Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative which is defined as a principled command that is necessary universally requires us to act in a manner where we can justify our actions into a universal law. (Shaw, Barry, Issa, Catley ; Muntean, 2016, p.
63). If there is something that needs to be considered a universal law it is always better to ask if all rational beings would accept or not to live as per that law. Similarly in the use of sweatshops everyone has to be considered in making a universal law so even if a stakeholder or a sweatshop in-charge argue that their only interest is the low price of their products and nothing else, but what if the roles would have been different, what would have happened if they (stakeholders or managers/ in-charge) were the ones working in those miserable dangerous conditions they would definitely feel differently. They would definitely not accept that living in accordance to that universal law.
As per Kant nothing should be taken away from the workers working in the factories but the laws or the system should be made more democratic and kinder. In order to summarise the universal law it is very critical that when you are making your rules to live by you must be critically certain that these are the rules you want the rest of the world to live by. An example can be seen where ‘working in those dangerous conditions is not right, then under no circumstances is it all right to work in those conditions’.
