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Ethical Issues Of Sweatshops

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When people mention the term sweatshops, the images that automatically come to mind are those of factories filled with people laboring away, often working many hours a day for very low wages, in a sweltering environment that is not conducive, to say the least. Given how technology and the world have advanced and progressed over the years, why is it that conditions for sweatshops seem to have stagnated and remained the same since the 1800s? This paper therefore aims to look at what are the reasons for sweatshops to still be in use until today, what ethical concerns revolve around the topic of sweatshops, and whether there are alternatives to the current situation. Could it be despite how grim the working conditions appear to be, that sweatshops are actually a necessity?
History of Sweatshops
Sweatshops have been around for a long time, and an example of it in earlier days would be the textile mills found in Ecuador where Spanish conquerors put the native population to work under sweatshop conditions to manufacture garments (Encyclopedia of Management, 2009). But the term sweatshop was more formally coined in the 1800s, to describe the working conditions in England’s emerging manufacturing industries. It was common for women and children to be found performing jobs under tough conditions that included monotonous work, long hours and miserably low wages. In the late 1880s, following massive immigration into the United States, sweatshops became common in American cities as well

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