So, I remember seeing this on Reddit a few weeks back.<p>Some commenters mentioned that sweatshops are a necessary evil for developing nations. It's better to have a shitty job than to have the alternative of being jobless and resorting to theft/prostitution for sustenance.<p>How true is such an argument?
Kind of funny. I started in similar conditions. But I hear constantly to "check my privilege" from someone with $100K+ income, university and $500 handbag.
This is emotionally confusing for me. It seems like the general consensus on HN is that this is a necessary evil. I can get on board with that, but it still feels wrong.<p>I guess the only way to think about it is progress is progress, so if sweatshops are an improvement for these people, then there is good in it for them... for now...<p>We have seen China over a few decades transition from textiles, to tech manufacturing, and now developing IP products and services. Is this the norm? Or the exception?<p>I just have questions at this point, but I guess for the time being... back to work.
I am depressed that significant part of collective intelligence of the most intelligent and influential tech communities on the internet is advocating for sweatshops because the alternative is worse. False dichotomy, if I ever seen one.
I wonder, how can we in the first world change our behaviour here to stop things like that? Does the very way we live cause this or are the causes local?
Sweatshops themselves aren't the problem, but rather the fact that the game is rigged against the average person.<p>They could just farm self sustainably, however they lack the knowledge and large landowners own the land. They also tend to have too many kids as well.<p>You can choose between being a peasant that is given some land to work as farmland in exchange for a shack to dwell in and some very basic food or be slightly less worse off in a sweatshop. You get fucked either way and there is no way out as education is a joke in cambodia and the like and there is no industry to employ any higher educated people to begin with.
Unlike Capitalism, Globalization is Zero-sum WITHOUT <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income</a>
I lived in Phnom Penh where this was filmed. The trucks carrying workers at the end of the day is a normal sight in the outskirts of the city. The average pay for this type of job is about $100 depending on how much extra overtime you put in.<p>How to fix it? I have some ideas but that would be on a much smaller scale. Basically a more direct model. The fashion industry needs to be disrupted and consumers must get more information about how brands produce clothes.<p>The problem today is that the government in Cambodia is extremely corrupt. They can't be relied on to improve conditions or put up the minimum wage (well they have a little bit but it is still under what can be considered a liveable wage). The big brands however point the finger at the government (H&M, Nike, Puma all put out press releases that blame laws and government practices). They say it is the job of government to improve. They sit in their nice offices in New York and Stockholm, in cities that were built over a long time with a long history of democracy and with a society that was built bit for bit. That took a long time. It is incomparable to the state of Cambodia (which started on a blank slate 30 years ago or so). Thus the government there is not qualified to make the required changes. The brands however are. They are in countries with good laws and fairly decent labour practices. They should take responsibility. They should not hide behind their suppliers. They can easily define contracts that require suppliers to have better minimum standards and wages for workers. It would not mean much difference in profits for these companies. A lady makes a shirt and earns $3/day, does it really matter if she is paid $5/day? Would the $50 shirt cost much more at the store? Nope.<p>I think the most pragmatic solution is that developed countries introduce taxes for clothes that are not ethically produced. That $15 t-shirt from H&M should be $17 and with $2 clearly labeled as non-ethical tax on the price tag.<p>Also I see some commentators here saying it's much better to work in a factory than to work on the rice fields. 20 years ago you could earn enough as a small farmer. Today that is not the case. Also the rising cost in Cambodia and elsewhere makes the small pay even more a problem than before. The workers earn $100. Rent is easily $30. I used to eat lunch at the market every day in Phnom Penh. It was about $1.50 for noodle soup. You can get a cheaper meal (I'm white and I added some better quality meat). But add that up. And consider you need to buy a towel. That's easily $4. A new pan? $5 for a cheaper one. I lived in Phnom Penh in 2012 and then in 2014. Even I as a foreigner noticed the inflation.
Here is the answer of an capitalist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZSnUBzzH5_4#t=236" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZS...</a>
Here is the answer of a capitalist: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZSnUBzzH5_4#t=236" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZS...</a>
Idk, still beats wallowing around in the mud waiting for UN handouts. Europe and developed Asia have all been through this stage of development. It's what it takes to modernize<i>.<p></i> * I'm not arguing for abuse or child labor of course. There are limits.
In terms of a large profit making company, the company has to make ever increasing profits for the shareholders or else it becomes pretty much illegal. Thus, currently these conditions are necessary, there is nothing to stop them, because to stop them means that a corporation is not operating properly.
It is necessary because to not allow it means that a corporation is behaving badly. Like it or not, and in this example most of us hate it, a corporation has to make every effort to increase profit and decrease waste.<p>How do we change it? As consumers we make it clear to these companies that it's not on. We vote with our money. But the tried and tested solution is via our politicians. We have to make it possible for our corporations to improve the conditions of their suppliers and not incur the wrath of their shareholders.<p>edits - wow, please read both paragraphs.