This post is in response to Jessica Lao’s post on Sweatshops
For more than a decade, sweatshops have been a grim issue. With the development of globalization, multinational corporation (MNC) or multinational enterprise (MNE) put their branches in developing countries with low wages, hazardous materials and situations for employees. They take advantages of labour and environment resources with a low cost in developing countries to maximize their profit.
Their is no doubt that sweatshops is not the only problem, child labourer is also a controversial issue. According to a National Labor Committee 2006 report, an estimated 200 children, some 11 years old or even younger, are sewing clothing for Hanes, Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, and Puma at the Harvest Rich factory in Bangladesh.
These are severe ethical problems concerning MNC, the government and consumers. First of all, employees facing these problems have no choice but to work in these companies due to the low income of their families situation, in other words, little is better than nothing. Second, MNC is beneficial to local economy. Besides, products with lower cost have lower price which most people prefer.
The most responsible part of these is the government, they need to formulate laws and regulations to improve labours’ rights.
Reference： http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/NLC_childlabor.html