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Anti-sweatshop Movement
Anti-sweatshop movement refers to campaigns to improve the conditions of workers in sweatshops, i.e. manufacturing places characterized by low wages, poor working conditions and often child labor. It started in the 19th century in industrialized countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to improve the conditions of workers in those countries.Sheila Blackburn (1991) ''The Historical Journal'' 34 (1) 43-64 "Ideology and Social Policy: The Origins of the Trade Boards Act" These campaigns are meant to improve the working conditions through advocacy for higher wages, safer conditions, unionization and other protections. While they are meant to undermine the reputation of companies using sweatshop labor, they are not statistically significant as intended. History Some of the earliest sweatshop critics were found in the 19th-century abolitionist movement that had originally coalesced in opposition to chattel slavery, and many abolitionists saw s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Sweatshop
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a cramped workplace with very poor and/or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Employees 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. 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. 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 United States. The U.S. De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels" ''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 28 November 1820 – 5 August 1895) was a German philosopher, political theorist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He was also a businessman and Karl Marx's lifelong friend and closest collaborator, serving as the co-founder of Marxism. Born in Barmen in the Kingdom of Prussia, Engels was the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer. Despite his Bourgeoisie, bourgeois background, he became a staunch critic of capitalism, influenced by his observations of industrial working conditions in Manchester, England, as published in his early work ''The Condition of the Working Class in England'' (1845). He met Marx in 1844, after which they jointly authored works including ''The Holy Family (book), The Holy Family'' (1844), ''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 California gubernatorial election, 1934 Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his muckraking fictional novel, ''The Jungle'', which exposed the fictional labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published ''The Brass Check'', a muckraking Exposé (journalism), exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Henry Mayhew
Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine '' Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in its early days. He is also known for his work as a social researcher, publishing an extensive series of newspaper articles in the '' Morning Chronicle'' that was later compiled into the three-volume book '' London Labour and the London Poor'' (1851), a groundbreaking and influential survey of the city's poor. Biography Early life He was born in London, the thirteenth of 17 children to Joshua Mayhew. He was educated at Westminster School before running away from his studies to the sea. He then served with the East India Company as a midshipman on a ship bound for Calcutta. He returned after several years, in 1829, becoming a trainee lawyer in Wales.Taithe (1996), p. 9. He left this career to become a freelance journalist. He contributed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl Of Shaftesbury
Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885), styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Shaftesbury and Lady Anne Spencer (daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough), and elder brother of Henry Ashley, MP. A social reformer who was called the "Poor Man's Earl", he campaigned for better working conditions, reform to lunacy laws, education and the limitation of child labour. He was also an early supporter of the Zionist movement and the YMCA and a leading figure in the evangelical movement in the Church of England. Early life Lord Ashley, as he was styled until his father's death in 1851, was educated at Manor House school in Chiswick, London (1812–1813), Harrow School (1813–1816) and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained first-class honours in classics in 1822, took his MA in 1832 and was appointed DCL in 1841. Whilst at Oxford, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Samuel Plimsoll
Samuel Plimsoll (10 February 1824 – 3 June 1898) was a British politician and social reformer, now best remembered for having devised the Plimsoll line (a line on a ship's hull indicating the maximum safe draught, and therefore the minimum freeboard for the vessel in various operating conditions). Its subsequent introduction in regulation resulted in a reduction of ship sinkings and a corresponding significant improvement in seafarer safety from the late 19th century onwards. Early life Samuel Plimsoll was born in Bristol in 1824. His Civil Servant father's promotions took him to Penrith in 1829 and to Regent Street, Sheffield in 1839. Leaving school at an early age, he became a clerk at Rawson's Brewery in the town. The managing partner there was Thomas Birks, who was also an Alderman on the town council. In 1849 he was elected as Mayor, and utilised Samuel as an assistant. One of his roles there was to coordinate the borough's many contributions to the 1851 Great Exhibiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Worker Rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions. Labor background Throughout history, workers claiming some sort of right have attempted to pursue their interests. During the Middle Ages, the Peasants' Revolt in England expressed demand for better wages and working conditions. One of the leaders of the revolt, John Ball, famously argued that people were born equal saying, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" Laborers often appealed to traditional rights. For instance, English ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Middle Class
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Common definitions for the middle class range from the middle fifth of individuals on a nation's income ladder, to everyone but the poorest and wealthiest 20%. Theories like "Paradox of Interest" use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class. Terminology differs in the United States, where the term ''middle class'' describes people who in other countries would be described as working class. There has been significant global middle-class growth over time. In February 2009, ''The Economist'' asserted that over half of the world's population belonged to the middle class, as a result of rapid growth in emerging countries. It characterized the middle class as having a reasonable amo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Investigative Journalism
Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, racial injustice, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting". Most investigative journalism has traditionally been conducted by newspapers, News agency, wire services, and Freelancer, freelance journalists. With the decline in income through advertising, many traditional news services have struggled to fund investigative journalism, due to it being very time-consuming and expensive. Journalistic investigations are increasingly carried out by news organizations working together, even internationally (as in the case of the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and Pandora Papers), or by Non-profit journalism, nonprofit outlets such as ProPublica, which rely on the suppor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depression, which had started in 1929. Roosevelt introduced the phrase upon accepting the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 1932 before winning the election in a landslide over incumbent Herbert Hoover, whose administration was viewed by many as doing too little to help those affected. Roosevelt believed that the depression was caused by inherent market instability and too little demand per the Keynesian model of economics and that massive government intervention was necessary to stabilize and rationalize the economy. During First 100 days of the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency, Roosevelt's first hundred days in office in 1933 until 1935, he introduced what historians refer to as the "First New Deal", ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fair Labor Standards Act
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) is a United States labor law that creates the right to a minimum wage, and " time-and-a-half" overtime pay when people work over forty hours a week. It also prohibits employment of minors in "oppressive child labor".See and . It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The Act was enacted by the 75th Congress and signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. Practical application The Fair Labor Standards Act applies to "employees who are engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, or who are employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce" unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. Generally, an employer with at least $500,000 of business or gross sales in a year satisfies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Progressive Era
The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s) was a period in the United States characterized by multiple social and political reform efforts. Reformers during this era, known as progressivism in the United States, Progressives, sought to address issues they associated with rapid technological and industrial history of the United States, industrialization, urbanization in the United States, urbanization, immigration to the United States, immigration, and corruption in the United States, political corruption, as well as the concentration of industrial ownership in monopoly, monopolies. Reformers expressed concern about slums, poverty in the United States, poverty, and labor conditions. Multiple overlapping movements pursued social, political, and economic reforms by advocating changes in governance, scientific methods, and professionalism; regulating business; environmental protection, protecting the natural environment; and seeking to improve urban living and working conditions. Corru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
