The appeasement of injustice inherent in this argument is easily
seen through when the argument is spoken by people who view success in
the free market as a moral good. But a similar argument has also come
from more compassionate voices, notably in a recent op-ed in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof.
This piece generated substantial buzz. If you google the term
"sweatshops," it now comes up as the sixteenth entry. (Thus, support
for sweatshops from the left is now a standing part of the
international dialog on this issue.) And—judging by the echoes and
plaudits that it received around the web—the piece caused a great deal
of second-guessing among progressives about whether or not we need to
keep fighting to eradicate sweatshops.
As the popularity of Kristof’s article shows, the anti-sweatshop
movement can’t afford to assume that rational people who are proponants
of justice have fully internalized the reasons to oppose sweatshops.
So, for those who find Kristof’s argument appealing, allow me to offer
the following counter point.
Kristof claims that working in a sweatshop is “a cherished dream”
for many people in the developing world. This may be the case, but
dreams don’t always turn out so well when they come true. Just
ask the thousands of young Chinese girls who are sent by their families
to work in big-city factories only to become indentured servants
without the funds to return home to the countryside, even if they
wanted to.
And even in those cases where sweatshop labor is an improvement, how
does that excuse us from inaction when so many workers are subjected to
forced overtime, criminally low wages, unsafe conditions, verbal abuse,
and sexual harassment; all while the executives of the clothing giants
who order from these factories are living high on the hog?
The main problem with Kristof’s argument is that he seems to assume
that the goal of the anti-sweatshop movement is to shut down factories
where sweatshop abuses take place. In fact, it is understood within the
movement that shutting down a factory in the face of a campaign by
workers to better their condition is in and of itself a sweatshop
condition. Sweatshop activists don’t want workers to lose their jobs.
We’re saying that those jobs should be dignified ones in which workers
earn something approaching their fair share of the profits of their
labor.
Some factory workers may indeed prefer sweatshops over the
alternatives Kristof presents, which include trying to scratch a living
out of the garbage dumps in Phnom Penh. However, most still reside in
abject poverty without meaningful hope for upward movement. One of the
main goals of the anti-sweatshop movement is to help create a global
middle class of blue collar workers. Wherever the movement succeeds,
greater democracy and a thriving civil society are likely to follow.
And this, as much as direct aid or anything else that sweatshop
apologists might propose to do, will help that family living in a
garbage dump in Phnom Penh, dreaming of sweatshops.
