Mich: What’s wrong with sweatshop labour: a feminist analysis

Mirjam Müller (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin)

In this paper I provide a normative analysis of sweatshop labour, i.e. labour intensive production work in factories mainly located in the Global South, which is characterised by minimal wages, long hours and systematic health- and safety hazards. While sweatshop labour tends to be voluntary and mutually beneficial, many share the intuition that there something morally problematic about it. I argue that this is best captured in terms of wrongful exploitation. I further argue that a comprehensive and plausible normative analysis of sweatshop labour needs to integrate the structural conditions that enable and sustain sweatshop labour. These are, in particular, the vulnerabilities which workers experience in virtue of their position within global relations of production and in virtue of their gender. I therefore defend the argument that sweatshop labour is best understood as a form of structural exploitation that is continuously reproduced. My argument proceeds in three steps. First I develop an account of structural, reproductive exploitation. Second, I show how this account can be used to provide a normative, feminist analysis of sweatshop labour. Finally, I outline what is wrong with sweatshop labour on this account.