Monday, May 12, 2014
Sweatshops
My novel, Boys Without Names is about an eleven year old boy named Gopal. After moving to Mumbai he is tricked into letting someone knock him out and take him to a sweatshop where he is forced to work all day under a very mean boss. Sadly though sweatshops are still used today. In 2007 they found out that a bunch of kids were working in a sweatshop making clothes. These clothes were going to GAP kids which were going to be sold in the Christmas section. In Gopal's case he was tricked into going to a sweatshop because he was desperate for work. If I were him I probably would have been more careful. I mean you shouldn't just let a stranger take you somewhere you don't know. After reading a lot of that book I think that sweatshops are awful, and should not exist. The sad thing is though, are that a lot of bosses are extremely good at hiding the shops. A lot of people think that they are just normal factories. A lot of goods that are commonly used are made at sweatshops. The clothes that you are wearing could've been made from a sweatshop! This is why I believe that sweatshops should be eliminated. How would you help eliminate sweatshops?
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I think that something we are all not considering is the fact that we have a free enterprise economy which means that people own their own businesses and compete with each other. Now if someone can pay their workers a low amount of money, and don't have to ensure their workers safety like sweatshop conditions, it will be done because they will have lower cost of making their items, therefore defeating their opponent in selling goods. Sweatshops can never be removed unless you want to have a revolution changing the economy, which is a horrible idea. A free enterprise economy has many upsides. Unfortunately, you cannot have good stuff without some bad stuff. With the free enterprise economy everyone is able to have their own business, controlled by themselves. If we didn't have a free enterprise economy the government would control all the businesses. An example of how that would be bad is China right after its civil war. It had all businesses controlled by the government. Its economy was horrible, only after it allowed some private businesses its economy improved and is what it is today. Taiwan, the other side of the Chinese civil war, has a free enterprise economy too and it is flourishing. More information on China and Taiwan is in the Asia and Pacific book Chapter 7 or page 150 in that same book.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t be able to stop sweatshops, but what I would do to reduce the amount of them would just be to focus on improving the economy of the nation it is in. Sweatshops are the result of a bad economy. Improving the economy would reduce the amount of sweatshops.
How would I? This would be hard. The book I am reading called Iqbal says that he started an organization to eliminate the amount of rug factories that are depending on child labor. I would do the same thing that Iqbal did, start an organization, and start to invest those factories and see if the bosses are that mean. I did a little searching in the internet, and found that some children were working in sweatshops at Walmart. They worked really hard, 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. They only earned 6.5 cents per hour, and they couldn't afford toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, toilet paper and soap! Think about all of the people's clothes that are worn by people that are hand made! Although sweatshops could be efficient, many children could be dying because of labor. This world would be a lot easier for children if we greatly decrease the amount of sweatshops.
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