... Are Sweatshops Good?

Blog Post 5

Close your eyes and describe the image that appears in your head when you hear the word sweatshop.  In my head I can imagine an overcrowded room, people lined up next to each other all using a machine to complete their work. In this room I picture loud noises coming from every corner of the room, the machine noises never stop. The looks on people’s faces all look really tired. You would think that every single person lined up at a sweatshop machine would feel nothing but absolute hatred for this job. However, some people can’t believe how lucky they are to have ended up working at this sweatshop. At least this is what Nicholas D. Kristof argues in his essay, “Where Sweatshops are a Dream”. Kristof puts together an essay that makes you question whether sweatshops might actually “help” people.

Kristof’s purpose in writing this essay was to try to

give insight to Barack Obama and his team, along with any other person who comes across this text, as to why fixing labor standards in places like sweatshops might actually hurt others. He tries to prove his point through the use of pathos. He describes not only the bad living conditions of some but also mentions their “jobs”. These people living in poverty attempt to make money by looking through garbage dumps in attempts of finding recyclables that they can sell. They hardly make any money from this and they also risk their lives while doing so. He mentions a girls named Neuo Chanthou whose sister lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran her over. People living in these conditions (for example, Pim Srey Rath) dream of the possibility of working in a sweatshop. To them obtaining a job like this is what they dream and hope for. Kristof also uses imagry in the beginning of his essay to allow us a better sense of the living conditions these people live in. In paragraph 12 of his essay he refutes the arguments of those who believe that labor conditions can improve wages and working conditions. He believes that better labor standards would make these companies want to hire less people.

I think Kristof did a good job of getting his message across. I think his strengths show in his use of pathos. He got message by making the reader feel empathy for these people who actually DREAM of working in sweatshops. I liked that he used this approach rather than using a bunch of statistics and facts. However including some of these would not have been a bad thing.