Stitching It Together: Worker Health and Safety in the Global Footwear Market

“Be sure to do the Health and Safety Awareness training before your next shift”, Laura my manager says over the phone. I sit in my bed and obligingly listen to horror stories of employees dying from misuse of machines on the job, I am working in shoe store retail, not construction I think to myself. Though the tools used to stretch, create holes and shape shoes look like the modern-day equivalent of tools used in a lobotomy, they are basically harmless. I go to work then; I sign a contract about how to use a ladder.