Sweatshop

A sweatshop is a factory, usually in a third-world country, where people work for a very small wage compared to their first-world counterparts, producing a variety of products such as clothes, toys, shoes, and other consumer goods. The term is usually used as a pejorative, and connotes a factory in which the workers may be kept in a harsh environment with inadequate ventilation, and may sometimes be abused physically, mentally, or sexually, subjected to long hours, harsh or unsafe conditions, and the like. Some companies have been found to use children in their subcontracting sweatshops. Some countries where sweatshops are found forbid the practice of trade unionization.

External links

• http://www.nlcnet.org/ National Labor Committee
• http://www.sweatshops.org/ An anti-sweatshops information site
• http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/ Another informational site
• http://www.aworldconnected.org/ Resources and information on sweatshops
• http://papers.nber.org/papers/w9669 National Bureau for Economic Research paper: The Effects of Multinational Production on Wages and Working Conditions in Developing Countries
• http://home.sandiego.edu/~mzwolinski/Sweatshops_essay_web.pdf .pdf on the ethics of sweatshops
• http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000924mag-sweatshops.html New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDun
• http://www.fairolympics.org/ Fairolympics.org - An initiative for fairer sports goods
• http://www.nosweatapparel.com/index.html Sweatshop-free, union-made apparel
• "Foreign owned businesses in Vietnam aren't sweatshops" Article cites study that seems to contradict negative images of foreign-owned businesses in 3rd world