Fair Trade and Sweat Shops
| Author | Message |
|---|---|
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave  Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | essentially, fair trade is a social and economic movement that would prevent slave/forced labor on cocoa, coffee, tea and other similar plantations worldwide. it's very similar to the cotton industry in the south when there was still slavery in the US. fair trade would require the workers to be well cared for and to earn a living wage. there are many companies that operate with fair trade; often they also provide organic non-GM foods, such as coffee and chocolate. so what do you guys think of trade regulations, sweat shops and the like? i'm kind of horrible at explaining things, so here are some links: fair trade sweat shops fair trade coffees, teas and chocolate |
| IXPROMISE Jazz Hands  Age: 30 Gender: Male Posts: 360 | i read this story about a kids parents who sold him for seventeen dollars he spent eight years chained to a heater knitting. he escaped and tried to get word out after a year they found him and killed him. its crazy |
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | yeah that's the sort of thing that happens in a lot of the sweast shops. for a $15 tshirt, less than .02% goes to the worker who sewed it, then some to the retail store and shipping costs--then 75% of the total goes to the manufacturing company, such as nike or wal-mart's various brands. so while the workers are quite replacable to the company, that's quite a bit of money they're making off of each one--plus there's the fact that if word got out about the specific conditions, they could be in some serious legal trouble. there was also a story about a boy who was in a sweat shop in pakistan who was twelve when he escaped and looked about six due to malnutrition. he made it to the US and there was a lot of contraversy and news stirred up over sweat shops--he was gunned down for political reasons. |
| Kid__ Always Born a Crime  Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 6686 | I buy Fair Trade products whenever I can. It's not right that a huge company in the modernised world can pay someone who does all the work so little. The companies are getting richer and richer, yet the people who do all the work are getting poorer and poorer. Something isn't right there. Something needs to be done to stop these companies and make them pay a fairer price. There needs to be a law to stop this sort of corruption and abuse of power. I mean, a fair trade chocolate or coffee isn't really expensive compared to the normal ones so why not pay the extra few pence when you know it's going to make a difference to someone's life. As for the sweat shops, in geography we were told about a woman in Indonisia who worked for Nike. She worked for twenty three hours solid and there were no lunch breaks, no toilet breaks and if the stitching was messed up in any way because she was too tired to see properly, they beat her and fired her on the spot. I really think that needs to be sorted out. I can't believe companies would allow their clothes to be made in factories where the conditions are so tough and completely unacceptable just so that they could save on average around £4 per worker an hour. Surely they are making enough money to be able to afford to pay the wages for people in the Western world rather than exploit poorer people who are willing to take any pay cheque that they can get. |
| aliss practice. Shotgun Sinner  Age: 102 Gender: - Posts: 8198 | I had no idea what a sweat shop is, but after reading the link you posted, that is horrific. That just comes to show how low humans can sink, how people can get something out of making others suffer. I am pretty disturbed by what people are willing to do to their fellow human beings for the pleasure and content of others. That is sick. Sick. |
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | yeah it's pretty disgusting. the problem is that people are often told about things like this, but either they don't care or it doesn't hit them as hard as it should have. and the real tragedy is that if people were better educated and took a stand on it as they would if it were their brothers and sisters and children working inthese factories, this could be abolished fairly easily--the same goes for fair trade. and it might be a tad expensive at first, but in the long run it wouldn't cost the consumer very much at all. |
| PunkerThanThou Thinking Happy Thoughts  Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 596 | People don't care and don't know. I'm disgusted with myself that I didn't know what they were until a few political bands directed me to this subject a few years ago- ignorance is the main issue, and caring, as you said- had Americans and other cultures paid more attention to the things CNN and Fox DIDN'T talk about, (how about something besides Anna Nicole for once?) the world just might be a better place. But we have to worry about Anna first.  |
