module 1 - fashion evolution

The rise of sweatshops

• With massive immigration into the US especially beginning in the late 1880s, sweatshops became common in American cities on the east coast. Southern and Eastern European immigrants were easy targets for manufactures and large companies who wanted to hardly dirt and only provided poor working conditions. In many cases a lot of newly arriving immigrants were just glad to be provided jobs no matter how low the wages as there was so much discrimination and racial segregation. Many management systems took advantage of these immigrant workers who were thankful for any kind of job and worked them long, hard hours with no breaks and neglected the safety of these workers; removing any consideration for the human factor. Many governments knew about these awful working conditions however were most unwilling to intervene. It wasn’t until 1938 that minimum wage and maximum hours was legalised and sweatshops began to disappear from America and other rising countries. Even tho things were starting to look up for getting rid of the ‘sweatshop’ industry it still hasn’t been abolished to this day and conditions are worse than ever as fast fashion is growing more and more and the change in trends are changing rapidly; manufactures have to work there workers even harder to meet customer demands.  After the new laws were brought out in 1938 garment manufactures found new and inexpenisve ways to finish their goods still in factories however outside in countries in South and Central America and Asia (which are still massive sweatshop capitals too this day) where labour expectations were dramatically cheaper and sweatshops began to flourish and thrive. Many companies took advantage of the fact these 'third world’ countries minimum wages were extremely low or even non existent. Brands such as Nike and Gap fell under harsh criticism for producing their expensive goods in such cheaper labour sweatshops. Sweat shops in developing and third world countries is still very very apparent today however these sweat-shop conditions can exist anywhere where there is a venerable population especially with more and more immigrants coming over to first world countries looking for jobs over the last couple of years it is getting more worrying that many might be susceptible to sweatshops conditions and be lured in as desperate times are upon a lot of immigrants and undocumented workers. In 2006, a factory in Massachusetts, US was raided by authorities were they found a number of factory workers in ‘sweatshop like’ conditions, over 300 of these workers were undocumented. Wether we like to admit it or not here is still so much racial injustice in the garments industry which would shock so many of the ordinary people that walk into shops like Primark or New Look who are either completely oblivious or just try to ignore it; this issue is obviously still very apparent today and needs to have a big, bright light shined on it.