Sweatshops
Statistics
There are a lot of sweatshops in the world. This is the place where all of the information stays in.
In China
China is a big country. Its land is huge and the people are flooding. Using these resources, they are now often called the factory of the world. They have been exporting 34 percent of the clothing in the world. Worthy of its name, China has been experiencing a rapid growth in economy.
Despite the rapid economic growth, it backfired to the 482 million people in China, which is 32 percent of the population is living with less than 2 US dollars. 85 percent of the poor population moves outside fromt the countryside to find jobs in the cities.
China's rapid economic growth rely on these people, also including illegal migrants who seeks for jobs. There are approximately around 150 million people in China, in which works hard, and is vulnerable from the protection of law and order due to their status.
Their monthly salary is around 1300 HKD, compared to, for example, a construction worker in Hong Kong who can earn 2300 HKD maximum a day. However, workers in the sweatshop has to work more than 70 hours a week (which means at least 10 hours a day), while a construction worker works 7-8 hours a day, 49-64 hours total.
The environment is harsh. In 2009 alone, around 1 million people in the sweatshop suffered for industrial diseases, while 20000 people suffered from occupational diseases.
Current and future trends
The technology trend brought this issue much worse. As time goes by, the flood of information through social media has confused people from focusing on one or two issues, which caused less interest and support to this issue.
Not only the technology trend made this worse, the unemployment trend and poverty trend made it worse than before. As educated people takes all the jobs that normal poor people used to have due to the increasing trend of unemployment rate, poor people lost their jobs, which pushes them to become poorer. This forced them to move to a new place or country, which made them end up in a sweatshop.
This problem will get worse due to the economic slowdown starts to change as a economic fall. Due to the downfall of economy, rich people will seek a way to make more profit and secure the wealth that they have in the economic crisis. This greed will make the poor poorer than before. Also, as the baby boomers die, jobs that required a low education will start to find a better educated people for their company's good. It will eventually bring the seperation of educated and non-educated as the rich and poor.
Companies
A lot of companies hire cheap or desperate workers for their sweatshops. These are some of the companies:
H&M
In 2010, one of their sweatshops burned and killed 21 workers by insufficient safety supplies and the fire exit blocked. They were before been accused for hiring young children from the Philiphines as child labor.
Nike
The most issued company for sweatshops. Watch the video from 5:00 to 12:00 from the WHO section.
Walmart
Walmart was accused in 2008 for making their workers work 19-hour shift a day, paying them 20 dollars a month.
Gap
People found out that Gap also made their workers work 16-hours a day in a cost of 40 cents per day.
Marks and Spencer
They were caught with Gap, also shown that they paid 1 dollar an hour, in a 16 hour shift.
Other companies are:
Victoria's secret
Disney