Scene 5 of Sweat by Lynn Nottage starts with the same summary of world events as all the other scenes, but one specific line stood out to me: “DC protesters disrupt the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting.” When we were assigned to do research on terms from Sweat, I came back to this line, curious about what the protest was for since the book never gave it a name.
From April 15-17, 2000, around 10,000 to 15,000 protestors gathered to protest at the IMF and World Bank meeting in Washington DC. These protests were a follow-up to the 1999 WTO protests. The purpose behind these protests was to support anti-globalization. Anti-globalization is a concept that opposes free trade because of the consequences of that system. Free trade rewards countries that produce goods for the least amount of money possible. In a system of free trade, countries that have the cheapest manufacturing attract companies. Companies don’t have to pay tariffs to transport across national borders, so cheaper manufacturing in other countries is naturally attractive and comes with far more monetary benefits. However, this also leads to little regulation in countries who are trying to provide cheap manufacturing. Workers’ protections are lost and environment protections are rarely in place. Thus, anti-globalization protests are becoming more and more relevant as our world is becoming more connected. Protests are especially common at meetings of organizations that are associated with economic globalization, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
In Sweat, the problem of corporate globalization is especially relevant to the characters. Olstead’s is actively looking for non-union workers to be able to pay lower wages, and Stan even mentions how NAFTA allows companies to move their production outside of the US. With the introduction of NAFTA, companies like Olstead’s are able to find cheaper production in Mexico. This provides the company with a way to make more profit since they can spend less money paying workers. Additionally, Olstead’s wouldn’t have to deal with the pesky business of unions in Mexico, making the prospect all the more captivating. However, when so many companies start moving their production, industrial cities like Reading go through de-industrialization, a process that leads to economic decline and unemployment. For the characters in Sweat, de-industrialization will likely become a major problem and cause them to lose their manufacturing jobs.
I loved how you looked into the societal events at the start of each chapter Nishitha. I usually look over these events, thinking they do not hold importance, when in fact they do. The protests at the IMF and World Bank meetings goes to show how people can be negatively affected by globalization. However, most people overlook these cons as they are not part of the populations that suffer the most making everything happen.
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