Editing Sweatshop (section)

==History==
[[File:Sweatshop in Ludlow Street Tenement, New York cph.3a24271.jpg|thumb|right|A sweatshop in a New York tenement building, c. 1889]]

===19th and early 20th centuries===

Many workplaces through history have been crowded, low-paying, and without job security; but the concept of a sweatshop originated between 1830 and 1850 as a specific type of workshop in which a certain type of middleman, the sweater, directed others in garment making (the process of producing clothing) under arduous conditions. The terms ''sweater'' for the middleman and ''sweat system'' for the process of subcontracting [[piecework]] were used in early critiques like [[Charles Kingsley]]'s ''Cheap Clothes and Nasty'', written in 1850, which described conditions in London, England. The workplaces created for the '''sweating system''' (a system of subcontracting in the [[tailor]]ing trade) were called ''sweatshops'' and might contain only a few workers or as many as 300 or more. All those workers were illegally underpaid in terms of regular time and even overtime. 

Between 1832 and 1850, sweatshops attracted individuals with lower incomes to growing cities, and attracted immigrants to locations such as London and New York City's [[Garment District, Manhattan|garment district]], located near the [[tenement]]s of New York's [[Lower East Side]]. These sweatshops incurred criticism: labor leaders cited them as crowded, poorly ventilated, and prone to fires and rodent infestations: in many cases, there were many workers crowded into small tenement rooms.

In the 1890s, the [[National Anti-Sweating League]] was formed in [[Melbourne]] and campaigned successfully for a [[minimum wage]] via trade boards.<ref>{{Cite book|orig-year=Online: 2006 |year=1983 |url=http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418|title=Australian Dictionary of Biography |volume=9 |chapter=Goldstein, Vida Jane (1869–1949)|last=Brownfoot|first=Janice N. |publisher=Melbourne University Press |via=National Centre of Biography, Australian National University}}</ref> A group with the same name campaigned from 1906 in the UK, resulting in the [[Trade Boards Act 1909]].<ref name=Blackburn/>

In 1910, the [[International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union]] was founded in attempt to improve the condition of these workers.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://womenshistory.about.com/od/worklaborunions/a/ilgwu.htm |title=ILGWU |website=About.com Education|access-date=May 17, 2016}}</ref>

Criticism of garment sweatshops became a major force behind workplace safety regulations and [[Labour law|labor laws]]. As some journalists strove to change working conditions, the term ''sweatshop'' came to refer to a broader set of workplaces whose conditions were considered inferior. In the United States, [[investigative journalism|investigative journalists]], known as [[muckraker]]s, wrote exposés of business practices, and [[Progressivism in the United States|progressive]] politicians campaigned for new laws. Notable exposés of sweatshop conditions include [[Jacob Riis]]' [[photo journalism|photo documentary]] ''[[How the Other Half Lives]]'' and [[Upton Sinclair]]'s book, ''[[The Jungle]]'', a fictionalized account of the [[meat packing industry]].

[[File:Millville, New Jersey - Dresses. Second view of the Western Dress Factory. Emphasis on general conditions in the... - NARA - 518630.jpg|thumb|[[Lewis Hine]] noted poor working conditions when he photographed workers at the Western Dress Factory in [[Millville, New Jersey]], for the [[Works Progress Administration|WPA]]'s National Research Project (1937)]]

In 1911, the [[Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire]] galvanized negative public perceptions of sweatshops in New York City. The pivotal role of this event is chronicled at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, part of the [[Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site]]. While trade unions, [[minimum wage]] laws, [[fire safety]] codes, and labour laws have made sweatshops (in the original sense) rarer in the [[developed world]], they did not eliminate them, and the term is increasingly associated with factories in the [[developing world]].

