Child labor: the real solution - 2003 essay contest winners

Humanist, July-August, 2003 by Sarah Rose Miller

What brand of clothing are you wearing right now? Where was your shirt made? Do you know what went into the making of your clothes? It could be the blood of a child, the sweat of a child, the tears of a child.

Now, as I read about child labor, I look down at the shirt I am wearing, a button-down blouse with leaf and flower designs weaving their way over the surface. I twist it around in an attempt to get a look at the tag, but the angle of vision is too awkward, and I have to take the shirt off before I can read the plain white print sewn into the tag: "100% Cotton Made in India."

As I slowly button the shirt back on, I think about what this means. India is a major home to child labor. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an estimated 120 million children from the ages of five to fourteen work fulltime or more; of these, India is responsible for about 44 million. As likely as not, my shirt is the product of some unfortunate child forced by circumstances to work away his or her childhood in a sweatshop. My head or my heart--I can't tell which--gives a twinge to my conscience. However, I have a life to lead--I can't put it on hold while I go through my closet and throw out every item that reads "Made in India" or "Made in Honduras." For one thing, it is impossible to know for certain if an item was made by child labor; for another, what good would throwing it away do now? The child has already suffered from making it--it would do no good to refuse to wear it. How can I feel saddened and guilty every time I wear this shirt? On the other hand, how can I not?

Sweatshops aren't the only venue for child labor. According to Fran Roselaers, director of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labor (IPEC), a branch of the ILO, "Slavery, debt bondage, trafficking, sexual exploitation, the use of children in the drug trade and in armed conflict, as well as hazardous work are all defined as Worst Forms of Child Labour." Debt bondage, known also as bonded labor, is the most customary type of slavery found in the world today, most commonly imposed upon children because children are much easier to exploit than are adults. It is the most prevalent cause of child labor in India, where whole generations often become ensnared trying to repay a debt while the excessive interest rates (sometimes as high as 60 percent) keep increasing the amount owed. Sometimes, as with a young Indian girl whose story was presented on 60 Minutes II, debt is incurred to save the life of the debtor. In the case of this girl, Shamshad, her family sold her labor for a $25 loan in order to buy medicine to stop her seizures. As it usually takes years for a child to work off a $25 debt, Shamshad kept her life but lost her liberty.

The most common type of debt bondage in India occurs from the home, usually in roiling bidis, a type of cigarette. The child usually has a daily quota to fulfill, and must turn the rolled bidis in to the employer at the end of each day. Other types of bonded labor occur inside factories. Clothing and other textiles, hand-knotted carpets, soccer balls, and bricks are just a few of the innumerable items fashioned behind factory walls under conditions of intense physical and mental stress.

Children may have other reasons for working in factories. One reason besides debt bondage is simple poverty; many poor families rely on their children to help provide for them. Mere lack of choice is another reason. Because India's public schools are in low repute, parents prefer that a child do something they consider useful.

Employers prefer to use child labor mainly because it is cheap and easy to manage. On average, children are paid half the salary of adults, and they are much less troublesome. Employers also value the "nimble fingers" of children, believing that they can do fine work better and more efficiently than adults can. But the "nimble fingers" claim is just that--an empty claim; dexterity depends on the individual. On the other hand, the arguments that child labor is cheap and manageable have some validity--but other solutions can easily be found. If an employer had a crew composed half of children and half of adults, hiring only adults would seem cost prohibitive. If the increase in wages were extracted from the exporters, the decrease in profit would be so minimal as to be practically unnoticeable. The cost could also be charged to consumers, who would only have to pay about 2-5 percent more; few would be unwilling to do so. If all producers relied solely on adult labor, none would be at a comparative disadvantage. As to the notion of children being easer to control--is that really the basis upon which the issue of child labor should be decided? Emphatically not. The fact that children are more easily manipulated than adults should be a strike against child labor; manipulation of helpless children for self-gain is simply morally indefensible.

Yet child labor is by no means an easy question of right and wrong. For one thing, differences in culture must be examined. While modern western culture considers it cruel to put a young child to work, westerners have no qualms about forcing a child to sit behind a desk at school for seven hours a day, five days a week, from age five to eighteen. The point of this is education, to prepare children for the future by teaching the skills they will need. In cultures where job opportunities are less based on education (as in developing countries such as India), working in a factory is a way to learn a skill or trade. Who are we to say that our way is right and their way wrong? In a 1997 address to the International Conference on Child Labor in Oslo, Norway, Assefa Bequele propounded this unwarranted assumption that what is good for our culture is good for all cultures, stating, "We are all here for a common cause, and we dream the same dream, of a world where children are at school and not at work, doing homework and not building homes." But we cannot make that decision for families in those countries where child labor is still rampant.