Reading 4 Study sheet.docx

1. **Sweatshops and Exploitation**: The document describes sweatshops as highly exploitative and dangerous workplaces where clothes are made, highlighting the severe undercompensation of workers for their labor. It uses examples from the Pearl River Delta and Rana Plaza disaster to illustrate the hu...

1. **Sweatshops and Exploitation**: The document describes sweatshops as highly exploitative and dangerous workplaces where clothes are made, highlighting the severe undercompensation of workers for their labor. It uses examples from the Pearl River Delta and Rana Plaza disaster to illustrate the human cost of maintaining low production costs. 2. **Fast Fashion**: Fast fashion is characterized by the rapid production and distribution of clothing to meet the latest trends, relying on aggressive pricing strategies and resulting in exploitation within the production chain. 3. **Industrial Revolution's Impact**: Discusses how the introduction of machinery like the spinning jenny and power loom revolutionized cloth production, leading to factory work replacing home-based labor and setting the stage for modern sweatshops. 4. **Globalization of Apparel Production**: Examines the shift of manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs due to globalization, detailing how this move has affected workers and economies in developing nations. 5. **Labor Rights and Industrial Action**: Highlights the ongoing struggle of garment workers for fair wages and safe working conditions, including historical and contemporary examples of labor movements and strikes. 6. **Impact of Economic Policies**: Critiques neoliberal policies and structural adjustment programs that have decimated local industries in developing countries, forcing people into exploitative factory jobs. 7. **Environmental Degradation**: Briefly mentions the environmental cost of the apparel industry's practices, particularly in China, without detailed exploration in the provided text. 8. **Consumer Responsibility and Corporate Accountability**: Discusses the complex relationship between consumer choices, corporate profit motives, and the potential for ethical reform in the fashion industry. 9. **The Asia Floor Wage Alliance**: An initiative aimed at establishing a uniform living wage across Asian countries to prevent the downward pressure on wages due to global competition.