Sweatshops In Bangladesh

On April 23, 2013, three cracks were discovered in the reinforced concrete supporting a nine story factory outside of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The next day, after workers populated the building, Rana Plaza collapsed killing over 1,130 people. The collapse resulted from rapid and illegal construction of the top three floors. (Shirt on Your Back) This tragedy exemplifies the harsh working conditions of factory workers in Bangladesh. “Women account for over 80 percent of its 4 million employees, most of them working in terrible conditions for long hours and extremely low pay” (Knox 285). Despite the working environment and meager wages, Bangladesh earns over $20 billion a year by exporting garments to Western retailers (Knox 285). Although income is low, garment sweatshops pay more than other jobs in Bangladesh. Since Bangladesh is over 8,000 miles away from the United States, corporations and …show more content…
The ongoing success of core regions depend on their manipulation of other regions. However, bringing companies into third world countries develops the economies of the peripheral regions and gives them the opportunity to advance beyond factories. (Allen 21) Through mutual exploitation, corporations take advantage of cheap labor, while workers take advantage of incoming firms by extracting higher pay. As more and more companies move to the third world, they start to have to compete for workers, thus, the wages go up as the number of available workers decreases. (Allen 22) Because of leadership cycles and imperial overstretch, core regions will eventually begin to decline as the semi-peripheral or peripheral regions become hegemonic. Therefore, the exploitation of cheap labor allows third world countries to increase their dollars in circulation, better their trading capabilities, improve their communication, and promote hope for more economic development. (Allen