Sweatshop

Sweatshop Definition

Sweatshop, small manufacturing establishment in which employees work long hours under substandard conditions for low wages. Sweatshops were an outgrowth of the contracting systems in which an employer or middleman (called a sweater) sought to reduce overhead costs and to increase the volume of production by distributing materials to workers in their residences and by paying for work piecemeal. Sweatshops were originally residential, and they developed later into small factories.

Industrial Revolution

Before the 1850s primitive conditions had characterized many of the small shops and residences in which manufacturing was done, particularly in the British clothing industry. But sizable segments of the populations in the United States and Britain did not work under unwholesome conditions in sweatshops until the full development of the Industrial Revolution brought about large, surplus urban populations, mechanization, and specialized methods of production.

By 1850 more than 200,000 women were employed in factories in the U.S. making such products as clothing, shoes, and cigars. As women and children increasingly entered the labor force, the sweatshop system was expanded. In the 1890s sweatshops formed the mainstay of the garment industry. The system was further promoted by the large influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

Restricted through Legislation

By the 1930s sweatshops had been severely restricted in the garment and other industries through federal and state legislation, especially minimum-wage and child-labor laws.

Source: “Sweatshop,”Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000

See Also

Child Labor
History of Women’s Rights
Women’s Rights
Labor & Employment Law in Lawi
Labor law
Convention Concerning Forced Labor
International human rights law
Business Ethics; Corporate Social Responsibility; Globalization; Wage Inequities; Worker Rights

Further Reading

Abernathy, F. H.; Dunlop, J. T.; Hammond, J. H.; Weil, D. (1999). A stitch in time: Lean retailing and the transformation of manufacturing—lessons from the apparel and textile industries. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bender, D. E. (2004). Sweated work, weak bodies: Anti-sweatshop campaigns and the languages of labor. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Bonacich, E.; Appelbaum, R. P. (2000). Behind the label: Inequality in the Los Angeles apparel industry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chapkis, W.; Enloe, C. (1993). Of common cloth: Women in the global textile industry. Amsterdam: Transnational Institute.
Esbenshade, J. (2004a). Monitoring sweatshops: Workers, consumers, and the global apparel industry. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Esbenshade, J. Codes of conduct: Challenges and opportunities for workers’ rights. Social Justice, 31(3), (2004b). 40-60.
Fuentes, A.; Ehrenreich, B. (1983). Women in the global factory. Boston: South End.
Hartman, L.; Arnold, D.; Wokutch, R. E. (2003). Rising above sweatshops: Innovative approaches to global labor challenges. New York: Praeger.
Hu-DeHart, E. Globalization and its discontents: Exposing the underside. Frontiers, 24(2/3), (2003). 244-261.
International Labor Organization. (2000). Labour practices in footwear, leather, textiles and clothing industries. Geneva: Author.
Klein, N. (1999). No logo: Taking aim at the brand name bullies. New York: Picador.
Lamphere, L.; Stepick, A.; Grenier, G. (Eds.). (1994). Newcomers in the workplace: Immigrants and the restructuring of the U.S. economy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Pollin, R.; Burns, J.; Heintz, J. Global apparel production and sweatshop labour: Can raising retail prices finance living wages? Cambridge Journal of Economics, 28, (2004). 153-171.
Rosen, E. I. (2002). Making sweatshops: The globalization of the U.S. apparel industry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ross, R. J.S. (2004). Slaves to fashion: Poverty and abuse in the new sweatshops. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Scott, F. R.; Cassidy, H. M. (1935). Labour conditions in the men’s clothing industry. Toronto: Thomas Nelson.
Seidman, J. (1942). The needle trades. New York: Farrar & Rinehart.
Won, M. G. (1983). Chinese sweatshops in the United States: A look at the garment industry. In Simpson, I. Harper & Simpson, R. L. (Eds.), Peripheral workers (Research in the sociology of work, Vol. 2) (pp. 267-279). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.