Sweatshop, workplace in which workers are employed at low wages and under unhealthy or oppressive conditions. In England, the word sweater was used as early as 1850 to describe an employer who exacted monotonous work for very low wages. “Sweating” became widespread in the 1880s, when immigrants from eastern and southern Europe provided an influx of cheap labour in the United States and central Europe. An increase in industrialization in the 20th century saw sweatshops emerge in parts of Latin America and Asia, a trend that accelerated with increased demand for consumer goods in the West and a lowering of international trade barriers.

sweatshop Boss admonishing an employee in a sweatshop; illustration from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Nov. 3, 1888. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: cph 3b26612)

Sweatshops often involve poverty-level wages, excessive hours of labour, and unsafe or unhealthful workplace conditions. Certain social and economic conditions are necessary for sweatshops to be possible: (1) a mass of unskilled and unorganized labourers, often including children, (2) management systems that neglect the human factor of labour, and (3) lack of accountability for poor working conditions, or failure of governments to intervene on the behalf of workers.

Historically, the sweatshop has depended on homework (literally, work done in the home) and the development of contracting. In the homework system, members of a family receive payment for piecework done in their own home or in a residence that has been converted into a small factory. In contracting, individual workers or groups of workers agree to do a certain job for a certain price. Sometimes they carry out this contract themselves; sometimes they sublet it to subcontractors at lower prices. This arrangement can lead to labour exploitation (often of women, children, and, in the developed world, undocumented workers or recent immigrants), erratic employment, and poor quality in the final product. When trade is brisk, extremely long hours are worked in seriously overcrowded workrooms. When trade is slack, the subcontractors—whose overhead costs are far lower than those of factory employers—typically dismiss workers without consideration. One of the earliest objectives of factory and minimum-wage legislation was to improve conditions for workers.

Workers in a New York City sweatshop, 1908. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. USZ62-19966)

In the 19th century, sweatshops were common in the manufacturing of shoes, soap, cigars, and artificial flowers. Conditions have tended to be worse in large cities, where sweatshops can be hidden in slum areas. Although legislation had by the middle of the 20th century controlled sweatshops in most developed countries, the system was still operating in many countries in Asia, where large numbers of people were engaged in homework and in small factory shops.

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Factors contributing to the control of sweatshops in the 20th century included the growth of national labour laws, pressures from trade unions, the political influence of labour parties, social awareness stemming from activism, and, on the part of industry, recognition of the efficiencies of factory production and increased interest in human relations. Around the world, the International Labour Organisation has attempted to raise labour standards in countries where sweatshops are still common. Sweatshops in the garment and shoe industries became headline stories in the 1990s when popular American brands were discovered to have been made in sweatshops in the United States and its territories and in overseas factories.