Most sweatshop workers choose to accept the conditions of their employ
ment, even if their choice is made from among a severely constrained set
of options.18
The fact that they choose the conditions of their employment from within
a constrained set of options is strong evidence that they view it as their
most-preferred option (within that set).
The fact that they view it as their most-preferred option is strong evidence
that we will harm them by taking that option away.
It is also plausible that sweatshop workers’ choice to accept the condi
tions of their employment is sufficiently autonomous that taking the
option of sweatshop labor away from them would be a violation of their
autonomy.
All else being equal, it is wrong to harm people or to violate their autonomy.
Therefore, all else being equal, it is wrong to take away the option of sweat
shop labor from workers who would otherwise choose to engage in it.
5. Challenges to The Argument I will discuss three potential vulnerabilities in The Argument. One potential
vulnerability centers on premises 1, 2, and 4, and stems from possible failures of
rationality and/or freedom (which I will group together as failures of voluntariness)
in sweatshop workers’ consent. The second is located in premise 3, and derives
from a possibly unwarranted assumption regarding the independence of a potential
worker’s antecedent choice-set and the offer of employment by a sweatshop. A
final criticism of The Argument is centered on the conclusion (6) and holds that
even if everything in premises 1-5 is true, it nevertheless ignores a crucial moral
consideration. That consideration is the wrongfulness of exploitation?for one can
wrongfully exploit an individual even while one provides them with options better
than any of their other available alternatives. a. Failures of Voluntariness The first premise states that sweatshop workers choose the conditions of their
employment, even if that choice is made from among a severely constrained set of
options. And undoubtedly, the set of options available to potential sweatshop workers
is severely constrained indeed. Sweatshop workers are usually extremely poor and
seeking employment to provide for the necessities of life, so prolonged unemploy
ment is not an option. They lack the education necessary to obtain higher-paying
jobs, and very often lack the resources to relocate to where better low-skill jobs are
available. Given these dire economic circumstances, do sweatshop workers really
make a “choice” in the relevant sense at all? Should we not say instead, with John
Miller, that whatever “choice” sweatshop workers make is made only under the
“coercion of economic necessity” (Miller, 2003: 97)? And would not such coercion
undermine the morally transformative power of workers’ choices? I do not think so.38 The mugging case discussed in section two shows that while
coercion may undermine some sorts of moral transformation effected by choice, it
does not undermine all sorts.39 Specifically, the presence of coercion does not license
third parties to disregard the stated preferences of the coerced party by interfering
with their activity. After all, one of the main reasons that coercion is bad is because
it reduces our options. The mugger in the case above, for instance, takes away our
option of continuing our life and keeping our money, and limits our choices to
two — give up the money or die. Poverty can be regarded as coercive because it,
too, reduces our options. Poverty reduces the options of many sweatshop workers,
for instance, to a small list of poor options — prostitution, theft, sweatshop labor,
or starvation. This is bad. But removing one option from that short list — indeed,
removing the most preferred option — does not make things any better for the worker.
The coercion of poverty reduces a worker’s options, but so long as he is still free to
choose from among the set of options available to him, we will do him no favors
by reducing his options still further. Indeed, to do so would be a further form of
coercion, not a cure for the coercion of poverty.40
[C]40. See Radcliffe Richards, 1996: 382. [Radcliffe Richards, Janet (1996). Nepharious goings on: Kidney sales and moral arguments. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 21 (4):375--416.]
[C]74. For instance, in 1992, the United States congress was considering legislation known as
the “Child Labor Deterrence Act.” The purpose of this act was to prevent child labor by preventing
the importation into the United States of any goods made, in whole or in part, by children under
the age of 15. The Act never received enough support to pass, but while it was being debated,
employers in several countries where child labor was widespread took preemptive action in order
to maintain their ability to export to the lucrative U.S. market. One of these employers was the
garment industry in Bangladesh. According to UNICEF’s 1997 “State of the World’s Children”
report, approximately 50,000 children were laid off in 1993 in anticipation of the bill’s passage.
