...Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat? Benjamin Powell David Skarbek Independent Institute Working Paper Number 53 September 27, 2004 100 Swan Way, Oakland, CA 94621-1428 • 510-632-1366 • Fax: 510-568-6040 • Email: info@independent.org • http://www.independent.org Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat? Benjamin Powell and David Skarbek• Department of Economics San Jose State University San Jose, CA 95192-0114 benjamin.powell@sjsu.edu ABSTRACT Many studies have shown that multinational firms pay more than domestic firms in Third World countries. Economists critical of sweatshops have responded that multinational firms’ wage data do not address whether sweatshop jobs are above average because many of these jobs are with domestic subcontractors. In this paper we compare apparel industry wages and the wages of individual firms accused of being sweatshops to measures of the standard of living in Third World economies. We find that most sweatshop jobs provide an above average standard of living for their workers. Benjamin Powell is an Assistant Professor of Economics at San Jose State University and the Director of the Center for the Study of Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute. David Skarbek is an economics major at San Jose State University and intern at the Independent Institute. The authors thank Jeffery Hummel, Charles Murray, Larry Pratt and Edward Stringham for helpful comments...
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...35 years ago, the women’s liberation movement raised the hopes and expectations of a generation of women. This movement challenged the prevailing notion that women were supposed to spend their entire lives engaged in housework and raising children. It demanded equal pay for women in the workplace, publicly funded child care, and the legalization of abortion. It challenged sexist stereotypes of women and the ideal of the traditional nuclear family, which often tied women to abusive or oppressive relationships. While the Ozzie and Harriet myth of the nuclear family—with a male breadwinner and stay-at-home mother—never really existed for many working-class Americans, the women’s liberation movement altered people’s ideas about the role of women...
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...Tiffany Shelby Annotated Bibliography Capella University Cohen, R. (Ed.). (2002). Dear Mrs. Roosevelt: Letters from children of the great depression. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. The editor provides a context and elaborates on the meaning of nearly 200 letters written to Eleanor Roosevelt by children and youth experiencing the hardships of the Great Depression from 1933-1941. The young people request individual assistance, explain why their families are unable to provide basic necessities, and justify the worthiness of their requests. The poignant letters provide some insight into hard-working families during this period who either have no employment, work part-time, or work at low-paying jobs. Children and youth plead with Mrs. Roosevelt for clothing; for money to ward off evictions, pay debts, and purchase simple household conveniences; for funds for educational expenses, Christmas gifts for family members, marriage and new household expenses, bicycles to help their families, and for radios to ameliorate loneliness. The letters attest to the courage, tenacity, and intelligence of youth who had few resources, but hoped for better lives during this era. The editor also clarifies Mrs. Roosevelt and her staff’s responses to the letters. Only 1 percent of youths received the material assistance they requested. About 5 percent were told by Mrs. Roosevelt’s staff to seek help from New Deal agencies, 3 percent were directed toward charities, and...
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...side it was taking advantage of overseas workers working at cheap labor cost. b) Social issues in this case are Safety, Health and poor working environment. Nike was the first company to join a World Wildlife Fund program to reduce greenhouse admissions. 2. Nike should be responsible for what happens in factories that it does not own to keep and protect reputation name of Nike because it pay wages to the workers working in the subcontracted factories. Yes, Nike has the responsibility to ensure that factory workers should receive a “living wage” because according to law, it is the responsibility of the company to respect and follow the labor and employment rights of workers, to consider of impact of its functioning on environment, provide a good working environment to workers, follow the code of conduct and certain moral and ethical standards. As it is the responsibility of local government to decide the minimum wage rate. The wage guidelines given by FLA and WRC seem to be appropriate to me because according to those institutions, a company should pay the minimum wage rate according to the country where it is operating so that workers can meet its basic needs. 3. First thing that I would like to say is that it is completely inappropriate to compare these both sides....
