If I look out of the window of the third floor of my home (where I work, it's a loft conversion) I can see a massive fast growing fulfillment centre belonging to a particularly famous British online fashion retailer (four letters, beginning with 'A', has a marketplace). 

Every single order globally is dispatched from that fulfillment centre. I was forced to work there for a couple of months after Google Penguin killed my online business. 

This business has been called "ethical" by some (made me cringe). It was exactly how I would imagine an Amazon fulfillment centre to be, and when I watch the Panorama program (maybe tonight if I can spare half an hour) I suspect it will all seem familiar to me. 

It was my experience there and the knowledge that I'd migrated to an economically depressed area, where most jobs are in these fulfillment centres (the river have one nearby too) that led me to gamble my savings on this eBay business. 

It was depressing and the people that I talked to all felt trapped. I was also on a 'zero hour' contract, and they trap you by having a bonus system which only pays out if you are there long enough to win a permanent contract (that bonus would be the difference between minimum wage and a living wage). 

It was truly backbreaking, staff turnover was huge, but I quit because I was concerned for my health. I saw people collapsing - and guess what..... they wouldn't call an ambulance because they didn't want any attention from the HSE. 

I now refuse to purchase from that business. It is likely however that all major online businesses operate in a similar way, although another popular British retailer (four letters, beginning with N and ending in T) pay well over the living wage in this economically depressed region and their employees work circa-30 hours in the warehouse, so they can't all be as bad as Amazon.

Unfortunately this works hand in hand with the free market and wanting things cheap though. If Amazon can store and dispatch things for peanuts then competitors have to be able to do the same to compete on price, and if they don't then customers will choose Amazon - the cheapest option. 

So it is us who fuel this epidemic of sweatshops, by wanting things as cheap as possible.