So You Want to Boycott 'Sweatshops'?

[Jon Katz]

I just read a startling, matter-of-fact assessment of “sweatshop” labor and what it means to the locals working in those environments.

In the Western world we tend to think anything beyond an eight-hour workday is too much and if you don’t have cable TV, a car or a decent pair of brand-name shoes, you’re making a substandard living.

But as New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof pointed out in a recent op-ed, in some countries so-called sweatshops are viewed as opportunities to flee even worse working conditions.

Kristof visited a Cambodian garbage dump where hundreds of “desperate” people, including children, scavenge for recyclable materials. As Kristof vividly describes, at the dump a “miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn.”

For these Cambodians, a factory job is their ticket out of a truly dirty, unhealthy and miserable lifestyle.

Not coincidentally, Kristof’s column comes just days before the Obama administration takes office. The Democrats and labor leaders have been critical of the nation’s current trade policies around the world, particularly in China.

But as Kristof points out:

“Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.”

As Americans, we tend to think if they don’t live like us, they must be miserable. We forget that developing nations are just that – developing. Lifting a nation out of poverty and industrializing it isn’t an easy task that happens overnight. Anyone who has read Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” should know that even here in America we went through some major growing pains.

Kristof notes that:

“The best way to help people in the poorest countries isn’t to campaign against sweatshops but to promote manufacturing there. One of the best things America could do for Africa would be to strengthen our program to encourage African imports, called AGOA, and nudge Europe to match it.”

Whether you agree with Kristof’s assessment or not, I urge you to read the full column here, and check out the video that includes actual footage of Kristof’s visit to the Cambodian dump.