
The terms sweater for the middleman and sweat system for the process of subcontracting piecework were used in early critiques like Charles Kingsley's Cheap Clothes and Nasty, written in 1850, which described conditions in London, England. Many workplaces through history have been crowded, low-paying and without job security but the concept of a sweatshop originated between 18 as a specific type of workshop in which a certain type of middleman, the sweater, directed others in garment making (the process of producing clothing) under arduous conditions. History Ī sweatshop in a New York tenement building, c. The phrase is still used in current times due to the fact that it is still used in a variety of countries around the world. However, the ongoing development of the issue is showing a different situation. This issue appears to be solved by some anti-sweatshop organizations. The idea of minimum wage and Labour's union was not developed until the 1890s. The term sweatshop was used in Charles Kingsley's Cheap Clothes and Nasty (1850) describing such workplaces create a ‘sweating system’ of workers. Many of them worked in tiny, stuffy rooms that are prone to fire hazards and rat infestations. Since 1850, immigrants have been flocking to work at sweatshops in cities like London and New York for more than one century. The phrase sweatshop was coined in 1850, meaning a factory or workshop where workers are treated unfairly, for example having low wages, working long hours, and in poor conditions.

Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors." Use of the term The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.


Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage child labor laws may also be violated. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging or underpaid. Some illegal working conditions include poor ventilation, little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting, or uncomfortably/dangerously high or low temperatures. A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions.
