Mike palmer
Mrs. Starnes
English Hour 1
10 February 2015
Should Consumers Buy Products Made in Sweatshops or Child Labor Factories?
A child is working in a sweatshop, making shoes for Nike. He lives in Sialkot, Pakistan, Along with millions of other laborers, and he is working to make money to keep his family alive. Suddenly, Nike stops buying products from that sweatshop because the American consumers don’t want to buy products made in sweatshops. Now, the child has no work, no money, and his family is broke. His family is broke because of American consumers. Consumers pressure Nike to cut ties with sweatshops, because they are “Immoral” and “universally condemned”. Nike just about starved millions of workers in Pakistan to, “score moral points” and get more buyers. American consumers should buy products that are made in sweatshops and child labor factories across the world
Almost all U.S. corporations’ products are made overseas in sweatshops or child labor factories. David Montero observed, “80 percent of the world’s soccer balls are produced here [Sialkot, Pakistan] by Nike and other top sports brands (108).” This proves that most of the world’s soccer balls are made in sweatshops, produced overseas in these third-world countries, and it’s not just soccer balls, either. Many other products are made in Pakistan by sweatshops. Montero also explained, “Nike severed its contract with Saga Sports, its chief supplier, saying Saga’s poor management exposes Nike to the threat of child labor...” The key details of this quotation are, “Chief supplier” and “child labor” Showing that Nike’s chief supplier, Saga Sports, exposes Nike to child labor, and uses child labor to manufacture its materials. Therefore, most of Nike’s products are manufactured overseas by sweatshops, along with a lot of other multinational corporations.
Children working in sweatshops making one dollar per day are better off now than they will be making no money when American corporations stop buying products from sweatshops. Of every solution, leaving is the least productive. If Nike exits Pakistan, unemployment will rise catastrophically (Khawaja Zakauddin, 108). Almost all of Sialkot, Pakistan’s population is working to make products for Nike, and if Nike stops paying for their products, then all of these millions of people are unemployed and broke. Many are afraid that Saga, Nike’s former supplier and company that owns a lot of Pakistan’s sweatshops, will fall, and with its fall, unemployment and financial instability will rise (Montero, 111). That means that when Saga goes out of business, there will be a miniature