Sweat Shops Alive and Thriving

Sweat Shop - circa 1890

My last blog post received a number of comments and all of them were well thought out and eloquently written. It would appear that all too many artists under value their work due to market expectations and most of us concur that the buying public is lead by Wal-Mart mentality. This is true to a great extent, though there are many individuals who appreciate and recognize the workmanship, quality and uniqueness of any type of handcrafted product that is not mass produced. As long as there is a Wal-Mart people will shop there to take advantage of the low prices and to stretch their hard earned dollars.

Wal-Mart started out as a company that proudly bought products made in the USA, they even boasted how they supported USA manufacturing. That was back in the days of Sam Walton the founder of Wal-Mart, I'm sure Mr. Walton would not recognize the behemoth that his chain of stores has become. In our day and age we would be hard pressed to find many items sitting on a Wal-Mart shelf with the "made in the USA" sticker on them .

Sweat shop - not much has changed except the century.

To read more about our big corporations benefiting from the use of cheap labor and supporting sweat shop conditions (like those of the western world over 100 years ago) click this link : http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshops/sweatshopsfaq.html

I suppose our only hope is that China, along with the other countries who have excessively cheap labor, will eventually end up with strong labor unions in much the same way the Western world did. Strong labor unions will insist that laborers be paid substantially and given benefits such as medical insurance, life insurance, paid vacation, cost of living raises, bonuses, retirement/pension plans and disability benefits should they incur any injury at work. Soon these workers would be earning the same amount as their equivalent in the USA, Canada, England, Australia, etc.

If there is no longer cheap labor, then perhaps companies will stop outsourcing manufacturing jobs. Once this occurs then big box stores such as our infamous Wally World will soon fill its shelves with locally manufactured goods. Since Wal-Mart is a global company I imagine that we could see items manufactured from all parts of the world, perhaps Wal-Mart would even consider changing their name to World-Mart?

So let's root for those strong, organized labor unions in places like China, the Philippines, India and anywhere in the world where big corporations exploit dirt cheap labor.