Reaping What Children Sow
By Julianne Geiger, Jen Alic for ISN
It is entirely possible that the shirt you are wearing started out somewhere in a massive cotton field in Uzbekistan, harvested perhaps by a five-year-old forced by the state to labor away under hazardous conditions. Then on to Bangladesh, where another child toiled away to make the fabric before passing it on to yet another whose labor fashioned it into the end product for a major western retailer. It is a matter of survival, consumer demand and corporate profit.
The most recent external pageGlobal Report on Child Labour found that the number of working children under the age of 15 in Asia and the Pacific dipped 4 percent to 122 million from 2000 to 2004. Although decreasing, the rate of decline is considered mediocre when compared to other regions, and the actual risk to child laborers remains essentially unchanged due to the hazardous and exploitive nature of the work found in developing countries.
The external pageProgramme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) reports that the number of working children in the Asia Pacific is by far the largest in the world and represents 18.8 percent of the 650 million five- to 14-year-olds in the region. Furthermore, “progress in eliminating child labour is still modest compared to progress in Latin America and the Caribbean,” the report states.
Asia (excluding Japan), being the most densely populated region in the world, employs 61 percent of the world’s child laborers. But it is Africa that employs the greatest percentage (41) of its total child population.
Children of the harvest
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 70 percent of the world’s working children (132 million of whom are aged five to 14) are employed in agriculture – one of the most hazardous industries.
Child labor violations in Uzbekistan are particularly severe in that they are perpetrated by the state. They are also far -reaching: A quarter of all cotton garments sold in the UK contain a percentage of Uzbek cotton fibers, for example.
In this unique system, the Uzbek state has a monopoly on the cotton market and requires farmers to sell cotton to state-controlled gins, keeping the profits with the state and wages for workers and farmers well below the poverty level.
Nearly one-third of the Uzbek population is employed in the cotton industry, and external pageaccording to a 2008 report, 30 percent of Uzbek citizens live in extreme poverty. Unlike other major cotton exporting countries that use machinery to harvest cotton, Uzbekistan uses forced child labor to harvest approximately $1 billion in cotton that is exported mainly to the European market.
Uzbek children may be compensated up to 14 cents per day; however, many receive no pay at all. Students must meet assigned quotas or face low grades in school, detention, beatings or even expulsion. Children harvest nearly half of Uzbekistan’s 800,000 tonnes of cotton annually.
Cotton farmers are also given production quotas by the local governments. Payments to farmers are made from the state through state-run banks and can be delayed for years. Those who complain or who fail to meet quotas are subject to arrest or beatings by local governors.
According to a special report from the external pageEthical Corporation, the finished cotton garments industry is more than 10 times the size of the production side.
Although pinpointing the spinners or retailers that receive Uzbek cotton can be an arduous task, NGOs insist it can and must be done. Fergana.ru news agency published a external pagelist of commodity firms who attended a recent cotton fair harvest in Tashkent, signing contracts for over 600,000 tonnes of slave-harvested cotton. It also included a list of spinners from Turkey, Bangladesh and Pakistan who obtain Uzbek cotton directly.
Asia and the Pacific are not alone in their need to address serious child and forced labor violations. The US has fallen under recent scrutiny for eschewing a bill that would update what Human Rights Watch (HRW) feels are antiquated federal child labor laws. In the US, the minimum working age in an agricultural setting is 12 - four years below the international standard; and as long as there is parental permission, there are no limits on the number of hours a 12- or 13-year-old child can work, provided it is outside school hours.
Speaking to ISN Security Watch, Zama Coursen-Neff, deputy director of HRW’s Children’s Rights Division, said labor laws in the US had failed to keep up with changing employment trends, and that the US had “big gaping holes” in its child labor laws as pertains to agriculture. According to her, common hazards include injuries from pesticide exposure, knives and sharp objects, and repetitious movements.
Coursen-Neff told ISN Security Watch there had been an uptick in the amount of recent labor violations in the US, and that “even the weak laws are not being enforced.”
