Evaluation of arguments in support of anti sweatshop activists doing more harm than good The opposition of sweatshop companies in developing countries has led to the formation of numerous anti – sweatshop organizations who mainly used public pressure to demand for an improvement in working conditions, increase in wage and discouraging imports with developing countries. Although anti – sweatshop organizations do achieve some results, however, it is not the best solution with regards to the problem of sweatshops as their actions may end up harming the people they wanted to help. It was claimed that most sweatshop companies responded to public pressure by closing down instead of giving in to what was demanded and hence resulted in thousands of workers being laid off, causing them to be unemployed (Balko …show more content…
This will also happen when anti – sweatshop activists demand for an increase in wage. It is said so as increasing wage would mean an increase in production cost; workers will continue losing their jobs unless increasing cost is cancelled with increasing price of final product or labor productivity (Foundation for Teaching Economics n.d.). So, the decline of well being is greater than those who benefit from wage rise. Discouraging importation of products from developing nations as a measure to stop sweatshop also lowers job demand. The demand for workers is dependent on the demand for goods needed to be produced which implies that the limitation on imported goods from developing countries eventually reduce product demand and thus less workers are needed to manufacture the goods (Foundation for Teaching Economics n.d.). Balko (2004) argued that sweatshops are often the best choice that people in developing countries have women and children included. If sweatshops do not exist, their alternatives include begging, prostitution or primitive agriculture, which are way worse (Balko 2004). Therefore, anti – sweatshop organizations are not the best option to