Sweatshops Are Sweatshops a Necessarily Evil? Within

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 sweatshops, try to hide that fact from the corporation (AP, 2000).

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 (AP, 2000). The workers were as young as 14 years old and worked 16-hour days.

For this they were paid $3 -- just about what it would cost them to buy a Happy Meal for themselves (AP, 2000). This defeats any rationalization that it is all right to pay them such low wages because the cost of living is very low where the workers live. McDonald's was accused of exploitation although they claimed ignorance. Clearly these practices are not necessary. these practices are not even the only way for the companies involved to accomplish their manufacturing and marketing goals.

McDonald's had Happy Meals before they farmed the manufacture of the toys out to jobbers in Hong Kong. It seems likely that companies use foreign sweatshops because it saves them money and thus makes them more competitive in the marketplace. In the case of the toys in Happy Meals, McDonald's caused toys to be manufactured under abusive conditions in Hong Kong so they could sell more Happy Meals to children in the United States. The moral defense for these actions seems to be that.