h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Channel Four News are headlining on an investigation into child labour supplying goods to Tesco.

So what? As long as no employment laws are broken in the host country there is nothing wrong with this. They laboured on about a 12 year old girl earning £9 month. But a 12 year old girl can be married in Bangladesh.

I have a biaised viewpoint. My sister-in-law has a jewellery business in Panama. She pays the equivalent of around $5 a day for unskilled labour. This sounds terrible, except the average wage in that area is $3 a day. She has a queue of prospective workers outside the factory every day. She also has staff that have been with her for 15 years.

These reports always fail to mention the cost of living in the countries concerned.

I'm against child labour, but get right narked at the lack of objectivity in *any* journalism that involves kids (be it plane crashes, obesity, labour...)

As soon as the word 'children' is mentioned it seems that we should forget about objectivity and start weeping.

Of course, the point would be that "child labour" isn't simply children working in safe factories for a wage that is based on the work they do, but that the vast majority of these children have been sold into slavery, work in unsafe and unhealthy environments, have no access to healthcare or education and no chance to make anything of themselves (if they live to adulthood) simply so you can save 10 cents (or pence, in your case) on clothing to send your kids off to school.

The point would be that childern, if they MUST work, should be paid what their work is worth, have a safe place to work, and be able to get an education so as not to continue the cycle of poverty.

And adults shouldn't?

nah, they're on the own, they are, after all, adults.

Oh, to be an employer in a developing nation. Just think of the profit you could make without troubling your conscience, so long as you don't use children.

I did not say that adults didn't need the same protections but your question was not about exploited workers but why you should care about exploited children.

Children are the most defenseless and unless we as a world community step up to protect them, the will continute to be exploited. Children are exploited because their parents either cannot protect them or their society cannot protect them.

In fact, the programs which help these children make a point of working towards ensuring that their families, their communities and their countries have the ability to provide safe and equitable workplaces for all workers. However, since children make up a large percentage of the most exploited and overworked workers, it is vital that they are protected.

SWL, your first post is a bit confusing. You made a comment about an investigation going on about child labour, then mentioned your sister's business in Panama, saying she has had staff that have been with her for fifteen years. You didn't say if this staff had started off as children.

You also threw in something about 12-year-old girls being available for marriage in Bangladesh - what is the connection to Panama? Is this also the norm there? I'm not sure about this, but I doubt it is the norm there - so why compare apples with oranges?

Mudhoooks posted in response to your original post about child labour saying that in countries where this is the norm, children should at least be paid a decent wage based on the work they do, should be allowed to work in safe conditions and not simply be treated as slave labour.

And then a couple of smart-asses made comments suggesting she meant that adults should not be given the same consideration. Which she had not said. Though I think Arnie's smart-assed response was in fact to Roymondo's comment, not to Mudhook's.

So I think you should probably clear up the confusion created by your first post, SWL.

az

<> (SWL)

This should read there is nothing illegal about this. Whether it is considered *morally wrong* is a matter of interpretation and opinion.


az

OK, to clear up any confusion.

The "report" alleged child labour and interviewed a girl of 12 to illustrate the point. But that girl is not a child in her society, she is of marriageable age and is thus an adult. So the report wasn't really about child labour at all.

Then it went on to quote wages being apparently scandalously low (thus allowing Tesco to sell cheap goods). As the report made no mention of the average wage for the area or the cost of living, I made a comparison with my sister in law's factory.

What the report was really saying was that in foreign countries, children are regarded as adults at an earlier age and the cost of living is less.

BTW, Channel Four devoted over 20 minutes of a 55 minute slot to this non-story.

<> (SWL)

We might as well say then that as long as any human rights violation is legally sanctioned by the country it occurs in then there is nothing wrong.

<> (SWL)

A girl of twelve where? In which society? Bangladesh or Panama?

The point that is still not clear is whether your sister hires children or adults for her business.


az

>>
What the report was really saying was that in foreign countries, children are regarded as adults at an earlier age and the cost of living is less.
<<

It sounds like you are really commenting on the poor journalism (as you saw it) by Channel Four.

Or are you saying that you don't think there is such a thing as child slave labour (meaning labour by children under conditions that the West wouldn't tolertate for its children in order to make clothes for its children)\?