| Beeblebrox Really Not Okay  Age: 44 Gender: Female Posts: 688 | I definitely support free trade organizations. When my fiancé and I got engaged, we decided to register for things at Ten Thousand Villages. Artisans and craftsmen in over 30 countries (like Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East) make handcrafted goods that the stores buy for fair wages so that disadvantaged people living in third world countries can make a decent living and take care of their families. It's a great cause and helps everybody involved. |
| Sammie Really Not Okay Age: 36 Gender: Female Posts: 639 | I think it is about time that countries and companies started treating the people who make the clothes we wear and the food we eat with more respect. This is the 21st Century. We can/should protect the people of this world even if it's just giving them the wage in which they deserve. I love people like Bob Geldoff(sp?) and Bono who use their ''fame'' to bring light to this situation and are always fighting to make their dreams happen. |
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | Beeblebrox: that sounds like a really good cause i'll have to check it out. and it's so simple to make that choice--it's heartbreaking that most people who have the time, energy and ambition to start their own companies still insist upon walking all over the people who help them along the way by manufacturing their products or growing their crops just to get that extra little bit of money. it really is a marginal cut in profit to pay people a decent wage. |
| Pandora's Box Motor Baby  Age: 29 Gender: Female Posts: 767 | I know wha tfair trade is and personally i think its worth a few extra pennies out of your life to give so much more back to the whole world and in our school we celebrate it sometimes and have times wear we bring in fair trade food and we show the younger kids what fair trade is i think they should do this all over the uk and the whole world!!! |
| karah Killjoy Age: 33 Gender: Female Posts: 14 | i never about sweatshops before reading this page, but i think i tried to convince myself it was a thing of the past, but now i know its not. i have a HARK meeting tomorrow and i'm going to see if we can start a project adressing this issue. |
| jace wayland. Shotgun Sinner  Age: - Gender: - Posts: 7139 | My aunt works for Nike and she said that she has brought it up in quite a few of their meetings and they said yes their are things like this but their not as horrible as you read about they get breakfast lunch and dinner and the women get two days off everymonth. I dont know if I agree with it but I thought I should bring it up. |
| Beeblebrox Really Not Okay Age: 44 Gender: Female Posts: 688 | Sodapop: Oh my god. Two days off a month? Jesus christ. That's horrible and inhumane. I've heard horror stories about Nike. How the office in Indonesia said that Nike factory said that one factory official was convicted of physically abusing workers, another fled the country during a police investigation of sexual abuse charges and a third was under arrest for abusing workers, as reported in The New York Times. I head a typical work week involves 70 hours, that workers make $30 a MONTH, which is less than the cost of living expenses and that most workers are women and children under the age of 16. I heard that they have to use toxic chemicals without protection and are exposed to hazardous fumes all day. All so that we can have our trendy shoes for $150 a pair. |
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | two days off a month? that's disgusting. think: most people in the states get two days off a week, and they're not doing physical labor. and three meals a day, or the money to adequately pay for those three meals, should be a given. |
| xXDrop.The.DaggerXx Killjoy  Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 71 | I want to specifically discuss child labor, because this is where most people claim that these children are being stripped of their childhoods and should be free like American children. There is an essay called "Live Free and Starve" by Chitra Divakaruni. In the essay she exposes the other side of the issue: "If the children themselves were asked whether they would rather work under such harsh conditions or enjoy a leisure that comes without the guarantee of food or clothing or shelter, I wonder what their response would be." I do not endorse child labor in the least. I cannot, however, see the good in destroying this form of employment that at least guarantees them the necessities of life, if we cannot provide another means by which to receive these necessities. |
