Let’s be honest, your clothes were probably made by an over-worked mother of six earning a dollar a day in a decrepit sweatshop. Her body suffers from malnutrition and fatigue as she forces herself to get past the 12 hour work day. After she finishes her job as button handler #256 she somehow manages to feed and take care of her six dying children.
We’ve all heard the same sob story so why haven’t we all boycotted sweatshop-using companies? Because that would be stupid.
From the same armchair activists that told you to “Boycott OPEC!” and “Boycott the Olympics!” are telling you to boycott companies who use sweatshop labor. Being a lazy generation of activists, telling us to not do something to help a cause always sounds intriguing. Just search the word boycott in Facebook groups and see how much of nothing people are delighted to take part in. Unfortunately, the sweatshop boycotters don’t realize their inaction will do more harm than good.
Let’s say the boycotters succeed in dismantling Nike’s infamous sweatshops. Great, now they’ve turned a sob story into a tragedy as thousands of workers lose their jobs. There is a good reason why those workers choose to work in sweatshops. The horrible working conditions of sweatshops should demonstrate how much worse any other available alternative would be. Prostitution and digging through landfills don’t look as rewarding when you can work for a multinational firm that can better guarantee a wage at the end of the day.
Sweatshops aren’t a result of heartless profit-driven corporations; they are a symptom of poverty. In poverty stricken towns high paying jobs are a scarcity, probably because the lack of skilled labor. Workers in poor villages don’t have the opportunity, health, or even the incentive to raise their skill level. They seem to be stuck in what they think is the best alternative.
If anything we should encourage more multinational firms to expand to the poor countries. Imagine if Adidas set up shop near by a Nike sweatshop. The two firms would be forced to raise wages or improve working conditions in order to attract a share of the labor force. Additionally, workers would have an incentive to improve their skill level in order to work in the better company. Not only would everyone be better off, there would also be a better efficient use of resources with the rise in skilled labor. Corrupt governments make it financially impossible or implausible for poor people to start their own businesses. Multinational firms may be poor people’s only hope in escaping the poverty trap.