Let's inflict our moral code and justice system on other countries then. Refuse to buy goods from Bangladesh. Watch the economy collapse there when a large number of bread winners are unemployable.

Unable to work, they may well starve but hey, it puts an end to cheap shirts so it's all worth it. Let countless young Bangladeshis die so you have the right not to be forced into buying cheap clothes.

Get a sense of perspective. Human Rights abuses are torture, false imprisonment and state-sanctioned death squads, not poor wages.

I sort of agree with you, SWL.

I've read reports on the number of people who live on less than four dollars a day. So what? What's the price of bread where they live? Maybe they're in grinding poverty, and maybe they're not. There's no way of telling from the simple monetary value of their wages. Such reports should tell you how much food they can afford to buy and what sort of accomodation they can afford to inhabit. Not their actual wages, which are meaningless numbers.

I only 'sort of' agree with you because I don't know enough to commit myself to an opinion.

TRiG.

Can you please answer my question in post 12, SWL? Just to clear things up.

az

Az, the sentence you quote gives the answer you're looking for.

No, my sister-in-law doesn't employ kids. I highlighted her case as an example of the false comparison in wages.

Incidentally, the workers at her factory do bring their children to work. Education isn't available for all in Panama and some areas are ridden by crime. It's safer to keep the kids where the parents can see them. But the kids don't actually do any work. I wonder if the same thing happens in Bangladesh which may give the wrong impression to a reporter with a hidden camera.

SWL, you started this thread complaining about an investigation into child labour laws. Then you mentioned your sister's biz in Panama.

<>

Except you didn't make that example clear. I for one thought your sister was hiring children in Panama based on your fist post. And I don't think I'm the only one who drew this conclusion.

But thank you for clearing it up.


az

>>Let's inflict our moral code and justice system on other countries then. Refuse to buy goods from Bangladesh. Watch the economy collapse there when a large number of bread winners are unemployable.<<

We 'inflict' our moral codes on each other all the time. And its not just about wages in other countries being lower than in yours or mine.

The reason this gets called slavery is because the global economy demands that the West buy cheap imports made by people in countries with poor work conditions (not just wages). i.e. we need slaves in other countries to produce our cheap goods. We can't get people at home to make them for that cost because we value them more. We don't value people in other countries and so we think its ok for them to have much worse lives that ours in order to produce our goods.

The situations I am aware of aren't about low cost of living reflecting low wages. Those people really are being shafted.

I've not seen any evidence that before we in the west started getting our clothes made by poor people overseas that those people starved to death.

I'm not so familiar with the clothing trade, but I know with farming that in places like India, farmers have been forced to grow cash crops for the global market which means they no longer grow their own foods, and there is a flow on degradation of the standard of living

I also know that since we got clothes made overseas cheaply, the level of poverty in New Zealand had increased hugely (relative to NZ historically obviously).

What this is all about is that the West lives off the back of poor 'others' i.e. slaves (we treat our own poor somewhat better).

>>
Get a sense of perspective. Human Rights abuses are torture, false imprisonment and state-sanctioned death squads, not poor wages.
<< (SWL)


I think you need to get an education

>>>
The Children's Rights Division at Human Rights Watch has focused its efforts on the worst forms of child labor, those prohibited by the ILO’s Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. Children who work long hours, often in dangerous and unhealthy conditions, are exposed to lasting physical and psychological harm. Working at rug looms, for example, has left children disabled with eye damage, lung disease, stunted growth, and a susceptibility to arthritis as they grow older. Children making silk thread in India dip their hands into boiling water that burns and blisters them, breath smoke and fumes from machinery, handle dead worms that cause infections, and guide twisting threads that cut their fingers. Children harvesting sugar cane in El Salvador use machetes to cut cane for up to nine hours a day in the hot sun; injuries to their hands and legs are common and medical care is often not available.

Denied an education and a normal childhood, some children are confined and beaten, reduced to slavery. Some are denied freedom of movement—the right to leave the workplace and go home to their families. Some are abducted and forced to work. The human rights abuses in these practices are clear and acute. We have found similar problems in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States: children who work for too many hours and too many days, for too little, or sometimes no pay, subject often to physical abuse, exposed to dangerous pesticides, and made to work with too dangerous tools.
<<<

http://hrw.org/children/labor.htm