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Comment by seraphsf | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the classic Nicholas Kristof article, “Two Cheers for Sweatshops”. (http://archive.is/W6ABE) The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job.

If the employer of a “sweatshop job” is not coercing or lying to its employees, then I have a hard time faulting the employer directly. We may still want systemic change to create more options and more equity for employees, but the “sweatshop” (that pays more than alternatives and which employees freely choose) is not the villain in this story.

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I saw a documentary once on a slum in Kampala, where they interviewed a guy living in the slum who's job it was to clean out the public toilets there. He claimed it was one of the 'best jobs', because he was paid on time, given a uniform/gloves to wear instead of having to buy one himself, set his own hours, and the labor was not back breaking agricultural labor in the open sun all day. He also remarked he was able to contribute to his community in a positive way by keeping it clean, something all the other residents rewarded him for with various tips as thanks for his service since they had to use those toilets everyday. Wasn't the response I expected.

That's very interesting, I don't suppose you know the name of the documentary?

I wonder if the biggest reason he didn't hate his job was the gratitude from other people. One of my first jobs was stocking shelves on the graveyard shift at a grocery store, and the 1 hour or so before the store closed I would occasionally help shoppers find things, help take heavy things to their car, or help them reach items high on the shelf. A sincere thank you always made the 7h of mind numbing stocking go a lot faster.

Indeed.

As I can't find a reference, you can treat this as anecdotal - but there was a radio story about 2 fifteen year old siblings who'd both 'taken up sweatshop work'. One was stitching trainers, one was doing embroidery - for very low wages.

Initial 'outrage at child-labour' was confused slightly when they both said they were very happy, as they'd previously been working on their parents farm - and their sweatshop labour had allowed them to contribute towards a tractor for their village (replacing the labour of a whole load of children) - and for the first time they had some personal savings.

Consider that cartels are known to work, they allow more profit for participants. The reason they work is because the price of maximum profit is typically higher than the equilibrium price.

Outlawing sweatshops effectively creates a wage / work conditions cartel.

> The gist of which is, a job can be ‘not good’ from the perspective of the privileged but still ‘much better than the alternatives’ from the perspective of the people who take that job.

If you want to go deeper on this subject I highly recommend reading Factfulness.

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