Sweatshop

See the impact on fashion designers visiting Cambodia.  Interesting compared with US Reality TV. There are a number of 10 min – 12 min episodes.  Worth a little time during a busy week.

Sweatshop

Liu also found that Chun Si's 900 workers were locked in the walled factory compound for all but a total of 60 minutes a day for meals. Guards regularly punched and hit workers for talking back to managers or even for walking too fast, he says. And they fined them up to $1 for infractions such as taking too long in the bathroom. Liu left the factory for good in December, after he and about 60 other workers descended on the local labor office to protest Chun Si's latest offenses: requiring cash payments for dinner and a phony factory it set up to dupe Wal-Mart's auditors. In his pocket was a total of $6 for three months of 90-hour weeks--an average of about one-half cent an hour. ''Workers there face a life of fines and beating,'' says Liu. Chun Kwan couldn't be reached, but his daughter, Selina Chun, one of the factory managers, says ''this is not true, none of this.'' She concedes that Chun Si did not pay overtime but says few other factories do, either.

Business Week

Even in specific cases where a company was allegedly exploiting sweatshop labor we found the jobs were usually better than average. In 9 of the 11 countries we surveyed, the average reported sweatshop wage, based on a 70-hour work week, equaled or exceeded average incomes. In Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Honduras, the average wage paid by a firm accused of being a sweatshop is more than double the average income in that country.

Library of Economics