Half a penny

According to this week’s article, “Santa’s sweatshop: In a global economy, it’s hard to know who made your gift—and under what conditions:, what appears to be a dehumanizing low wage job over here is may not be perceived as an insult in other countries. According to the article, “what may appear to be horrific working environments to most citizens in the world’s richest nation are not just acceptable but actually attractive to others who live overseas or even in “Third World pockets” of the United States” (1). So despite the less than acceptable working conditions and wages, for those who are driven by their poor economy and are in desperate need of work will have to settle for what seems to be unappealing jobs to us. The wages are also seen as abundant when unemployment is rampant.

The article also talks about the terrible working conditions the workers had to endure in to ensure that the quota is met and the workers were less than often paid for overtime outside of the factory when they have to bring their work home. This brings us to a news article I found online called, “Inside a Chinese Sweatshop: “A Life of Fines and Beating””. The article focuses on a Chinese worker named Liu Zhang who discloses that guards regularly beat workers for irrelevant reasons and after he had fines and fees deducted from his pay, Liu was literally making a ridiculous amount of half a penny per hour.

I’m happy to announce that this is already my third blog entry and I still haven’t broken the Compact Challenge. Now that I’ve reach the half-way mark, I find it to be a lot easier to keep up with the challenge. This weekend I visited my favorite clothing store and I was able to resist buying anything that was not considered a necessity.

Blog #3
Marcella Lee

[Inside source: Holstein, Palmer, Ur-Rehman, and Ito. "Santa's Sweatshop: In a Global Economy, it's Hard to Know Who Made Your Gift - and Under What Conditions." Reader. ]

[Outside source: http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_40/b3701119.htm]