He seems to forget that sweatshops are usually run by multinational corporations (often in Export Processing Zones, where what little labour legislation the country has is moot) who are able to coerce governments into overturning minimum wage and other legislation for their factories. More people may be employed, but for significantly reduced wages. This means that local industries cannot grow because the population has become the working poor - technically employed but only earning enough for basic survival.

The people may have been better off without the sweatshops, because at least the people who were employed were earning a little bit more, and could put it back into the local community, which would create more jobs in turn.

As so often, it is the system that is flawed, not the decisions of individual workers.

Adele has made some excellent points, and it might be worthwhile to add that as well as having practically no concept of worker's rights, these Export Processing Zones usually bypass the export or land taxes of the nation they're set up in. Subsequently little, if any, of the money the nation would receive if the same factories were locally owned is actually passed on to the community.

Also, because there is so little regulation, and the materials and labour used to power EPZs are so incredibly disposable, the factories can be swept up and relocated once a less expensive option in a more desperate country becomes available. This leaves a swathe of desperately poor workers unemployed in an area with no other industries because the local economy has survived soley off the crumbs of the EPZs.

I totally agree. These are their best options only because the intrusion of these factories continue to undermine the development of the country and weaken the local government. It is somewhat as the Stockholm syndrome, or thinking a kidnapper was good because he only beat me once, he could have killed me, you know.

This strikes me as a ridiculous argument. It's like saying "shouldn't we be encouraging women to enter abusive relationships, because with the support of the abusive partner, many would only enter poverty." It's true that this is the reason why many women don't leave abusive relationships, and this is why it's pointless to simply say "building more shelters and enacting tougher penalties would solve the problem." No, it won't on it's own. The answer is to create more opportunities and support systems for women so that they aren't tied to violence as a means of survival.

The same applies here. I agree that the answer is absolutely NOT to just pull the sweatshops and be done with it as though we've done something good. We wouldn't have. The answer is to create more opportunity so that people have better options that a sweatshop and don't have to choose between the abusive relationship or the abusive system.

Great points and food for thought. Can anyone give me some citations where I can read some academic work about this? I am more familiar with the literature on sweatshops.

A counterpoint:

Despite these awful conditions, it is hard to look at the history of China, Mexico or India as they have moved out of the grip of world poverty and not see the incredible benefits of globalization--sweatshops included.

Even if this is not desirable, is it not comparatively better than fishing for trash in a dump?

The failure of the Left to make sense of globalization, and, in fact, the failure to advocate for it, I think is ultimately more costly on the lives of the world's urban/rural poor than any "evil neoliberalism."

Ironically, despite the protests of the WTO, poor countries actually seek more trade, not less. If you recall, talks broke down in the summer because Western governments failed to end farm subsidies, inflating the poor of the American farmer who should be put out of a job by poor farmers who could freely sell their product on the world market.

Despite these awful conditions, it is hard to look at the history of China, Mexico or India as they have moved out of the grip of world poverty and not see the incredible benefits of globalization–sweatshops included.

As near as I can tell, China, Mexico, India, and lots of other countries ostensibly reaping the benefits of globalisation are still home to many of the world's poorest citizens. The major benefit to the economies of these countries seems to be that people who were already rich are getting richer from tapping into the upward movement of wealth caused by globalisation and western economic imperialism. I'm not certain that for the average person in any of these countries, their standard of living has risen measurably, or correlatedly with globalisation. The poor of these countries may in fact be worse off under globalisation than they were before, particularly in the sense that people need to urbanise to get to these factory jobs, instead of remaining on land they may actually own. Being a landless factory worker in dangerous sweatshop conditions is probably a worse existence than being a subsistence farmer; while the former does integrate the person to a significant degree with the cash economy (and the latter may not), the former constitutes more occupational hazards and opportunities for exploitation.

