What is a sweatshop and how bad is the problem?

A. The US Department of Labor defines a sweatshop as any factory that violates two or more labor laws, such as those pertaining to wages and benefits, working hours, and child labor. Anti-sweatshop advocates go further to say that beyond following the letter of the law (which can be very weak in many countries that attract sweatshops), a factory pay a living wage in safe working conditions, enforce reasonable work hours, provide for sick leave and maternity leave, and allow workers to organize to avoid being labeled a sweatshop.

Because no single definition exists (and because sweatshops don’t want to be uncovered), it’s difficult to assess the worldwide scope of the problem. Compounding this difficulty is the “race to the bottom,” which means that companies don’t always let their sweatshop factories stay in one place, if they can shift their manufacturing to ever-cheaper and less-regulated locations. For example, the number of sweatshops in Mexico soared in the 1990s after NAFTA enticed companies to close their US operations and move south. As global manufacturing costs continued to shift, many companies then moved their operations from Mexico to even more attractive Asian countries. And more recently still, after the US-Jordan Free Trade agreement went into effect in 2000, the number of sweatshops in that country exploded as well. Between 2000 and 2005, apparel exports from Jordan to the US soared 2000 percent, often due to the round-the-clock labor of guest workers from poor Asian countries who were following the jobs as they moved.