sweatshop

sweatshop

1. A factory or workshop in which employees are forced to do very hard work, especially the manufacturing of clothing, for long hours with very low wages. Can be used facetiously to describe generally unpleasant or undesirable work conditions. The massive retailer recently committed to stop selling clothes produced in sweatshops. The charity aims to help find better employment opportunities for workers who hitherto had no option but to work in sweatshops to make ends meet. They've really turned the office into a sweatshop, making us work 70-hour weeks to get this project finished before the deadline.
2. Of, describing, or pertaining to such a factory or workshop. It's no secret that the clothing line has been using sweatshop labor for years to produce their goods at the lowest possible cost. The life expectancy of workers subjected to sweatshop conditions is unsurprisingly very low.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

sweat-shop

n. a workplace where employees work long hours for low pay in poor conditions. The bank manager is unfair! I’ve been a teller in this sweat-shop for thirteen years, and I’ve never had a new carpet in my office.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • sweat-shop
  • not have a stitch of clothing (one)
  • without a stitch of clothing (on)
  • with not a stitch of clothing (on)
  • Santa's workshop
  • change out of
  • change out of (something)
  • civvies
  • wardrobing
  • kit up
References in periodicals archive
Arguing with the economic development theorists Ross outlines how rather than stepping-stones to development, sweatshops are on a downward slide to the bottom.
A second theme is the equation of sweatshops with the garment industry.
If the climate doesn't finish them, the sweatshops do.
Sweatshop labor is not quantitatively dominant either in the world economy or in the United States.
Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wudunn in their New York Times article "Two Cheers for Sweatshops" (September 24, 2000) assert that boycotting fails to improve working conditions and instead causes sweatshops to close and workers to be fired altogether.
Like many who toil inside sweatshops, most of these jornaleros are in this country illegally, and, to them, getting deported is a bigger threat than not getting paid.
These sweatshops are a brutal face of globalization.
Several of the women interviewed were involved in legislative action against manufacturers such as Donna Karan New York (DKNY) and Jessica McClintock for the hazardous sweatshop conditions in which their merchandise is produced.
Instead, 60 Minutes interviewed the white male sweatshop boss, who had nothing but praise for the company.
If it's difficult to associate human labor with the Murakami gloss, it's easy enough to see a link between his industrious assistants and the sweatshop workers who make the knockoff handbags for which Louis Vuitton is, after all, best known (Murakami's version has been available for months on New York streets).
He said they also recorded interviews with sweatshop workers and young people involved with the Sandinista Youth Movement.
The Gap buys GE cotton, pesticide cotton, and relies upon a notorious network of sweatshop subcontractors.
Second, the sweatshop workers themselves had begun to organize.
In less than five years, labor rights, human rights, legal rights, community and religious organizations, later joined by university students based on their respective campuses, have formed coalitions to expose the excesses of globalization centered around the sweatshop wherever they operate in the world.
Sugar Hill Capital Partners announced that Sweatshop, a Brooklyn-based coffee house founded by Luke Woodard and Ryan De Remer, is occupying the firm's ground-level storefront at 336 Flatbush.