Sweatshop
A sweatshop and sweatshop is a derogatory term for factories or factories, usually in a developing country, where people work for low wages.
Multinational corporations are outsourcing their jobs with mainly manual activities and moderate education requirements often in sweatshops, in order to reduce labor costs.
The predominant in such establishments working conditions are often described as follows:
- No collective agreements
- Long working hours
- Lack of protection against dismissal
Sweatshops are primarily found in developing and emerging countries ( in Latin America under the name maquiladora ). Many young girls and women in India work in sweatshops (eg Sumangali factories ) because they have to generate the socially anchored dowry.
History
The first sweatshops originated at the beginning of the industrial revolution in England during the 1830s to 1850s. The previous medieval craft, with the " workshop" (compare "workshop" ) those premises and is employed apprentices and journeyman, began to lose its former importance. Especially in the field of textile production larger factory systems formed out early, who had a high need for workers in the simplest activities. Here joined the " Sweater" as a middle man in the " sweating system" on which to "sweat " = " sweat" figuratively the working conditions in the newly established premises ( home industry) reproduced that one from about 1850 there as a " sweatshop " to distinguish called conventional workshops.
With the development of the " sweating system" was established in the course of this decade, more and more the phenomenon that a sweater middleman had again subcontractors, which in turn had sub-contractors, in turn, had sub-contractors, the withholding each money from the original contract, to the extent that a workers at a pittance produced the actual work. Pittance at that time was not to be understood in a figurative sense, as Charles Kingsley of 1850 represented in his essay "Cheap Clothes and Nasty " because the wage was not enough to survive in the sweatshops. This period also falls Friedrich Engels ' The Condition of the Working Class in England " of 1844 /45, which was written under a similar impression, but does not mention the term sweatshop.
The working conditions, was used in the without any labor and health protection has been criticized early on ( Pauperismusliteratur ) and has led to the emergence of late capitalism to an extensive list of protection. The term changed herself so to designate those companies that do not respect the established policy. With the emergence of emerging countries in which in turn arose the phenomena of sweatshops, led to a resurgence of the term - it became a marketing argument of " sweatshop-free " care is taken in the context of business ethics to adequate working conditions in supplier factories. A definition of the meaning is not given here - tightly restricted alone are worthy of criticism working conditions with a high proportion of manual work, while it coincides in the generalization with sweatshops of any kind.
Critique of the sweatshop concept
Critics of the sweatshop concept argue that despite the - measured by western standards - poor working conditions employed in these establishments people would otherwise be unemployed. Various studies show that wages in the multinational corporations operated or contracted production are mostly in developing countries on average wages in these countries. Campaigns against the purchase of goods produced in sweatshops hurt the workers in poor countries thus.
Nevertheless, these businesses, principally of Western anti-globalization NGOs are often also referred to collectively as sweatshops. This points to the widespread false, since extensive, use of sweatshop concept.
When used properly, can argue, however, that just the term " sweatshop " precisely the definition of the measured Western standards, working conditions and includes measures against these - and thus contradicts the criticism of the definition.