| Cigarettes And Suicide Bleeding on the Floor  Age: 37 Gender: Female Posts: 1725 | Beeblebrox: Hey, welcome to life in an idustrial town in civilized western society. In the town I live in, employees of big companies like Rio Tinto have a typical working week of 80 or so hours (10 to 12-hour days, six days a week), and depending on where you work, exposure to hazardous chemicals is part and parcel of the job - my husband recently did shutdown out at Orica, which is a cyanide processing plant, and came home every day covered in white cyanide dust that burned holes in his car seat covers. My friend's mum works with caustic soda out at QAL (a plant that processes alumina powder to aluminium), and buys new uniforms every month because the caustic reduces the heavy-duty denims and cottons to rags in a few weeks. Yeah, the pay is much different between a sweatshop and working on site in Gladstone (typical take-home pay for a week at Orica, the powerhouse, QAL or Boyne Smelter - the place where bauxite is processed into alumina, then sent to QAL - is anywhere from AU$700 to AU$1500, depending on what particular job you're doing), but the risks are the same, and the conditions aren't much better. My husband recently got offered a job at the powerhouse (which generates and supplies electricity to a large portion of the state), and despite the AU$900-a-week paycheck, he turned it down for a $500-a-week office job because he wanted a life - and working 11 hours a day, six days a week is no life as far as we're concerned. But if he hadn't been offered the office job, he would have had to take the powerhouse job - so working in sweatshops and the like really depend on the availability of other employment. I know if I was in that situation, I'd rather work for peanuts and have a roof over my head and food on the table, than be living in the gutter with no job opportunities, or prostituting myself and getting god-knows-what from my 'clients' just to get a hot meal twice or three times a week. By no means do I support the pay that these workers are given, but the conditions really all depend on the type of job you're in. Such horrific, dangerous work environments are just as prevalent in western society as they are in South America and Asia - coal mines, chemical plants, the like. Employees of these places are typically given only a few days a month off, work so many hours a week they're either at work or sleeping, thereby never getting the opportunity to spend time with their families or friends, and every day when they get up at 3am to be at work by 4 to start at 4:30, there's a very real chance they might not make it home (there have been at least three cases in the last six months of workers being severely injured by caustic soda burns, which are potentially fatal). But, in a town like Gladstone, this is pretty much the only work available, so unless you have the money or the desire to move (a lot of people who live here were born and raised here, and have family that they're reluctant to leave) somewhere else where there's no guaranteed work (at least here you can get a job easily as they employ thousands of people), you're stuck with it. Meanwhile, even those of us who don't work on site are still exposed to hazardous material - trucks and trains carrying loads of filthy resources leave a trail of crap behind them in the air and on the streets, housecleaning and even breathing becomes nigh on impossible some days when the coal dust is particularly heavy in the air... You can't get away from it in a town like this. And that's just our lot, we live with it, and deal with it. |
| Thug Life. Bleeding on the Floor  Age: 33 Gender: Male Posts: 1315 | Nike shoes is a big implimenter of sweat shops i mean how else would they manage to crank out that many shoes from china vietnam ect i saw a doco about how nike is trying to bee environmentally friendly using recylced shoess to make new ones but i kept thinking to myself whats the point when your still making shoes through sweatshops ? |
| Ignore Alien Orders Salute You in Your Grave Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 2026 | Cigarettes and Suicide-- [i'd quote but it'd just be a lot of text] I understand your point, and I disagree with labor like that taking place anywhere in the world, be it in Vietnam or in a supposedly "civilized" country. However the idea is not to shut down the factories; these people do need jobs. The idea is that the jobs can be very easily made safer and the workers can recieve much better pay, and that's not happening. |
| Cigarettes And Suicide Bleeding on the Floor Age: 37 Gender: Female Posts: 1725 | Caitlin Caustic;;:I guess that's what I'm trying to say, I may not have made it as concise as it needed to be... I definitely think conditions should be made safer for the sweatshop workers, and that they should receive adequate pay, but what I was trying to say was that they shouldn't necessarily be shut down or certain other things about the working conditions changed, because not only are 'horrific conditions' like 80-hour working weeks common in places other than sweatshops, but if the factories didn't exist, these people would be forced into the gutter or a life of crime to support themselves and their families. |
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