sweat-shop

Related to sweat-shop: up and running

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:
  • sweatshop
  • 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 out
References in periodicals archive
Critics claim it will be too humid to play football in Qatar but the region is so wealthy even the sweat-shops have air conditioning.
Qat on a hot tin roof; RESULT!
Sweat-shops, and How Women Changed Their Role in the American Workforce.
The exploitation of children: past and present
The archdiocese will no longer do business with clothing and athletic vendors who produce their goods in sweat-shops that violate fair labor practices, exploit workers and pay less than the minimum wage.
Newark has 'no sweat' policy on uniforms
Over the past two years, it has allocated quotas based on past performance, which favours larger firms and used free pool distributions through a capacity qualification, which encourage mergers among small sweat-shops and their assimilation into the medium tier of companies, optimizing the quotas.
Knocking on quota doors: textile exports increase
Three-quarters of Midland office workers are working in virtual sweat-shops and left to suffer chronic health issues such as headaches, backache and eye fatigue because of indifference from their bosses, new research suggests today.
Big health issues in offices
The people who Messent cruelly and unnecessarily dehumanises are the abandoned English working class, surplus to requirements now our manufacturing is farmed out to third world sweat-shops.
Politicians have neglected the white working class; views
'When people have to work in sweat-shops, breathe polluted air or live in fear of their neighbours, it is time to change the rules,' NEF says.
Enterprise: Challenging economic policies of the world
Top fashion designers have been exposed for paying as low as pounds 30 a week in sub- contractors' sweat-shops. And these slave wage employers are not in the Philippines or rural China, but right in the Californian sunbelt.
War waged on the slave trade
Most unions bank at the Co-op because it won't invest in arms companies or firms that use sweat-shops.
Pensions Co-chop; 'CARING' BANK CUTS FINAL-SALARY SCHEME