Sweatshop challenge - Spend well and change the world

Every day every one of us uses something produced in a factory where the working conditions and pay would be unacceptable if not illegal in our own workplaces.

Every day every one of us uses something, be it a smartphone, a pair of runners or a kettle, and the workers who made it, usually poorly educated women thousands of miles away in the Far East, get by far the very smallest share of what we pay for it.

It has always been thus but globalisation has accelerated and copper-fastened this process. It has also made uneasy bedfellows of consumerism and ethical questions because it is surely wrong to support manufacturers or retailers who do not treat workers properly. And it would be almost revolutionary to hope that all workers, no matter where their workbench is, enjoy the protections — comparatively at least — we regard as basic.