This week we watched a documentary on the unfair working conditions in Cambodia. The documentary “Sweatshop Deadly Fashion,” was extremely emotional and really showed the behind the scenes of where clothes come from and how they’re made. The Norwegian documentary examined the lives of sweatshop workers through the eyes of three, wealthy Norwegian citizens. Each of them shop at large clothing brands and love to buy clothes. After this film, you could see that each of their perspectives will be forever altered after experiencing the lives of these workers. It was sometimes hard to watch some of the scenes because it would just make me feel angered and distressed because I feel like there’s nothing I can do to help. It really mad me sad watching these people work in such awful working conditions. It made me want to immediately stop shopping at those big clothing chains such as H&M. I was shocked by how much these people were getting paid especially when you compare what they’re making compared to how much they actually sell the clothes for.
They mentioned in the film that there are much worse sweatshops, some would not even allow anyone to come in and film. One thing that really was hard to watch was when one of the Norwegian girls was interviewing a worker and she explained how her mother died while she was still breastfeeding her. The mother had died from hunger because the family could not afford food. I just kept asking myself WHY aren’t these big clothing brands helping their employees, we all know they can afford to pay them enough so that they can live by it. These workers can’t even live on the salary they are being paid. The only thing I feel like I can do is stop shopping at these brands that provide horrible working conditions for their employees because if everyone stops shopping there, they’ll lose money.
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