Aren t sweatshops a necessary part of economic development?
No. There is a critical question that you must consider when you pose this question: “What is economic development?” If you consider economic development to be a situation where local communities improve their quality of life and all those living in the community can afford food, clothing, housing, healthcare, education, and reasonable savings and recreation; then no, sweatshops are not a necessary part of economic development. If however you follow the neo-liberal model of development that calls for nothing but continued growth as a benchmark of development, then you might believe that sweatshops are necessary. Such neo-liberal models however are NOT helping to develop developing countries. On the contrary, they are destroying the people and the planet in the process.