===Late 20th century to present===
{{Further information|Slavery in the 21st century}}
In 1994, the United States [[Government Accountability Office]] reported that there were still thousands of sweatshops in the United States, using a definition of a ''sweatshop'' as any "employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law governing minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers' compensation, or industry registration".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.gao.gov/products/hehs-95-29 |title=Garment Industry : Efforts to Address the Prevalence and Conditions of Sweatshops |publisher=[[Government Accountability Office]] |archive-date=February 25, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225031027/https://www.gao.gov/archive/1995/he95029.pdf |url-status=live}}</ref> This recent definition eliminates any historical distinction about the role of a middleman or the items produced and focuses on the legal standards of developed country workplaces. An area of controversy between supporters of outsourcing production to the [[Third World]] and the anti-sweatshop movement is whether such standards can or should be applied to the workplaces of the developing world.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}}

Sweatshops are also sometimes implicated in [[human trafficking]] when workers have been tricked into starting work without [[informed consent]], or when workers are kept at work through [[debt bondage]] or mental duress, all of which are more likely if the workforce is drawn from children or the uneducated rural poor.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}} Because they often exist in places without effective workplace safety or environmental laws, sweatshops sometimes injure their workers or the environment at greater rates than would be acceptable in developed countries.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} [[Penal labor]] facilities (employing prisoners) may be grouped under the sweatshop label due to underpaid work conditions.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Zatz|first=Noah D.|date=April 2008|title=Working at the Boundaries of Markets: Prison Labor and the Economic Dimension of Employment Relationships |url=https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1509&context=vlr |journal=Vanderbilt Law Review|volume=61 |issue=3|pages=859–956|via=Vanderbilt University Law School}}</ref> 

Sweatshop conditions resemble prison labor in many cases, especially from a commonly found Western perspective. In 2014 Apple was caught "failing to protect its workers" in one of its [[Pegatron]] factories. Overwhelmed workers were caught falling asleep during their 12-hour shifts and an undercover reporter had to work 18 days in a row.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/business-30532463|title=Apple 'failing to protect Chinese factory workers' |website=BBC News|language=en-GB|access-date=March 10, 2016}}</ref> Sweatshops in question carry characteristics such as compulsory pregnancy tests for female laborers and terrorization from supervisors into submission.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/leading-article-the-gruesome-reality-of-sweatshops-2094318.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220526/https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/leading-article-the-gruesome-reality-of-sweatshops-2094318.html |archive-date=2022-05-26 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Leading Article: The Gruesome Reality of Sweatshops |work=Independent.co.uk |date=October 1, 2010 |access-date=April 2, 2013}}</ref> Workers then go into a state of forced labor, and if even one day of work is not accounted for they could be immediately fired. These working conditions have been the source of suicidal unrest within factories in the past. Chinese sweatshops known to have increased numbers of suicidal employees have suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop overworked and stressed employees from leaping to their deaths, such as in the case of the [[Foxconn suicides]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=What happened after the Foxconn suicides|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-happened-after-the-foxconn-suicides/|access-date=2021-12-05|website=www.cbsnews.com|date=7 August 2013 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Recently, [[Boohoo.com|Boohoo]] came under light since auditors uncovered a large chain of factories in Leicester producing clothes for Boohoo that were only paying their workers between £3-4.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-08-28|title='Just get out of here': how Leicester's factories went to war with Boohoo|url=http://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/28/boohoo-leicester-factories-went-to-war|access-date=2021-04-21|website=the Guardian|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last1=de Ferrer |first1=Marthe |last2=Katanich |first2=Doloresz |date=2020-07-09 |title=Inside the Leicester sweatshops accused of modern slavery |url=https://www.euronews.com/green/2020/07/09/inside-the-leicester-sweatshops-accused-of-modern-slavery |access-date=2022-04-24 |website=euronews |language=en}}</ref> The conditions of the factories were described as terrible and workers received "illegally low pay".<ref>{{Cite web|date=2020-10-02|title=Boohoo bargains – but at a human cost|url=https://www.antislavery.org/boohoo-bargains-but-at-a-human-cost/|access-date=2021-04-30|website=Anti-Slavery International|language=en-GB}}</ref>