HRW supports a recently introduced bill that would close the loopholes in the existing laws, prohibiting any child aged 13 or younger from working in agriculture except on a farm owned or operated by their parents.
Fashion faux pas
The greatest fashion faux pas is that cheaper, trendier clothing is being subsidized with child labor and few consumers stop to think about how their latest outfit came into being.
Poverty-level wages, excessive hours, exposure to harmful pesticides, shameful living conditions, sexual harassment, denial of basic human rights, not to mention child and forced labor are often the stitching that holds together what we call fashion.
The garment industry is under increasing pressure to produce more and cheaper products.
According to external pageLabour Behind the Label (LBL), one UK-based group at the forefront of the campaign for global workers’ rights in the garment industry, supply chain complexities involve a “network of agents, sub-contractors and suppliers. So fragmented is this side of the industry that even the companies which commission garment production do not always know exactly where and under what conditions their products are made.” As such, it is “easy for companies to turn a blind eye to poor working conditions and low wages.”
As one example, LBL says that external pagein Bangladesh, some 200 workers died and many more were injured in garment factory fires between June 2004 and June 2006. “Most died in stampedes as workers trapped in factories panicked and rushed to the only exit. Many factories have no emergency exits.”
According to a briefing from the external pageEthical Trading Initiative (ETI) – a group that has successfully fought for workers’ rights – “Worldwide, an estimated 211 million children aged under 15 work.. Child labour is widespread throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, though there are also some 2.5 million working children in developed economies. Asia has the largest number of working children, accounting for 60 per cent of the world’s total.”
The 2009 external pageLets Clean Up Fashion report notes that “The scandalous truth is that the majority of workers in the global fashion industry rarely earn more than two dollars a day in an industry worth over £36 billion a year ($59 billion) in the UK alone. Many have to work excessive hours just to get this meagre amount and have no possibility to earn wages needed to properly feed, clothe, house and educate their families.
“In the last four years many of the biggest brands and retailers on the UK high street have publicly accepted that garment workers’ wages need to increase and claim to have started work to eliminate poverty wages from their supply chains. However, few of the projects and plans developed in corporate offices in Europe or North America have had a tangible impact on the wages and lives of the men and women producing our clothes. Why? Because most projects have ignored the fundamental issues of freedom of association, price and distribution of profit, and have focused instead on making factories or workers more ‘productive.’”
In an interview with ISN Security Watch, LBL campaigner Samantha Maher said that "In the UK, most retailers recognize that consumers are interested in ensuring that their goods are produced ethically, and have spent a lot of effort trying to promote themselves as ethical. The dilema is to move this from a public relations excercise to genuine efforts to improve conditions."
Awareness and consequence
Creating consumer awareness is perhaps an easier task than affecting actual change. Indeed, groups like LBL, the external pageClean Clothes Campaign and War on Want have succeeded in bringing much media attention to the issue via high-profile protests and well-researched reports targeting retail giants.
external pageWar on Want is demanding the creation of a supermarket watchdog, and most recently has focused much of its energies on external pageBritain’s leading cheap fashion retailer, Primark (Penneys), which earlier this year launched the opening of a new store in London. The group organized protests outside the new location, featuring a clothesline representing the retailer's ‘dirty laundry’ and posters detailing the situation for workers who supply the chain’s cheap fashion products.
The organization says that Bangladeshi workers earn low wages to supply Primark with cheap clothes. A November campaign and broadcast of a external pageBBC documentary last year showed India's poor, including children, working long hours for poverty-level wages on Primark clothes in slum workshops and refugee camps. It reverberated throughout the media and prompted the company to launch a new ‘ethical’ website in response to various allegations regarding its employment practices. According to Primark, the workers in its supply chain receive a “living wage,” and it had already dropped some of its suppliers for abusing worker rights.
However, it is important for both consumers and companies to be aware of the details of each situation and of the consequences of acting on that information. War on Want criticized Primark for dropping certain suppliers amid criticism of unethical trade, as the loss of those contracts cost many jobs.
external pageAccording to the US Department of Labor, in Bangladesh, children regularly work in large-scale, formal factories; elsewhere, children were more likely to work in small subcontracting shops or homework situations. “In some cases, children were found to work in locked shops, with armed guards preventing entrance and exit during work hours.”