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...Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: The article “Sweatshops and Third World Living Standards: Are the Jobs Worth the Sweat?” analyzes the meaning of sweatshops in Third World countries from different point of views. The authors gives us a little bit of understanding around the meaning of the word and also try to address and compare the different wages in the apparel industry with the wages of other individual firms accused of being sweatshops as well as their influence on the standard of living in Third World countries. Economists nowadays view sweatshops as a creation of wealth for Third World countries unlike some anti-sweatshop activists, and that the idea of fighting them would create a huge loss on the employment and the future investment in those countries. Other economists around the world support the idea that sweatshops are viewed as a voluntary agreement between workers and employers in disregard of the wage dollar. The article also mentions about the two letter that were written, one from economists from Academic Consortium on International Trades or (ACIT) that went around universities and colleges to bring awareness and point out the negative effects of anti-sweatshop movement, and the second one that was written by Scholars Against Sweatshop Labor or (SASL) who collected 434 signatures which 73% of them were from economist, in respond to the one from (ACIT), that supported the movement that was created by student against sweatshops. The author...
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...Between 1870 and 1910 the population rose by 132 percent, but the number of people involved in industrial labor soared even more rapidly-from 3,500,000 to 14,200,000. The experience of workers led to the Progressive Movement in Industrial America due to the inhumane and often fatal working conditions laborers experience, the incredibly long hours for low wages, and the crowded and extremely unsanitary tenements and workplaces. Laborers often work in inhumane and often fatal or incredibly dangerous working conditions. "The air at times is dense with coal-dust, which penetrates so far into the passages of the lungs that for long periods after the boy leaves the breaker, he continues to cough up the black coal dust. Fingers are calloused and...
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...Farm Labor Movement Farm labors are one of the most unrecognizable jobs that we have in the United States. Most people do not ever realize, when they purchase fruits and vegetables at the local super markets, how much work is required in the planting, caring, and harvesting before these items arrive at the store. When I was a child, I was ignorant to the hardships that my parents had to go through to make a living. As my father said, “that was a time when no one cared about the farm worker to where we did not have clean water, bathrooms, a fair wage, unemployment insurance, and lunch break that was not long enough to be able to eat all of our lunch” (Mexicano, 2012). “The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about the people” (Chavez, n.d.). Although many farm workers were afraid of speaking out, because they did not want to lose their jobs, there were a few that wanted to make better working conditions for all and this is when the Farm Labor Movement began. There were other movements like the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, Community Service Organization (CSO), the American GI Forum (AGIF), or the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), but the one movement that had the biggest impact in the United Stated was the United Farm Workers (UFW). The Mexican American Civil Rights Movement began in the 1940’s, and their goal was in achieving the Mexican American empowerment. The Community Service Organization was founded in 1947 and was a California Latino...
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...present their solutions to this issue. The minimum wage has been presented as a viable option in solving this issue of poverty that allegedly plagues the nation. The first federal wage regulations were passed under FDR in the 1930s, and many states already had their own wage regulations in place. Recently, there has been a growing movement for a substantial increase in the federal minimum wage. Many large cities and several states have increased their minimum wage or have begun working towards a higher minimum wage over the next several...
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...The debate over minimum wage is a pivotal issue that affects millions of workers and businesses. The minimum wage is the lowest legal compensation that employers can offer to employees, a figure that can influence the quality of life, economic stability, and the purchasing power of a workforce. The passage “The Fight for Fifteen Movement Is a Costly Job Killer” by David W. Kreutzer, explains that increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour could have negative economic impacts. Kreutzer said higher wages could lead to higher prices and less hiring, hurting businesses and customers. The passage “Minimum Wage Increase Proposal Does Not Go Far Enough” by C. J. Polychroniou, has the opposite opinion. Polychroniou shares that the minimum wage cost has not changed in over 10 years. Not only has the minimum wage not increased in recent years, but the price of living has skyrocketed. As such, discussions around minimum wage often revolve around its impact on poverty reduction, employment rates, economic growth, and the overall fairness in the distribution of wealth. This complex and multifaceted topic invites a closer examination of how changes in minimum wage policy can ripple through society....
