Making a Difference

In seminar today we watched a video about outsourcing jobs by setting up sweatshops in Indonesia.

Benjamin Powell, author of “Making poor nations rich”; Powell believes that sweatshops are beneficial for both corporations and workers. He had said we should love sweatshops and the alternative they offer for the average worker.

I have to say I do not agree with Powell had to say, after watching a video on Nike’s sweatshops it doesn’t make it right or better to treat any human being that way.

Yes, it may be a chance for someone to live on the bare minimum, but shouldn’t wage be about people being able to earn and save so that they can have a better lifestyle and earn an education? In the video it showed Nike had signed an endorsement deal with Tiger Woods for a hundred million US Dollars just for sporting the logo and those Indonesian workers are being paid a dollar twenty-five minimum daily which is enough to pay their rent and maybe buy a little food. They do not receive benefits and they do not get the luxury of being able to use a bathroom or sleep on a pillow or buy medicine when they are feeling sick.

It just rattles me that they, (we) have the power to be the change but we’re so blinded and corrupted whether it be by greed or the social norm. I don’t think we should support the change because we’re economically advanced or industrially advanced but because we’re human beings and we shouldn’t alienate them out. We should do our part in helping them out and protecting their human rights. I know what you’re all thinking, what am I going to do that will make a difference? It starts by doing your part, whatever that may be. I, for one will do my part by refusing to be a consumer of companies who take advantage of cheap labour.





Panagiota Kioulos