Although the number of children working the garment industry may be hard to pinpoint, the ILAB said the number of children working in the Bangladesh garment industry has decreased due to wide-scale media attention, cancelled work orders and threats of boycotts. But this is not necessarily a success story: Under pressure, companies reacted and child workers were displaced. Without a safety net in place, many children end up begging in the streets, in prostitution, domestic servitude or underground sweatshops.
Julia Hawkins, media and communications manager for the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), told ISN Security Watch that understanding the wider economic and social context in which factories are operating is a crucial when determining how to respond. According to Hawkins, only twice so far has it supported boycotts: with Uzbek cotton and with products from Burma (Myanmar), where she said there was little hope of affecting change otherwise.
ETI is concerned with “what happens when companies find children working at a supply site. We have been successful in educating companies on how to react. It is critical for companies to understand the local situation,” Hawkins said. ETI advises companies not to simply turn a blind eye or to send the children home without knowing what the consequences would be. The key is to prioritize the interests of the children.
Coursen-Neff of HRW told ISN Security Watch that “simple boycotts are too blunt of an instrument.” This is seen as an encouragement to simply fire the children. Instead, HRW feels the company has a responsibility to transition the children into education or other avenues.
RugMark International (RMI), a non-governmental organization dedicated to the elimination of illegal child labor in the handmade rug industry in India and Nepal, shares a similar view.
April Thompson, director of marketing and communications at GoodWeave (the new RugMark label), told ISN Security Watch: “While there is a place for watchdog groups and investigative journalists calling out certain companies for not doing the right thing, we instead focus on creating positive awareness for those companies who do. We believe it is more effective to provide consumers with a positive alternative such as that presented by the GoodWeave label than simply ask them to avoid buying a product from a certain company.”
Through its GoodWeave certification program, RMI ensures importers and end-users that they are supporting efforts to end illegal child labor. In addition to offering certification programs for its rug manufacturers, RugMark offers education and training for rescued child laborers and children who are at-risk. Since RugMark's inception, the number of South Asian children trapped in illegal carpet-making work has dropped from 1 million to 250,000, and more than 9,000 children have been served by its education and rehabilitation programs.
Pragmatism, a new trend
When it comes to affecting change in the industry, forcing retailers to take a long, hard look at their supply chains and ensuring that customers are being offered ‘ethical’ products, a pragmatic approach is necessary.
Drawing the battle lines with companies is not the answer in most cases. Real results can only come from a pragmatic yet perhaps painful alliance that includes the companies.
ETI, in particular, stands out in this respect. The group is an unprecedented alliance of NGOs, trade unions and companies that seeks to view global labor problems from all sides. And its results have been real and far-reaching. According to Hawkins, “It took us a long time to establish trust […] what we’re finding is that a lot of the work that needs to be done is about combating mistrust.
“A priority for ETI is to ensure that companies first and foremost understand what is going on in their supply chains and how they should respond,” Hawkins said.
And so far, the alliance has made some significant progress, boasting more than 50 corporate members; 39,692 suppliers covered by members' ethical trade activities; 8.6 million workers employed by those suppliers; 84,520 actions agreed by those suppliers to improve workers' conditions (with more than half of those improvements in health and safety; 15 percent in wages and 17 percent in work hours).
But there is still an overwhelming amount of work to be done, as children around the world continue to be put to work in factories, on farms, as domestic servants, in sex-tourism and begging gangs. And, as the ILO warned earlier this year, the global financial crisis is likely to exacerbate the situation and families and children find survival even more challenging.
“Across the world today, far too many children continue to spend their days in exploitative or hazardous work – be it in fields, workshops, streets, mines, brothels or even war zones – rather than at play and in school [...] subjected to cruel and callous work that shocks the conscience. [...] Our research demonstrates that the call for action must be reaffirmed with renewed energy...” according to the US Department of Labor’s 2008 external pageFindings on the Worst forms of Child Labor report.