Sweatshops. noun. a factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions. A word that has been characterized in the media as one to conjure up images of back-breaking labor paired with meager pay and poor desolate souls that toil for hours on end. Today, I am here to tell you exactly why that characterization fails to explore the extent of the impact that sweatshops have had, not just on their workers, but also on the consumers that purchase the goods used in these sweatshops. The sweatshop debate began in the 1970s, with an accusation slapped across Nike’s face in the form of of a report published by Jeff Ballinger about Nike’s sweatshops in Indonesia. Since that moment the world has been sparked into a hotly debated topic where clash always results in human rights versus economic gains. What Ballinger and other critics of idealize is the fact that sweatshops represent human rights violations and supporters of sweatshops are cold-hearted people who care for nothing but the increase of their money. However what Ballinger fails to realize is that buying materials from sweatshops fail to realize is that sweatshops have propelled the economic growth of countries …show more content…
We can choose to promote an ideal of sweatshops that induces images of toil and trouble, and continue to write the so called “helpful” éxposés that strip the men and women of these countries of their jobs, their lives, the very bread off of their tables. Or we can choose to invest in these countries by simply buying a ten dollar sweater, that two dollar bracelet. We can become the backbone to support the rise of nations all around us, to create a system where we creates lives for eternity rather than a full stomach for one