How is sweatshop labor defined?

Question

Is it determined solely on how many dollars a person is paid per unit of time?

Or does it ever matter how much a company takes in as gross revenue vs employee salary?

For example : It's been said that Apple stores collect a gross average per day $130K.
Each store has less than 100 full time employees. 
So at $4.3M gross revenue per month, how much would they have to pay their employees to NOT be considered sweatshop labor? 

Keep this in mind when you complain next time about a real estate agent getting paid 3% per sale or a CEO makes 300x his lowest employee.

Jared · Accepted Answer

I would not use sales as a factor in determining if something is "sweatshop labor."  You must consider the human aspects of work.

You do not have to offer a person breaks, including lunch breaks, in some circumstances.  I'd say that a human being needs at least seven hours of sleep per night.  

If you work someone 17hrs a day with no breaks (lunch or casual), then you have to have some notion that this person is "ok" with this.  Normally pay is the factor here.  Many people work 24+ hr days for low pay, but get compensated in some manner with which they are fine (dollars, experience, etc.).  An employer might work you 17hrs a day without a break doing hard manual labor, and do so for seven days, and then given you seven days off.  This isn't sweatshop labor (in a joking sense, it might be, but not the way you mean it).

When you work someone to the point that his health is called into question; when you compensate him in a manner ridiculous to how much you make (profit, not sales); AND the employee has little choice of other employment, you may be running a sweat shop.

A couple of examples:

I pay an employee here in the U.S. minimum wage.  I require him to work 12 hours a day with no break in a hot environment (he sweats a bunch).  I pay him overtime when he incurs it.  He has a choice to work the job or to quit.  -- Not sweat shop labor.

I own the only factory in the area, and most people in the area do not have access to transportation.  I have job market power to set wages (and this goes back to the first example) and hours.  What I require of my employee is detrimental to his health, and he has no other option -- if I am doing something to limit his other options -- then I run a sweat shop.

Being FORCED TO WORK a job is one thing.  Having no better option is not necessarily being forced to work; it's a choice.  This is highly debatable ethically.  

So i'd say that a true sweat shop is where a person is FORCED to work there, and no other factors matter.  This deals with demographics, geography, etc.

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How is sweatshop labor defined?

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