Sweatshop

If the real purpose of all the uproar about sweatshop labor in the Third World is to allow college students and professors to feel morally one-up on businesses that are providing much-needed jobs in poor countries, then it accomplishes that purpose.

Sweatshop labor, rainforest destruction, global warming, displacement of indigenous communities, air and water pollution, eradication of wildlife on farmland as “pests”, the violent overthrow of popularly elected governments to maintain puppet dictators compliant to big business interests, open-pit strip mining, oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas, union busting, child slavery, and payoffs to repressive regimes are just some of the many impacts of the seemingly innocuous consumer products we consume every day.

A lot of the products we buy are made by sweatshop workers or even slaves.

"In this shop they sell really cheap kitchen utensils." "Exactly, and they're made by slave-labourers in some South Asian sweatshop. I wouldn't shop there even if I was paid to."

Many Jews were employed in the garment industry, working under sweatshop conditions.

I should quit this sweatshop job and move to a good company.

June 12 marks the World Day Against Child Labor sponsored by the International Labor Organization. The annual occasion is meant to draw policy attention to the more than 200 million children around the world who work full time, many in sweatshop conditions.

I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for the sweatshop workers poised to help me realize my vision.