Life and Debt (film)

I thought the film Life and Debt was really interesting. It made me realize how lucky we are to live in America. In Jamaica, women are forced to work in textile factories five or six full days a week. In return for their hard labor, all they get is $30 per week. Thirty dollars could not even buy food to support one person for a week, nevermind a family. I think this film did a great job of portraying the terrible working conditions that these people are faced with. Americans do not realize that when they wear that sweater or pair of Hanes underwear that it was made for them by hand by an underpaid, overworked person. Jamaica is just one of the few countries that is faced with these issues. The Jamaican government made it so there could be no unionization in the Free Trade Zones. In the past, women who tried to form a union in order to achieve better working conditions were fired and black-listed, preventing them from ever working again. These people are just standing up for their rights and are being punished for it. This film was an eye-opening way to show us that Americans really have it easy. The Jamaican families struggle to make it day-to-day, while we sit here on our iPhones and Mac computers worrying about who we are going to get dinner with that night. It is unfair that people are forced to work in such unfair conditions. This film showed me the devasting effect that the International Monetary Funds (IMF) have around the world.