According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary globalization is, "the act or process of globalizing : the state of being globalized; especially : the development of an increasingly integrated global economy marked especially by free trade, free flow of capital, and the tapping of cheaper foreign labor markets." Through globalization, our world has shrunk and we are now connected in ways that we never imagined over 40, 50, 60 years ago. In some cases this has been a welcomed change. However, with change, there comes intended and unintended consequences. Two major aspects of globalization are sweatshops and cultural change. Sweatshops have become an extreme problem and since companies won’t openly state that they use sweatshops it is difficult to find if a company is true to its word. "The US Department of Labor defines a sweatshop as a factory that violates two or more labor laws, such as those pertaining to wages and benefits, child labor or working hours. In general, a sweatshop can be described as a workplace where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or benefits, poor working conditions, and arbitrary discipline, such as verbal and physical abuse." Since people are paid extremely low wages they can’t save money to get out of these terrible conditions. Children are often taken and forced to work and are beated. Many things are made in sweatshops like shoes, clothing, and toys. This is why they bring children into sweatshops because of their small, nimble fingers that can get into small places. Companies that use sweatshops across the world get their own benefit since they don’t have to pay a lot. If the companies had factories in the U.S they would have to pay a lot more than they do to the workers in foreign countries. This is one example of globalization that has negative affects. Three companies that use sweatshops are Victoria Secret, Nike, and Walmart. Victoria Secret is one company that many people don’t suspect of using sweatshops but they do and many people are abused in the making of their garments. The company says they use 10% rain- fed cotton that workers have to pick. The workers work fourteen to fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, and get only one day off every three to four months. They get treated very roughly by their managers yelling at them to work faster and workers that fall behind get beaten. Workers only get about three minutes to make a bikini which is fourteen dollars but they only get four cents. These workers are getting cheated about nineteen dollars each week. In 2008 Victoria Secret used this tagline to market their clothing, "Good for women. Good for the children who depend on them." They basically openly said we use child labor to produce our clothes. Also, "the company even went so far as to boast that each purchase improved the lives of women and children in Burkina Faso, the destitute African nation where the cotton is picked." The spokeswomen was defending the company saying that this was totally against their standards and they would investigate this matter. But who knows if they truly did look into this so called "matter." Another company that uses sweatshops is Walmart. In Jordan workers produce clothes for Walmart and they started to complain. They work for ninety to one hundred hours per week and receive no money for months and workers get beat and sent to jail if they ask for money. The living conditions were terrible because they had to sleep ten to twenty people in a small dorm. In a phone interview a girl named Nargis Akhter said, "We used to start at 8 in the morning, and we'd work until midnight, 1 or 2 a.m., seven days a week. "When we were in Bangladesh they promised us we would receive $120 a month, but in the five months I was there I only got one month's salary — and that was just $50." Workers from Bangladesh paid thousands of dollars to work in Jordan but when they got there they got paid less
