When you think about sweatshops, the first thing that usually comes to mind is some barely-out-of-diapers child with a physical frame reminiscent of poorly glued together popsicle sticks toiling over a pair of Nikes. If there was any reason to suspect that our perceived image is significantly flawed I’d bring it up, but, frankly, in one simple Google search you can see countless variations of that image. If you’re still not convinced, you can read any number of reports put out by human rights groups about atrocious labor conditions in developing countries. The fact that the majority of the clothing sold and worn in the first world is produced by those suffering under the yoke of heinous conditions provokes a sizable backlash from consumers, but too often when discussing labor conditions in developing countries, the debate slides towards an overly emotional discourse, and not a rational one.
From an objective standpoint, there’s a lot to like about sweatshops. While that sentence might seem a little morally bankrupt, there are some solid economic arguments for sweatshops that don’t involve being really into Nikes or obese profit margins for international corporations. The first is that the jobs that sweatshops’ supply are actually doing more to uplift their communities than whatever jobs the workers had done previously. Their old job was probably a hell of a lot more wholesome and granted them some dignity, but both of those things look pretty inferior to an increased income if you live in abject poverty. If the wages for sweatshop labor weren’t attractive to workers, then there wouldn’t be dump trucks full of children rolling up to get those little tykes behind a sewing machine. An “attractive wage” is an extremely relative thing as getting paid pennies to suffer terrible conditions sounds criminal (at best) to us, but it could mean the ability to afford to send your children to school in far less fortunate places. The wages paid to the workers work their way back into the local economy and promote economic growth. If you think economic growth isn’t worth the barbaric practices that run amok in a sweatshop, you should consider that GDP and quality of life are very correlated and every economy has to start somewhere. You can’t have a middle class without first having a working class, and a working class doesn’t typically toil in an air-conditioned office.
Economic growth alone may validate the existence of manufacturing and industrial jobs moving abroad but it does not excuse the heinous treatment of laborers in developing economies. Large international corporations have proven that they will seek out the cheapest labor source that they include in their supply chain, and while global wealth inequality remains stark, there will be those willing to sacrifice everything for the privilege of being abused for money. International accords that make corporations commit to allowing their workers to organize themselves and work in safe environments are something that consumers should demand from any company they purchase goods from; bear in mind, the moral commitment is often one that also demands an extra commitment from the wallet. Nevertheless, it’s a commitment worth making as humans are the base entities that compose economies and give them meaning. Economic growth should never come at the expense of basic human rights.
Sweatshops and other employment opportunities should be courted by the developing world; the significant benefits they bring should not be ignored. An economy can’t grow to any serious degree with “sustainable arts and crafts,” and a robust economy does more for the quality of life of a country than any amount of charity work. Sweatshops and economic entities like them compose the engine of any developing economy and they remain the best way to pull a country out of the economic doldrums. Human rights violations should be abhorred and prevented as much as possible, but at the end of the day a developing economy is more grime and grit than anything else. It might appear hellish to us ,but that very well might just be the best way forward for many developing economies and nations.