Wow the comments on this thread are really great. I suspect that Interrobang is correct. I wonder if there's data to explore this question, and really drive it home--i.e. how do we operationalize this argument? And if this has already been taken care of, I'd love to get my hands on that citation :)

if sweatshop owners (a.k.a Multinacional Corporations) feel they are doing so much for Cambodia or other 3rd World Country, then why not pay them a fair amount of money and give them Human conditions to work in? Rather than dark, small, cramped, sub-soil rooms with ridiculously low payment all for the sake of clothes??... If they are indeed so nice to these people why would they not give them Humane and Humane conditions to work in and their possibility of earning more than 2cents a day... ... ... ?
Corporate Lobbying is a pathetic thing...

As for the life of people in poor countries having improved or not, as far as I know they have improved. In a lot of places, most indicators for quality of life have gone up and many people have risen above the line of extreme poverty. But that doesn't mean much, because the gap between poor and rich has grown. Basically, everybody got richer (with some excpetions) but the rich got even more rich.

So yeah, globalisation, despite everything, has improved people's life. I just don't think that we've been doing it in the best way.

or perhaps these types of things take many years to fully develop. i think of most of the situation at hand to be progress, especially considering how vastly different the world was just 40 or 50 years ago... not even a century...

"More people may be employed, but for significantly reduced wages"

Significantly reduced wages compared to what? Subsistence farming? Wages around the third world (even for sweatshops) have increased when compared to historical wages for non-industrial work.

This is an incredibly disappointing work of journalism by a New York Times journalist. What Nicholas Kristof doesn't mention in this video is that it's nearly impossible for factories that are considered "sweatshops" to ever unionize without widespread suppression. When factory conditions are terrible and wages aren't sufficient for supporting the workers and their families, there is no way for these workers in Export Processing Zones and similar factories to organize. Sweatshop activists don't fight to close sweatshops or urge institutions to use only companies that have been designated as sweatshop-free. Rather, they fight to change labor standards that privilege multinational corporations and allow them to never recognize the establishment of unions. In cases where union organizers aren't killed and unions begin to form, contractors who are the middlemen between corporations and factories radically decrease the number of orders until the factory is forced to lay off most of the workforce and eventually shut down. If anyone wants more info, check out the current controversy surrounding Jerzees de Honduras, a factory that produces Russell Athletic apparel. It is the only unionized apparel factory in Honduras and one of the only factories Russel Athletic is shutting down, yet it is perfectly legal under weak global labor standards. If people want to read sophisticated arguments that actually detail what sweatshop activism and the alterglobalization movement is fighting for, read No Logo and/or Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the U.S. Apparel Industry.

"“More people may be employed, but for significantly reduced wages”

Significantly reduced wages compared to what? Subsistence farming?"

Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. You know what you never see? An empty sweatshop. Because even though the working conditions are deplorable to us, it's better and better money then anything else these people could be doing.

Now I don't think this is a justification for sweatshops but I don't think tactics of trying to shame "bad" corporations work, and this unfortunately has been the main tactic. Capitalism + Globalization + Free Trade = Sweatshops, the sum can't change unless the factors do.

Joining the conversation late, so I don't really expect a response. But: it's true that the workers in sweatshops take the jobs, and would not give them up. They're desperate. In Jeffrey Sachs' book "The End of Poverty" he cites a survey that was taken of Chinese sweatshop workers. None of the workers surveyed would have given up their jobs. However little it was, they had a disposable income.

Now, having said this, I still don't consider sweatshops to be "progress" or particularly useful. They're arguably better than nothing, but for everyone who's saying that globalisation has made the world a lot better... well, how do we know what things would be like if sweatshops had always had stricter regulations, or never existed in the first place? Just because living standards have, on average, gone up, there isn't any reason to think that this is the only way they could have been bolstered. Living standards were going up before the advent of globalism, as far as I know.

I must confess that I didn't watch the video, but I have heard many other pro-sweatshop arguments. China and India may be success stories, but those two nations have a lot more going for them than sweatshops alone. Have smaller nations, like the Phillipines or Vietnam or Honduras had similar successes? How deeply was that covered in the video? (Also, as other posters have pointed out: "export processing zones" are bad news.)

PS. Great blog. Just found it today. It's a bookmark, now.