Imagine working 6 days a week for 9 ½ hours each day. Then when you get your paycheck it’s $19.98. That’s roughly 35 cents per hour. This is how much the people of Haiti get paid each day. This is just above minimum wage in Haiti which is 30 cents an hour or $2.40 a day. In comparison only a small can of rice cost $ 2.00. Their salary in some ways reflect their working conditions; in that they’re both poor. The people are treated as drones and expected to work that way for less money than any drone would cost. Their lives describe how evil people become through greed and money. Still the biggest question is why we accept people who treat others this way and do not say a word, as though our mouths have been glue shut and taught not to speak. These wrongs need to be corrected because it’s inhumane to treat people this way, and America can improve it’s own as well as other economies if we change this.
He stares up looking into the vast unknown. The stars are bright and the night is short, all his nights are short. Still the night is his best time, his time of peace. Jacob has been looking at these stars knowing that one day he’d have the pleasure of being as high as them. He is a 25-year-old man who’s lived in Port-au-Prince since birth. He’s been working his daily hell since he can remember. He looks forward to his time off like many others. He has 14 ½ hours in a day to himself. He walks for 40 minutes to meet his daughter after school. They then walk home and have dinner. On the occasional night they get in a shower, but lately it’s a luxury they do not have. His home is four walls and no longer a roof. He lost that along with his wife in the earthquake. So he spends most of his time looking at the stars. He sees his hope within them, and his daughters too. She is the most fortunate of her age because she will get an education as to not live in sweatshop through her entire life.
The next day Jacob wakes up to his doom, like every other day. He marches off to his smothering job. He hopes to get the maximum quota today, he wont be able to pay his rent without it this week. He walks miles to his job and arrives just a little early, 5:45. He begins to sow the little wings of the fairies. He hated them. They were the most deceitful things he knew, even worse than his “boss.” They looked like cute, helpful little bundles of joy but they were not. They were the demons that would tease him. They were not made of joy, as they portrayed; instead, they’re made of suffering and greed.
His fingers were sore, slowly they numbed, as the day would go by, like every other day. He was always very cautious to not prick his finger; he couldn’t get blood on the clothing. He managed to make his quota today and went home satisfied.
This is the life of a man working in the sweatshops of Haiti. There is constant stress and little hope. This man spoke about was working for Disney. The clothes he sews today were shipped to America and then trough out the country to Wal-Marts. Then a little girl begs her mother to buy a pair, after all they’re only $12. Her mom gives in and gets her the pants. Only a month later they are of no interest to her because they’re wore and faded. After all why would a company pay for good material, they had good workers to make up for it and they did cost less.
In one day, with the amount of pants made by the people of a Haiti sweatshop, Disney makes roughly $11,970. After paying their workers they earn $11,904 everyday (without shipping). If perhaps we cut the CEO’s pay a little and distributed that into the workers, maybe things would be better off. Haiti would have more money and could afford to buy their children better than mud cookies, as shown in a BBC news article just earlier this year. If not do that, open shops here in America where there are labor laws. Give the people work and save on all that transportation. Still it would cost more money for the business owners to give the people what they need.
I think the first step to solving this problem is to make people aware of it. Some would rather not know because they don’t want to think of lives in such an awful state. Others say if we stop sweatshops our economy will crash and burn. Still I think we can do it a better way, I know we can. This is America; it’s the land of the free, of the just. If we don’t stand up to the wrong our country is doing to others then I think America has a different meaning than it did before. The solution has been stated. America has an opportunity to change things. Now the only hope is that one stands and millions follow. The sweatshops must be changed into a true working environment because harm has been the only result of sweatshops. As Gondi once said “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”