Sweatshops Are Sweatshops a Necessarily Evil?

Within the last few years, Americans have become aware that sometimes when American corporations send manufacturing tasks to foreign countries, those tasks end up being performed by people we would view as not yet adults -- young teenagers, and sometimes even workers younger than that. The companies argue that they do not always have either control or knowledge that such practices are going on, thus excusing them, in their eyes, from any moral responsibility. However, others argue that the managers of companies are responsible for all the actions their company takes, and that if they don't know about the use of children in sweatshops, they should.

While some companies have taken responsibility for the use of sweat shops and taken action to prevent it, the pressure on companies is significant, and those who ultimately act as middlemen, farming the work out to those...

At the same time, the operators of the sweatshops like to use younger teens, because it is not actually legal for them to work. Thus they can be made to work long hours and live in inadequate quarters without making trouble for them McLeod, 2000). Sometimes the work is dangerous, and in the United States, even if someone of the age of 15 or 16 had a work permit, that person would not be allowed to work around dangerous machinery. But in one case discussed in the media, a young Chinese woman suffered a badly mangled arm from a machinery accident. She is suing her former employer, and hopes to win so she can get better medical care for her mangled arm McLeod, 2000).
In 2000, media reporters discovered, with some irony, that underage workers in Hong Kong were being used to produce the toys included in "Happy Meals" bought for children at McDonald's restaurants…