sweatshop

先日、他大学の友人と就活について話していた時にふと思ったことです。「ブラック企業」って英語で何というのだろうと。最初は”black corporation”と変な発言をお互いしていましたが、たまたまネットで見つけた記事がヒントになりました。

Are 'sweatshops' an economic necessity?

Hong Kong (CNN) – A few years back, influential New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof shocked readers by opening a column this way: “Africa desperately needs Western help in the form of schools, clinics and sweatshops.”

For Kristof, who regularly advocates better conditions for people in the developing world, this advice seems to belie his progressive views. But he’s part of a chorus of liberal economic thinkers who advocate that sweatshops – a broad term for factories or workshops characterized low wages, long hours, sometimes underage workers and unsafe conditions – are an unsavory but necessary first step to help bootstrap the world’s poorer economies.

Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman penned a 1997 piece for Slate entitled “In Praise of Cheap Labor” that argued “bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all.”

http://business.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/06/are-sweatshops-an-economic-necessity/?iref=allsearch

sweatshopは「《略式》低賃金・悪条件の工場」(『ジーニアス英和辞典　第４版』大修館)とあります。LDOCEには"a small business, factory etc where people work hard in bad conditions for very little money - used to show disapproval"と定義されており、small businessとあることから、「工場」に限らなくても良さそうです。
OALDは"a place where people work for low wage in poor conditions"とあるため、賃金が低く、労働組合にやたらと敵意を持っているような劣悪な「企業」全般にこの単語が当てはまるのではないでしょうか。(Minnesota)