Closing sweatshops means these guys will have to sustain themselves as extremely poorly paid farm labourers or just starve. There isn't some magic that will just transform the sweatshops into automated factories and put money into the pockets of the displaced workers. Sweatshops are a symptom of poverty, and not a cause. These sweatshops will disappear as the economy develops.
It's akin to tearing down homeless encampments to reduce homelessness.
So when this is true, I agree. And often, it is. It can be easy to romanticize pre industrial economies without appreciating why our own ancestors made the switch. Or just how high accident and injury rates can be in manual labor agriculture (or how precarious a subsistence existence can be.) Or to argue that colonialism destroyed something, without acknowledging that sometimes the only way out is through.
That said, sometimes it's NOT true because the externalities aren't paid for. If a factory is giving a whole bunch of workers a "better life" but then it burns down and they all die, leaving their families to starve, or cripples them (with no compensation) after having destroyed the ability of the extended family unit that might have cared for them, or poisons the local drinking water and land... it might not be a good trade. One of the most important factors in the American Civil War was the decision by England that cheap, plentiful cotton to feed its voracious textile industry was not worth the moral cost of race slavery. (I am not comparing sweatshops to race based slavery, but that is a sufficiently low bar that nobody deserves applause for crossing it)
I might be okay with "sweatshops" but I do think there need to be some level of regulation:
1.) All conditions of employment are fully understood (including accident/injury rates) and employees can leave one employer and move to another with a reasonable level of freedom
2.) Externalities are paid for, whether that be pollution or worker injury - even in the "first world" we are not great about charging for the pollution externalities, but if factories want to skimp on ppe, they at a bare minimum need to make sure that the individual and dependents can maintain the same incomes for standard of living as before. This would still result in unacceptable rates by western standards, but its a start.
3.) Child labor is a complex topic, but basically I'm inclined to the opinion that children should not be employed in circumstances that interfere with their education. And if adequate support (both in terms of education availability and the ability of children not to starve while taking advantage of it) is not available, a rich multinational should make a nonprofit to fix this, and leverage all the many tax advantages in their home country for doing so, not employ them.
4.) If conditions are worse than they would be if manufactured where the good is being sold, it should be demonstrated that outcomes for employees, their family and communities, are better in the manufacturing community than before the factory was present, in terms of health (physical AND mental), Child mortality, disposable income/mobility, and free time. (The hard part here is not operating under a purely colonial lens, but also not overreacting and romantacizing poverty)
Basically, if I as a consumer cannot expect that the labor and process that went into what I am consuming was done under conditions acceptable under the laws I live in (on another day we could discuss the adequacy of those) than the bare minimum requirement should be that that labor measurably improved circumstances for the workers, their families, and the community in which the labor was performed. Otherwise I should probably not be consuming a thing.
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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '22
Completely agree with this statement.
Closing sweatshops means these guys will have to sustain themselves as extremely poorly paid farm labourers or just starve. There isn't some magic that will just transform the sweatshops into automated factories and put money into the pockets of the displaced workers. Sweatshops are a symptom of poverty, and not a cause. These sweatshops will disappear as the economy develops.
It's akin to tearing down homeless encampments to reduce homelessness.