The Ethical and Economic Case for Sweatshop Regulation (original) (raw)

The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshops: A Critical Assessment

During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop behavior, and to point out that there is more room for consensus regarding some of these methods than has previously been recognized. It addresses the question of when sweatshops are justified in violating local labor laws. And it assesses the relevance of recent literature on coercion and exploitation as it applies to sweatshop labor. It concludes with a list of challenges that critics of sweatshops must meet to productively advance the debate.

Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation

This paper argues that a sweatshop worker's choice to accept the conditions of his or her employment is morally significant, both as an exercise of autonomy and as an expression of preference. This fact establishes a moral claim against interference in the conditions of sweatshop labor by third parties such as governments or consumer boycott groups. It should also lead us to doubt those who call for MNEs to voluntarily improve working conditions, at least when their arguments are based on the claim that workers have a moral right to such improvement. These conclusions are defended against three objections: 1) that sweatshop workers' consent to the conditions of their labor is not fully voluntary, 2) that sweatshops' offer of additional labor options is part of an overall package that actually harms workers, 3) that even if sweatshop labor benefits workers, it is nevertheless wrongfully exploitative.

The Ethical and Economic Case Against Sweatshop Labor: A Critical Assessment

During the last decade, scholarly criticism of sweatshops has grown increasingly sophisticated. This article reviews the new moral and economic foundations of these criticisms and argues that they are flawed. It seeks to advance the debate over sweatshops by noting the extent to which the case for sweatshops does, and does not, depend on the existence of competitive markets. It attempts to more carefully distinguish between different ways in which various parties might seek to modify sweatshop behavior, and to point out that there is more room for consensus regarding some of these methods than has previously been recognized. It addresses the question of when sweatshops are justified in violating local labor laws. And it assesses the relevance of recent literature on coercion and exploitation as it applies to sweatshop labor. It concludes with a list of challenges that critics of sweatshops must meet to productively advance the debate.

A Contractualist Defense of Sweatshop Regulation

Business Ethics Journal Review, 2022

Kates argues that ex ante contractualism fails to defend interference with sweatshops on moral grounds. In this commentary, I argue that Kates does not apply this approach correctly. Ex ante contractualism, indeed, successfully defends interference and thus should still be considered an appealing alternative to other moral approaches for evaluating when and how to interfere in sweatshop conditions to help workers.

Optimality, Deception, and the New Case for Sweatshops

Sophisticated recent proponents of sweatshops no longer defend them on purely economic grounds, but instead grant that sweatshops are permissible only if employment contracts are voluntary and the promised economic growth optimally benefits the worst-off. Nonetheless, proponents argue that these conditions are in fact met, and that sweatshops generally benefit the poorest workers the most. The current article argues that the case for sweatshops is founded on fatal methodological errors including second-best fallacies and ignoring massive negative externalities. The sweatshop economy is based on a capital-flight model that militates against the promised development, and hence is essentially deceptive. Further, sweatshops ensnare poor people into a doomed mass-consumption model of economic development. Sweatshops are therefore immoral, by standards that the proponents themselves endorse. The article concludes with some tentative reflections on political and consumer-driven responses to sweatshops. Keywords: Sweatshops; Development; Capital Flight; Global Economy; Mass Consumption

Reassessing the Exploitation Charge in Sweatshop Labor

Croatian journal of philosophy

One common argument against sweatshops is that they are exploitative. Exploitation is taken as sufficient reason to condemn sweatshops as unjust and to argue that sweatshop owners have a moral duty to offer better working conditions to their employees. In this article, I argue that any exploitation theory falls short of covering all standard cases of sweatshops as exploitative. In going through the most prominent theories of exploitation, I explain why any given sweatshop can either be wrongfully exploitative or not, depending on the exploitation theory being considered and the circumstances of the application. I conclude by suggesting that sweatshop critics had better find other reasons besides the charge of exploitation to protest or interfere with these workplaces.

Arguments for and against Sweatshops.

Sweatshops are defined by International Labor Rights Forum, as an organization that violates two or more labor laws (2013). These laws could be those concerning wages, working hours, working conditions, safety and disciplinary methods implemented. Workers in sweatshop are claimed to be beaten, tortured, and even sexually harassed in occasions (Australian Broadcast Network 2013). However, many argue in defense of sweatshops that even though they violate these laws, they bring more benefit than harm over long term. While others are resolute that sweatshops should be abolished due to their deplorable conditions.

Sweatshops and Exploitation: A Critical Analysis of The Scholarly Debate

Sweatshops and Exploitation: A Critical Analysis of the Scholarly Debate, 2024

The paper examines how theoretical misunderstandings of Karl Marx’s theory of value have affected scholarly debates on sweatshops and labour-exploitation more broadly. Participants to these debates tend to overlook the distinction between the form of value and the substance of value. The paper further analyses problems with an exchange-based conceptualization of the labour-process, adopted by many sweatshop-defenders. Rather than posit Marx’s own perspective as the exclusively correct position, this paper seeks to foster a more informed dialogue on the issue of labour-exploitation in global sweatshops.

"The wages of sweat: A social history perspective on the fight against sweatshops"

The social history of the fight against sweatshops casts light on the current movement in favor of corporate social responsibility. But making the head of a chain of subcontractors responsible for seeing to the wellbeing of those at the end of the chain is not contemporaneous with present-day globalization and North/South relations. Since the 19th century, when the sweatshop system appeared, those who champion the workers have pointed a finger at those who, though they only exercise indirect control, profit from their exploitation. As our historical analysis emphasizes, though in other contexts the issue of poor working conditions sometimes found solutions that (partially) avoided holding the principal liable, what characterizes the anti-sweatshop movement in the context of globalization is its nearly exclusive focus on bringing pressure to bear on the contractor at the head of the chain.

The Sweatshop as a Regime: Full Introduction to 'The Sweatshop Regime'

Every day, as we clothe ourselves, we wear the endless circuits of exploitation at work in garment sweatshops. Who is in charge of these circuits; who is subjected to them; and based on which processes are such circuits created and recreated? To what extent do our jeans, jackets, sweaters and T-shirt hide common stories of exploitation, and to what extent instead do their seams and features conceal the struggles of different working lives, exposed to and consumed by distinct production practices? At its broadest, this book unveils the processes leading to the creation and recreation of the garment sweatshop in India, in the context of greatly differentiated garment commodities and markets. This is hardly a trivial exercise, given that, as astutely observed by Karl Marx (1990, p. 280), employers always carefully and jealously guard the mysteries and secrets of the 'abode of production' , 'on whose threshold there hangs the notice " No admittance except on business " '. These mysteries and secrets are particularly numerous in the garment sector, where the 'abode of production' is fragmented and organized in composite production circuits connecting different spaces of work and geographical domains. Admittedly, many of such mysteries and secrets – even some of the most repugnant – have been unveiled throughout the last decades by the work of numerous committed scholars, researchers, journalists and activists (recent contributions come from Hoskins, 2014; Seabrook, 2015). Lately, the World Factory has even become the object of a political play interactively illustrating our false commitment to ethical capitalism once this threatens profitability (see Paul Mason's review in The Guardian, 2015). In many ways, one could say that this book simply aims at joining these critical voices by exploring the workings of the sweatshop in India, one of today's great emerging economies whose success is undoubtedly happening on the shoulders of its millions of working poor. However, while joining the numerous concerned accounts that attempt to describe the sweatshop and its impact, this book also aspires to theorize the sweatshop. In particular, the analysis developed in the following pages will try its best to convince the reader that the sweatshop must be conceptualized as