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Kathie Lee Gifford has a signature line of clothing, which Wal-Mart is manufacturing and selling. What Kathie Lee did not know was that her clothing was being made by children in Third World countries. These children were working long hours in unhealthy factories, and the company refused to pay them for their work. News stories about Kathie Lee Gifford's association with sweatshops brought them into the public eye.

Sweatshops are factories that have below-standard working conditions and sometimes require long work hours. Sweatshops are mainly perceived as being located in Third World countries like India, Haiti, and China, but sweatshops are here in the United States too. The Department of Labor has found the following violations in sweatshops:

• factories are not ventilated
• employees are abused
• there are no toilets
• there are no emergency exits
• doors/exits are locked
• there is do not have running water
• companies violate minimum wage laws
• child labor is involved

Well-known companies like Walt Disney, The Gap, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Levi’s have purchased from or manufactured products in sweatshops. Like all businesses, sweatshops like to keep their costs low. However, they fail to comply with minimum wage laws. The Department of Labor estimates that over half of the sewing factories in the United States are paying below the minimum wage (Contact 4 News, 1996, WWW). Wages in some U.S. sweatshops are estimated to be 60 cents per hour, in comparison to Haiti’s 30 cents per hour (People’s Weekly, 1996, WWW). Both of these pay rates can be considered starvation wages.

Another problem is that some factories use child labor to increase their profits. In Indonesia, Nike pays 12-year-old girls to make shoes 70 hours per week in a factory that reeks of glue. Over 200 million children work in factories in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Asia.

Fortunately, the public’s outrage has forced companies to be responsible for their actions. The following firms are now trying to rectify the inhumane conditions in sweatshops:

• Reebok has agreed to restructure the way it purchases over 350,000 soccer balls in Pakistan (Holstein, 1996, WWW).
• Levi’s will not do business with factories that violate employees’ human rights (Polter, 1996, p12).
• Sears will not purchase from companies with a questionable history (Polter, 1996, p12).
• The Gap has signed an agreement to monitor factory conditions in El Salvador(Polter, 1996, p12).
• Wal-Mart has stopped doing business with the Honduran factory that manufactured Kathie Lee Gifford clothing (Polter, 1996,p12).

Sweatshops offer workers some advantages in foreign countries. In Malaysia, women have an opportunity to work at Motorola instead of working in the rice fields. The average pay in Malaysia is $108 per month. However, if you work for Motorola, you are paid $300 per month. Women are changing their culture and learning to speak out and voice their opinions. They are setting goals to own a business, to go to college, or to be independent (Greider, 1997, p38). The economies of third world countries are also improving due to American money being spent there.

Consumers in the United States also benefit from sweatshops because companies are able to keep their prices low.

On April 15, 1997, President Clinton established an agreement to try to end sweatshops. U.S. clothing companies are being asked to adopt a code of conduct for clothing made in the United States. The agreement asks for a worldwide ban on all child labor in Third World countries. It also gives workers the right to join a union, and requires employers to pay the minimum wage in each country. Companies that follow the agreement will be able to sew a "No Sweat" label on to their products. These labels will represent that the garments were not made in sweatshops. This agreement is historical, and is the first step towards abolishing sweatshops.

There are many different points to consider when deciding if sweatshops are good or bad. In an ideal situation, there would be a balance between production overseas and production in the United States. Companies would pay employees the current minimum wage and meet the standardized regulations relating to the work environment. Some American companies have already taken the first step in improving work conditions across the globe. With the help of the public, we can make sweatshops a thing of the past.