Following up from last week’s post on sweatshops in Bangladesh, I came across another classmate’s blog that contained a similar post. Cherihan’s post explored the revelation of Primark’s use of child labor in order to produce some of their clothing. BBC’s Panorama Program found out that this UK company was using firms in India that worked with underaged children to embroider shirts. Even though this company did fire the firms that dealt with child labor, Cherihan asked the question whether they would have done so had BBC’s Panorama Program not reveal this problem. If it was still hidden from the public, would Primark have done anything? This is similar to my last post and how Wal-mart had asked that the report that showed they were using sweatshops not be produced in order for the public to not know.
It seems that many companies use unethical practices in order to gain a little more profit but once the public knows about such, they claim that they knew nothing of it and try to fix the problem. It’s as if such ethical violations are allowed as long as the public is unaware of them.