At school we have been Learning about sweatshops. While researching for a debate on this topic, my partner and I found out that sweatshop workers in Bangladesh get paid no more than 13 cents an hour! Not only that, but they are treated very badly. Workers get physically and sexually abused by their bosses and have their pay taken away if they don’t get enough work done and even if they go to the bathroom for too long. This would be a horrible way to live.

Sweatshops are not only a problem in Bangladesh but also in many other places around the world.

Fighting against sweatshops isn’t just something that people in those countries should be doing. Even here in Australia we need to think about what we can do. When workers in sweatshops get paid 13 cents an hour this means that we can go to places like K-Mart and buy $5 tshirts. We all love finding cheap clothes but is it worth it when you think about the whole picture?

I don’t know what to do about that though? I don’t think everyone is going to stop buying clothes from those countries because they are thinking about what they can afford themselves. Even if people did stop buying them, would that mean the workers would get paid even less then 13 cents an hour because of us trying to help?

What do you think?