Thursday, October 30, 2008

V I S U A L L A N G U A G E : social/cultural research [sweatshops]

Footwear and sweatshops [SOCIAL/CULTURAL]

PRO-SWEATSHOP LABOR
  • economic theory of comparative advantage which states that international trade will, in the long run, make some parties better off.
  • Developing countries improve their condition by doing something that they do "better" than industrialized nations
  • Benefits developed countries because workers can shift to jobs that they do better
  • Although wages and working conditions may appear inferior by the standards of developed nations, they are actually improvements over what the people in developing countries had before
  • If the factory jobs did not improve the workers' standard of living, those workers would not have taken the jobs when they appeared
  • Sweatshops are not replacing high-paying jobs but rather offering an improvement over subsistence farming and other back-breaking tasks, or even prostitution, trash picking, or starvation by unemployment
  • Critics of sweatshops compare wages paid in one country to prices set in another
  • The $0.15 that a Honduran worker earned for the long-sleeved t-shirt was equal in purchasing power to $3.00 in the United States
  • Offer substantially higher wages and better working conditions compared to their previous jobs of manual labor
  • Sweatshops are an early step in the process of technological and economic development whereby a poor country turns itself into a rich country

ANTI-SWEATSHOP LABOR
  • harmful materials
  • pollution
  • birth defects
  • difficult and dangerous conditions
  • few rights or ways to address their situation
  • hazardous situations
  • extreme temperatures
  • abuse from employers
  • long hours for little pay
  • no overtime pay or minimum wage
  • violated child labor laws
all information found at wikipedia.org

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