The big problem with us (people in developed, industrialized, Western nations) having debates about sweatshops is that we look at it from a very different perspective.
It's a very desensitized and paternalistic view that most people tend to have. "Oh no, these sweatshops are committing terrible human rights violations and the people working there are completely helpless. We must shut them down through sanctions, boycotts, and legislation." This is unfortunate because it completely overlooks the reality of the situation, the context of the situation, and ignores the agency of the people actually living in those countries working in sweatshops.
That said, a few things and a real life example:
Note: Everything in my post is based on the following sources:
Unexpected Power: Conflict and Change among Transnational Activists
by Shareen Hertel (this is a text)
http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/ilrpress/titles/4584.html
Globalization, labor standards, and women's rights: dilemmas of collective (in)action in an interdependent world by Naila Kabeer (this is a paper/article)
http://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/femeco/v10y2004i1p3-35.html
I have PDFs of the Kabeer article and the part of the Hertel text I used, if anybody wants to read them.
In 1973, the International Labor Organization passed ILO 138, an international treaty that sets minimum working ages (note: the US never ratified this). In 1990, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was put into force (the US was involved in heavily shaping it, but still has not ratified it). Anyway, partly as a result of these things, in the late 1980s US activists began lobbying against child labor in sweatshops in the Bangladeshi garment industry.
This crystallized in 1993 when Iowa Senator Tom Harkin proposed the Harkin Bill on child labor, which would basically disallow the importation of goods produced by child labor. This was one of the first things to put pressure on the Bangladeshi garment industry. In addition, there were boycotts by the US-based United Food and Commercial Workers’ Union in 1991 and by the Child Labor Coalition in 1995, which also put a lot of strain on the Bangladeshi garment factories.
This all seems like a noble cause - until we look at the reality. The garment industry made up almost
half of Bangladesh's exports, and most of them to the US, in 1995. Bangladesh had little choice but to submit to US demands. Moreover, there was already a lot of poverty. The children and women working in these factories and "sweatshops" had little choice but to work.
According to editors of Bangladeshi newspaper Dainik Bangla: “We also believe that children must not be allowed to work in the factories, but no matter how humane the UN and the ILO conventions are, we do not believe that these documents would agree to a situation where children are likely to go hungry. We think that the US should consider the social reality of the Third World before adopting the Harkin Bill”.
Also in the Hertel text, "Former ILO child rights expert Rijik van Haarlem, active in Bangladesh at that time, explained that the...Harkin Bill made "no provisions for rehabilitation [of the children]. Many were faced with destitution. It is assumed that thousands of them sought and found other, often more dangerous jobs. Some ended up in prostitution.""
Eventually in July 1995, the garment workers industry signed a memorandum of understanding; the garment organization pledged $900,000 in support for child workers and their education, UNICEF pledged $175,000 for alternative schools, and the ILO pledged $250,000 survey and monitoring of displaced children for a year. But estimates say that by this time, 30-40,000 children had already been fired, and had been forced to go into the above mentioned unsavory jobs. This also does not take into account the number of women who lost their jobs because often, women would have to bring their children to work with them.
Note that at this same time, there were lots of child rights advocates in Bangladesh as well, but their goals were not the same as US and Western child rights advocates. Whereas US groups were dead set on enforcing universal global regulations ('no child labor and sweatshops
anywhere') the Bangladeshi activists were focused on more practical goals based on regional realities ('child labor and sweatshops are deplorable, and we hope that one day through development and international support we can end those practices, but given the current situation, it is unrealistic to expect that. Instead, we should make sure children and families are fed and that we gradually work towards providing children education so they don't have to work in these places').
The fact that so many women were even laid off (due to having children) is terrible, because it could undo the progress that has been made in women's rights in Bangladesh. In fact, this is a common theme in developing countries everywhere. In central and South America, there are factories with poor working conditions called maquiladoras; the majority of workers here tend to be women. According to an article by Naila Kabeer, "Ver Beek (2001) found that while women working in the maquiladores in Honduras were more likely to report a health problem in the previous month than those who had been working elsewhere and had less leisure, they earned higher wages than workers elsewhere. They were also more likely to report improvements in intra-household relationships and to report help in domestic work from male members. Maquila workers were more likely to have voted in the last election and more likely to feel that they carried some weight with the government; these trends became stronger over time. This may explain, while most workers would like to see improvements, especially in their wages, 96% reported that they were very (49%) or somewhat (47%) satisfied with their jobs." Having a job and an income allowed women to have more power.
Going back to the Hertel text, women in Bangladesh were given more power in their marriages (since they too now had an income source); women in bad marriages could now get a divorce. Some women could send money to their families.
Obviously, we do not want poor working conditions and child labor and sweatshops to persist forever. But as Aesir pointed out:
The way I see America is a prime example of this, factories exploited the workers, as our economic growth progressed workers unionized, lobbied and fought for higher wages and safer working conditions and benefits.
Women and workers in the aforementioned developing countries are also starting to form unions; it will be a slow process, but through economic development, international support, and local social change, they too will eventually reach a higher standard of living and standard of working. Enforcing universal minimum standards is just a quick fix. It will not solve anything; it will just force children and women to go work in the unregulated, unmonitored sector, in much more dangerous jobs.
Trying to enforce universal regulations is definitely not the way to go about it. Sweatshops are bad, but attempting to ban or sanction all sweatshops is much, much worse. It is simply an unrealistic way to go about things.