This chapter compares the living standards provided by sweatshop wages to other alternative living standards in the countries where sweatshops are located. The main finding is that sweatshop pay compares favorably with widespread poverty living standards and agricultural earnings in the countries in which sweatshops operate and often even compares favorably with average living standards.

This chapter introduces the economic perspective on sweatshops and some alternatives available to workers. It explains the ethical standard – the welfare of Third World sweatshop workers and other poor people in the countries where sweatshops are located – that will be used throughout the book, and it provides an overview of what will be covered in the coming chapters.

This chapter shows that child labor is common in most countries with sweatshops but that most children don’t work in manufacturing – most work in agriculture or the service sector. Thus, calls to ban imported sweatshop goods made using child labor ends up shifting even more children into agriculture and services where pay is often lower and work less safe. The chapter argues that the process of economic development that raises average incomes has been the main cure for child labor. Anti–child labor laws typically codify improvements that market competition already achieved.

This chapter reviews the various organizations that comprise the anti-sweatshop movement and what policies they advocate. It provides a history of the origins and growth of the anti-sweatshop movement.

The ILO was created in a period of globalization in the early nineteenth century to help governments agree on health and safety protections for workers. These labor standards were renewed after World War II and today the ILO is the primary global agency at the interface where governments and labor meet on a global scale. This chapter looks at the authority of the ILO in both theory and practice. The theory is provided by the legal texts of the ILO’s conventions and agreements, and a case study on Myanmar’s long-running violations of the rules provides insight into some of the lived experience of the rules.

This Chapter was initially drafted during the Obama Administration. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) had been negotiated and, although it had not yet been ratified in the United States, the Administration and majority of policy makers were in favor of its implementation. Since that time, as previous Chapters have made clear, the United States Administration changed and the United States withdrew from participation in the TPP. While unfortunate, the Administration’s political decision to withdraw from the TPP does not come as a surprise; an examination of the negotiating history of those provisions illuminates a stark political divide within the United States, even prior to the change in Administrations. Fortunately, the other eleven parties to the TPP persevered, resulting in the Comprehensive and Progressive TPP.