For Better or for Worst
Sarah Stillman addresses the sweatshop debate from a primarily utilitarian standpoint. This standpoint doesn’t consider multiple important factors and is not an indication of how people actually act. In my opinion, Stillman’s stance reveals a failure to address the globalized nature of the sweatshop phenomenon with regards to the ease with which corporations are capable of moving their operations to other countries. On the other hand, she does bring up important ethical concerns that should be addressed. In her 2005 essay Made by Us: Young Women, Sweatshops, and the Ethics of Globalization, author Sarah Stillman provides the reader with a narrative of her experiences interacting with young women employed in Latin American sweatshops. She indicates that she believes that globalization – a process marked by the growing interconnectedness of global systems – has been lead to a proliferation of sweatshop factories in the third world and expresses concern that young women are “increasingly bearing the burdens of globalization while reaping relatively few of its tremendous rewards" . Although it is not explicitly stated in her essay, Stillman seems to espouse a primarily utilitarian philosophy in her moral judgements of the sweatshop industry. John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher and founder of the utilitarian school of moral reasoning, describes it as the following: [t]he creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the greatest happiness principles, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness
Author Anthony Weston expands upon this statement, indicating that he believes utilitarianism is a “moral commitment to the happiness of all, to the good of the whole... [a state in which] more is better and the most the best.” The moral argument presented by Stillman is congruent with this philosophy. Promoting happiness in this case can be represented by the health and well-being of factory workers. Conversely, the actual conditions of the sweatshops, notably their purportedly substandard pay and poor working conditions, are very unlikely to “promote happiness”. Therefore, the continued operation of these sweatshops can be seen as morally wrong. Stillman offers two arguments against sweatshops from this perspective: the first, that young women working in such factories are given insufficient compensation for the wealth they generate and the second, that they are unfairly subject to harsh and often inappropriate working conditions. Both of these components likely decrease the overall happiness of the workers. Examining the issue of sweatshops from a financial standpoint, Stillman indicates her conviction that the corporations involved in the operation of sweatshops are often able to extract substantial profits through the abuse of their workers. She notes statements made by Charles Kernaghan, the director of the National Labour Committee, a US-based human rights NGO. He is quoted as indicating that a shirt produced by a woman in Honduras for 15¢ USD in compensation was sold to consumers for $40 USD. Without making an explicit statement, Stillman is effectively asking the reader if they believe that this level of compensation is appropriate given the purported suffering of the workers. The possible happiness gain that a consumer may experience from lower prices extracted through such labour practices would likely be seen by many as substantially less important than the potential happiness gain which sweatshop workers would receive from increased pay. Proponents of sweatshops would likely disagree with this perspective, even from the utilitarian standpoint. Many believe that consumers’ benefit from lower prices outweighs the needs of workers. While consumers may benefit from low prices, the relative harm caused by a small increase in the price of certain consumer goods is outweighed thoroughly by the outright gain which factory workers could enjoy if they received greater compensation for their work. Moreover, many of the problems described by Stillman could be remedied even without an increase in wages. It is highly doubtful that the poor working conditions or the physical, verbal and sexual abuse of workers she describes contributes positively to their overall productivity or happiness. For example, she describes a sweatshop in Honduras as having no access to clean drinking water, indicating that the sources available for workers were contaminated with fecal matter . Drinking from an unclean water source has the potential to lead to sickness. A worker sick with cholera, for instance, is not only likely to be unhappy but is also more likely to be unable to perform his or her job at peak efficiency, thus increasing overall production costs. Therefore, the consequences of such abuse can be seen as negative both from a utilitarian worker-oriented viewpoint as well as from a perspective more concerned with consumer and corporate well-being. Stillman raises an interesting point midway through her paper, indicating that despite her condemnation of products produced in sweatshop environments, their presence in her life is ubiquitous. She states that upon introspection, she has found herself “submerged in a system that genuinely repulses [her] ethical sensibilities.” This statement is fascinating when considering the broader state of the anti-sweatshop movement over the past twenty years. She notes that efforts to raise awareness and to end negative practices in sweatshops had great popular support in the 1990s, but failed to achieve substantive changes to sweatshop operations. This suggests an interesting aspect to utilitarianism in practice. Despite knowledge of what the best course of action in a given situation might be (in this case, demanding that producers operate their factories in ethical ways), many consumers remain apathetic to the needs of a greater good. This apathy indicates that utilitarianism may be a poor predictor of human behaviour. Stillman’s argument also fails to address the globalized nature of sweatshop economies. She recalls statements purportedly made by a factory manager seeking to encourage his workers to increase their productivity, asking a young woman if she knew “how many girls are lined up in China who would die for this work?” While the author attempts to use this statement in order to illustrate the potential dangers of overwork, it also carries another more latent message: local victories against sweatshops may not be positive developments due to the globalized nature of the phenomenon. For instance, if labour-rights organizers win concessions against a corporation to better working conditions and increase pay for workers in their country, there may be little incentive left to remain in that country when other locations may offer a more permissive workforce or more complacent regulations. Examining this issue from a utilitarian perspective raises a difficult question: would workers in countries such as Honduras maximize their happiness with sweatshop factories in which the poor working conditions, substandard pay and abuse persist, or with no sweatshops at all? Without sweatshops, former employees could be freed of their poor working conditions, but would also be freed of their regular (although very low) pay. The answer to this question is unclear, though if it were to prove to be the former, parties such as Ms. Stillman could be seen as morally wrong for seeking to improve working conditions and compensation for sweatshop workers. In conclusion, Stillman generates a moral argument centred around utilitarian, humanistic concerns for young women working in sweatshop conditions in the third world. At first glance, her argument is sound; the relative gain for workers through increased wages far outweighs the relative gain that consumers receive from purchasing consumer goods at marginally lower prices as well as the relative gain that corporations experience through cost-savings exercises. Examining her stance more thoroughly however reveals failures on a pragmatic level by failing to address the globalization aspect of the sweatshop phenomenon with respect to the readiness and ease with which corporations are willing to move their operations to other countries if they deem it necessary. Works Cited
Stillman, Sarah. "Made by Us: Young Women, Sweatshops and the Ethics of Globalization."
2005. http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/CM_Images/UploadedImages/WinnersEssays/Sarah_ Stillman.pdf (accessed 14 November 2010).

Weston, Anthony. A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000.