The agreement promises an increase from 1,662.50 taka ($24) per month to 3,000 taka ($43) per month, which may seem like a monumental increase from outside Bangladesh. But in Bangladesh, a worker with a family of average size (4.8 members) who works a typical 10 hour work day will require 11,282 taka per month just to feed herself and her family members. This excludes necessary allowances for rent, transportation, or healthcare.

According to John Kline, one of the most important aspects of the Alta Gracia factory is that it represents a successful alternative to the current sweatshop model. Knights Apparel has proved it is possible to pay its workers a living wage and it has also proved that this is only possible if the company is willing to commit to paying its workers this wage.  In the Dominican Republic it has been determined that a living wage is equivalent to 340% of the legal minimum wage.

The higher incidence of lymphoma and leukemia cases in females, as opposed to males, seems to attest to the fact that traditional gender roles play an important factor in the recruitment practices of these companies. As the Ms article points out, at Samsung “men tend to work as engineers and managers while women generally work as line operators -where they are prone to higher chemical exposure.”

The former Samsung clean room workers and their families have recently filed a lawsuit against Korea Worker's Compensation and Welfare Service who refused to pay compensation after conducting an investigation which failed to find sufficient evidence that the cancers were work-related.

Dangerous working conditions, long hours, child labor, violations of the rights of women workers and many other abuses characterize many work places around the world. For example, as I was watching workers in The Simpsons clip stuffing toys with cotton, I could not help but think of the situation facing child workers in Uzbekistan. Right now, the government of Uzbekistan is selling its cotton to international traders even as it continues to remove children from schools across the country and force them to pick cotton.