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...to the United States both legal and illegal continues to have a variety of effects. Most economic historians believe the effects of immigration have been much less harmful than commonly supposed and, in many ways, have been beneficial. Positive Economic Effects Immigration provides several economic benefits to the United States. The argument for the free movement of labor among nations is exactly the same as the argument for the free movement of labor among the sectors of the domestic economy. Suppose an economy produces only two goods, X and Y. If demand for good X picks up, the demand for labor used to produce X rises as the marginal revenue product of labor employed in the production of X increases. Labor will move out of the production of good Y if and only if its productivity is higher in X in terms of the value of output. This movement ensures efficiency. Recall the simple definition that an efficient economy produces what people want at least cost. Those who favor a looser policy believe immigrants do not displace U.S. workers but rather take jobs that Americans do not want. Immigrants serve as domestics and low-wage farm workers producing things that the United States needs. In addition, the U.S. economy has absorbed wave after wave of immigrants while maintaining virtually full employment. At the opposite spectrum of the economy, the Cato Institute reports that one-quarter of all engineering and technology companies founded between 1995 and 2005 had at least one key...
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...up becoming or aiding some form of a social movement. Social movements were and still are an integral part within the making of modern America. Some of the most notable social movements are The Women’s Rights Movement and The Civil Rights Movement. Although these are not the only ones that made a large impact within the country, they merely are just the most taught. Another movement that made an impact on this country is the labor movement, this movement was first started in mid-1800’s. The first labor movement was mainly focused on factory workers and people working within cities. It missed...
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...From the 1890’s to the 1920’s, a new movement occurred, known as the Progressive movement. The main goal of this movement was to spread awareness of major issues to American citizens and ultimately, to discover solutions to major social, economic, and political problems. Eventually, the social reformers were successful, because of the changes brought to the workplace and the betterment of living conditions in large cities. During the early 1890’s, many companies had poor working conditions. These included long workdays, child labor, and no payment for injuries on the job. Social reformers used muckraking, or digging up scandalous information, to put the word out about these issues. One famous muckraker was Upton Sinclair, writer for the Chicago Tribune and author of The Jungle. His works, particularly The Jungle exposed the terrible working conditions of the meat packing industry in Chicago. This novel upset many, as it portrayed the awful lives of the men who worked at the plants. In addition to this revealing novel, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire also occurred. This fire was caused by smoking within the factory, and caused the deaths of many women, as the door was locked and the fire escape was blocked. This tragic event was an eye opener, and caused many reforms in the way workers must be treated. For example, the Adamson Act limited the workday to only eight hours. This was also made law by Holden vs. Hardy, while a law was passed in Oregon stating women could work...
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...The Chicano Movement, also known as the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, was a campaign in the 1960’s in the southwestern United States for Latino Civil Rights. Similar to many civil rights groups in that time period, the Chicano Movement promoted awareness of injustices done to Chicanos, people of Mexican ancestry. According to an online article about immigration to the United States, the origin of the term Chicano is unclear, however, “some experts believe that the word originated from an improper pronunciation or slang version of Mexicano.” The Chicano Movement focused on discrimination, voting rights, work and pay discrimination, and ethnic stereotyping. According to an article from the Library of Congress, “Mexican Americans faced...
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...The opening phrase on ‘Labor’ in history.com reads like this : “The labor movement in the United States grew out of the need to protect the common interest of workers. For those in the industrial sector, organized labor unions fought for better wages, reasonable hours and safer working conditions. The labor movement led efforts to stop child labor, give health benefits and provide aid to workers who were injured or retired.” The factors that led to the rise of labor unions: An in depth analysis of the factors that led to the rise of labor unions in the United States only reveals that the basic need and the primary objective of the workering people was to secure economic and legal protection from their exploiting employers. The origins of the...
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...Manzano Angelina Professor Veronica Herrera PUB AFF 112 03 March 2024 Power to the Tenants ‘Power to the Tenants’ is a social movement campaign that is a part of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) representing the left-wing socialists of the US. This social movement is particularly centered around the RSO, otherwise known as the “Rent Stabilization Ordinance”. One of the main campaigns associated comes from the ‘Hillside Villa Tenants’. The argument here is that the rent within Los Angeles County has become outrageously overpriced and the quality of housing provided does not meet the standards of what the people are paying for. The RSO works in parallel with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to raise rent every year due to the precedent inflation within the economy (DSA-LA, para 2). This law was placed as a legal measure...
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