How many sweatshops are there in the world

Cutting production costs allow retailers to sell products at either a higher profit margin or in higher quantities — allowing them to maximize profits for the benefit of their owners. Unfortunately, nearly all of the most popular, well-known brands in the United States employ sweatshops to some degree to produce their goods.

Companies such as Forever 21 , Ross, and TJ Maxx have been major offenders in regards to utilizing sweatshops located in the United States. In fact, many of these apparel retailers have sweatshops located in Los Angeles. Sweatshops, by definition, are any factories that break labor laws. In that regard, sweatshops are considered illegal in the United States.

Unfortunately, the consequences for breaking such labor laws is often not enough of a deterrent to prevent sweatshops from existing. However, this law only enables workers employed by sweatshops to seek back wages against the owners of the factories. Many retailers who use sweatshops hide behind multiple middlemen in a convoluted supply chain, allowing them to avoid any accountability for their involvement. A recent study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzed the effects of Ethiopian industrial labor working in sweatshops on the lives and income of Ethiopians.

It compared the livelihood of workers who were offered factory jobs and workers who were offered nothing. Researchers Chris Blattman and Stefan Dercon found that the income of workers who were employed in factory jobs was slightly higher than the income of the workers who were offered nothing, or employed in the informal sector. While wages and employment in the informal sector are often unstable and volatile, a factory job provides temporary stability and steady wages for workers in between jobs.

In a country that does not provide a social safety net, like unemployment insurance, even temporary unemployment can have devastating effects. This makes the short-term and stable industrial jobs so vital for the wellbeing of many citizens in developing nations, who although face a higher risk of disease and injury, rely on these jobs for the social safety net that countries like Ethiopia cannot yet afford to provide.

There are few issues where Keynesian economists, like Jeffrey Sachs and Paul Krugman , and libertarian think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute can see eye to eye on. But in the case of sweatshops, they both recognize their role in improving the lives of people living in the developing world. While seemingly counterintuitive, many economists agree that these sweatshops play an important role in development.

The theory attempts to explain the process of growth within emerging markets. According to Lewis, there are two economies of developing nations, the traditional sector, based on rural agriculture and the modern sector, based on urban manufacturing. The former involves low productivity, as a large surplus of workers produce very little and farm for basic subsistence.

The latter, on the other hand, incorporates a higher level of productivity using technology, allowing workers to put their labor to greater use. Lewis stated that because workers in the agricultural sector are so unproductive, labor could move to the modern economy, where it could play a much more productive role and agricultural production would be left unaffected.

This would lead to the improved welfare and productivity of the nation. Labor would continue to move from agriculture to manufacturing until it is distributed among both sectors to the point that productivity per each unit of labor is maximized, or until they have the same marginal product of labor, as economists say.

As a result, wages would increase and poverty would decrease. Many cotton farmers work in highly hazardous conditions to produce cotton for the factories. In a survey from Benin, West Africa, 45 percent of cotton farmers said they used pesticide containers to carry water, and 20—35 percent used them to hold milk or soup.

Another study found that 86 percent of households in the cotton industry stored their pesticides in their bedroom. Farmers work bare-footed, bare-handed and are directly exposed to pesticides. An Egyptian study found that 88 percent of cotton workers had never used protective clothing - though cotton is the most pesticide-intensive crop in the world.

Two of the industries where the use of slave labor is most common is the garment industry and the cotton industry. No industrialized country would allow pesticides to be used under the conditions common in African cotton fields or in Asian sweatshops. But we are happy to buy the cheap cotton and clothing. Go for organically grown cotton and clothes that are produced responsibly without the use of child or slave labor.

Spread the message. Through these, they exchange information about supplier factories, including reports about working conditions. Publishing supplier factory information would allow brands sourcing from the same factory to exchange key information about working conditions and potentially collaborate to prevent labor abuses or dangerous conditions.

Some argue that their membership in initiatives like the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a binding agreement between brands and global unions, forged after the Rana Plaza collapse, is proof of their commitment to transparency.

The Bangladesh Accord publishes a list of all garment factories covered by the initiative, but does not publicly identify which factory produces for what brand, let alone globally. At least one company, Inditex which owns Zara and other brands , has refused to publish any supplier factory information, arguing that it privately discloses the data to global unions with whom it has signed a global framework agreement, intended to improve working conditions throughout its supplier factories globally.

Publishing supplier factory information would only amplify the effectiveness of such a global framework agreement. Their practices demonstrate that the two tools—framework agreements and transparency—can coexist. Multi-stakeholder initiatives—involving different stakeholders from the garment industry, such as brands and NGOs, including the Ethical Trading Initiative, the Fair Labor Association, and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition—should play an important role in moving the industry toward basic transparency.

Such initiatives should make publishing supplier factory information a condition of membership and seek time-bound plans from existing apparel and footwear member-companies to move toward this goal. At the very least, they should require that brands in prominent leadership roles—such as boards of such initiatives—publish supplier factory information.

Primark, for example, is on the board of the Ethical Trading Initiative, making its refusal to go transparent all the more reproachable. Walmart, one of the founders of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, has yet to publish its global supplier factory information. Investors, including pension funds, can use their role as owners in companies to press for transparency. It is not just a social imperative but can help reduce their financial risks by allowing for better preventative measures through collaboration with other brands.

The Corporate Human Rights Benchmark—backed by investors including the London-based assessment management company Aviva Investors—also requires apparel companies to map and disclose at least the upper layer of their supply chain. Only they can impose penalties on noncompliant companies, and only they can set enforceable standards that truly level the playing field for businesses and workers. Tragically, the combination of reluctance to regulate companies and overall government apathy has meant there have not been strong legislative efforts worldwide to address human rights concerns in the garment industry.

Legislation that specifically requires apparel and footwear companies to publish supplier factory information would be an important step. Nevertheless, the increasing attempts by some governments to legislate on company responsibilities towards human rights in their global supply chains may lead to some change.

For example, the UK Modern Slavery Act—which among other things, requires companies to monitor for modern slavery in their supply chains, does not specifically require companies to publish supplier factory information. But it has served as a catalyst for transparency: a number of UK apparel and footwear companies have published supplier factory information as part of their overall risk mitigation strategy on modern slavery in their supply chains.

The French law on due diligence by companies is yet another piece of legislation that serves as a good example that can be built on. In the post-Rana Plaza world, no apparel company should think twice about a basic level of transparency. Shabana in Bangladesh still struggles to piece her life back together.