Activists and progressive governments sometimes interfere in the working conditions of sweatshops. Their methods may include boycotts of the products produced in these facilities, bans on the import of these products or tariffs imposed by the home country, and enforcing the host country’s laws that aim at regulating sweatshops. Some argue that such interference in sweatshop conditions is morally wrong since it may actually harm workers. The reason is that the enterprise that runs the sweatshop may choose to lay off (...) some workers as the result of effective interference in order to maintain their profit at the desired level. If successful, this argument would prohibit any interference in sweatshop conditions on moral grounds. In this article, I argue in dissent and build a contractualist argument in favor of the moral permissibility of interference in sweatshops. I base my argument on an ex ante interpretation of T.M. Scanlon’s contractualism. (shrink)

Kates argues that ex ante contractualism fails to defend interference with sweatshops on moral grounds. In this commentary, I argue that Kates does not apply this approach correctly. Ex ante contractualism, indeed, successfully defends interference and thus should still be considered an appealing alternative to other moral approaches for evaluating when and how to interfere in sweatshop conditions to help workers.

One common argument against sweatshops is that they are exploitative. Exploitation is taken as sufficient reason to condemn sweatshops as unjust and to argue that sweatshop owners have a moral duty to offer better working conditions to their employees. In this article, I argue that any exploitation theory falls short of covering all standard cases of sweatshops as exploitative. In going through the most prominent theories of exploitation, I explain why any given sweatshop can either be wrongfully exploitative or not, (...) depending on the exploitation theory being considered and the circumstances of the application. I conclude by suggesting that sweatshop critics had better find other reasons besides the charge of exploitation to protest or interfere with these workplaces. (shrink)