Sweatshops: Minimum Wage and Production Cost Reduction Essay

Submitted By Funkydude1
Words: 299
Pages: 2

The article, “Children found making Gap clothes at sweatshop in India”, talks about how children as young as 10 make Gap clothes at a sweatshop in New Delhi. The Observer newspaper quoted the children as saying they had been sold by their families to the sweatshop in states, such as Bihar and West Bengal, and are not allowed to leave until they had repaid that fee. Some children working for as long as 16 hours a day to hand-sew clothing, said that they were not being paid because their employer told them that they were still trainees. The Observer quoted one boy identified only as Jivaj as saying that child employees who cried or did not work hard enough were hit with a rubber pipe or had oily cloths stuffed into their mouths. The human rights of these children were violated and in turn created a bad image for the company even if they saved money on cost of production. Another article, “H&M’s Cambodian “Poverty Pay” Scandal Exposed on Swedish TV”, which says that H&M has come under fire after a Swedish broadcast claims the that they aren’t doing enough to prevent sweatshop-like conditions at a subcontractor’s factory in Cambodia. Cambodian workers producing clothing for the company are paid so little they have to borrow money to buy food. The minimum wage for Cambodian garment workers is $61 per month—or 25% of what constitutes a living wage. In 2011, over 2,400 workers passed out in Cambodian factories due to malnutrition as a direct consequence of low salaries. But H&M,