Most of these children had little education, and few other opportunities to acquire one or to obtain alternative legal employment. As a result, many of these children turned to street hustling,
stone crushing, and prostitution — all of which, the report notes, are much more hazardous and
exploitative than garment production (UNICEF, 1997: 60). [“Sweatshops, Choice, and Exploitation” Matt Zwolinski Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 4 (Oct., 2007), pp. 689-727 Published by: Philosophy Documentation Center Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27673206]
From the UNICEF report:
An Agreement In Bangledesh An important initiative to protect
child workers is unfolding in
Bangladesh. The country’s powerful garment industry is committing itself to some dramatic new measures
by an agreement signed in 1995.
The country is one of the world’s
major garment exporters, and the
industry, which employs over a
million workers, most of them
women, also employed child labour.
In 1992, between 50,000 and 75,000 of
its workforce were children under 14,
mainly girls.
The children were illegally employed according to national law, but
the situation captured little attention, in
Bangladesh or elsewhere, until the garment factories began to hide the children from United States buyers or lay
off the children, following the introduction of the Child Labor Deterrence Act
in 1992 by US Senator Tom Harkin. The
Bill would have prohibited the importation into the US of goods made using
child labour. Then, when Senator
Harkin reintroduced the Bill the following year, the impact was far more devastating:garment employers dismissed
an estimated 50,000 children from their
factories, approximately 75 per cent of
all children in the industry.
The consequences for the dismissedchildren and their parents were
not anticipated. The children may have
been freed, but at the same time they
were trapped in a harsh environment
with no skills, little or no education, and
precious few alternatives. Schools were
either inaccessible, useless or costly. A
series of follow-up visits by UNICEF,
local non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and the International Labour
Organization (ILO) discovered that children went looking for new sources of
income, and found them in work such
as stone-crushing, street hustling and
prostitution — all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment
production. In several cases, the mothers of dismissed children had to leave
their jobs in order to look after their children.
Out of this unhappy situation and
after two years of difficult negotiations,
a formal Memorandum of Understanding was signed in July 1995 by the
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers
and Exporters Association (BGMEA),
and the UNICEF and ILO offices in
Bangladesh. The resulting programme
was to be funded by these three organizations. BGMEA alone has committed about $1 million towards the
implementation of the Memorandum
of Understanding.
Under the terms of the agreement,
four key provisions were formulated: • the removal of all under-age workers
— those below 14 — within a period
of four months; • no further hiring of under-age
children; • the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in
appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend; • the offer of the children’s jobs to
qualified adult family members. The Memorandum of Understanding explicitly directed factory
owners, in the best interests of these
children, not to dismiss any child workers until a factory survey was completed and alternative arrangements
could be made for the freed children.... [http://origin-www.unicef.org/spanish/publications/files/pub_sowc97_en.pdf. Panel 12; pg.60.]
Conclusion: The argument that closing sweatshops leads to prostitution appears a valid one, as according to a 1997 report by UNICEF, it happened once in Bangladesh. According to that same report, provisions were established to prevent it from happening again (in Bangladesh). (Personal opinion: There’s too little evidence to determine whether the argument is actually sound. It happened once, though, and I find little reason to assume conditions in other countries are so different than they were in Bangladesh. However, thus concluding that sweatshops are good would be a misstep. One should rather conclude that if one is to close a sweatshop, provide alternative employment or enable and equip the workers to find their own alternative employment.)
I will quote at length here.
From the UNICEF report:
Conclusion:
The argument that closing sweatshops leads to prostitution appears a valid one, as according to a 1997 report by UNICEF, it happened once in Bangladesh. According to that same report, provisions were established to prevent it from happening again (in Bangladesh).
(Personal opinion: There’s too little evidence to determine whether the argument is actually sound. It happened once, though, and I find little reason to assume conditions in other countries are so different than they were in Bangladesh. However, thus concluding that sweatshops are good would be a misstep. One should rather conclude that if one is to close a sweatshop, provide alternative employment or enable and equip the workers to find their own alternative employment.)
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