The paradox of child-labor reform

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 24, 1997 | by John Berlau

In many developing countries, child labor is regarded as an economic necessity. Many scholars and economists are wondering whether congressional efforts to end the practice end up hurting the very children lawmakers want to help. Now a United Nations report suggests that may indeed be the case.

Ever since a labor activist revealed that daytime TV talk-show co-host Kathie Lee Gifford's line of sportswear was produced by youngsters working long hours in a Honduran sweatshop, child labor in the Third World has received a barrage of attention in the media and on Capitol Hill.

U.S. companies have been running for cover as television exposes children assembling their products in overseas factories. Newspapers and magazines regularly give attention to groups organizing boycotts of toys and clothing made with child labor. President Clinton recently organized an "apparel industry partnership" in which companies such as Nike, Reebok and Liz Claiborne agreed not to employ children younger than 14 anywhere in the world. As the president is asking Congress to renew his "fast-track" authority to negotiate trade agreements without legislative interference, some are pushing to make sure sanctions and bans are in place for countries that export products made by children.

Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin "believes child labor should be treated the same way as intellectual-property rights in trade agreements," says his press secretary, Patrick Dorton, and that if the U.S. can act to protect a CD, it can protect a child. Every year since 1992, Harkin has introduced his Child Labor Deterrence Act to ban imports of goods made by children younger than 14.

On the Republican side, New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith is sponsoring a bill that would levy trade sanctions against countries found to exploit child labor as well as cutting off foreign aid to them. "We're talking about a nine-year-old working in a sweatshop when he should be in the third grade," Smith's press secretary Ken Wolfe tells Insight, equating child labor with prison and slave labor -- which Smith has campaigned against in China. "It's inhumane," Wolfe says.

But many scholars and economists who have researched the problem wonder whether efforts to outlaw child labor might lead to results even more "inhumane" for the very children they intend to help. "It's easy enough for us as Americans, with our high standard of living, to tell India and Pakistan we don't want children to work, but we have to ask what's the alternative," says Walter Williams, a labor economist who is chairman of the department of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. It isn't just free-market economists such as Williams who are worried about the effects of drastic action taken to end child labor. The United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, which sets goals and timetables for countries to end child labor worldwide, was taken aback when it discovered Bangladesh's response to a U.S. Senate bill sponsored by Harkin.

The 1997 edition of UNICEF's State of the World's Children annual report notes that even though Harkin's bill to ban child-labor imports never was passed, the mere threat of losing the U.S. market was enough to persuade Bangladesh's garment manufacturers to lay off an estimated 50,000 children younger than 14 in 1993. Follow-up visits confirmed the unintended consequences of Harkin's effort to do good. "The consequences for the children were not anticipated," the U.N. report states. "The children may have been freed, but at the same time they were trapped in a harsh environment with no skills, little or no education and precious few alternatives."

When UNICEF, the International Labor Organization, or ILO, and some private Bangladeshi organizations tracked some of the workers, they "discovered that children went looking for new sources of income, such as stonecrushing, street hustling and prostitution -- all of them more hazardous and exploitative than garment production." The report also notes many mothers had to quit their jobs to look after their unemployed children, thus further impoverishing the families.

Asked by Insight to comment on the UNICEF report, Harkin's spokesman denied the authenticity of the UNICEF conclusion without explanation, faxing the response: "There is no evidence that ... the children dismissed from their jobs in Bangladesh entered more dangerous working situations."

As a partial remedy, UNICEF and the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association agreed in 1995 to a memorandum of understanding, in which no more child workers would be hired but none would be dismissed until alternative arrangements for them were made. The businesses agreed to pay monthly stipends partially to compensate for lost wages so the children could attend UNICEF-funded schools. About 8,500 children have enrolled, according to Waheed Hassan, chief of the education section of UNICEF-Bangladesh.

The overall problem of uneducated children in Bangladesh is more daunting. More than 3 million children in that country don't go to school. And Hassan tells Insight "it's a fair assumption" that many children, especially girls, will lie about their ages and try to go to work at garment factories because these jobs are preferable to many others both in salary and work conditions. "The garment sector is considered relatively more prestigious by the girls themselves than most other occupations," says Hassan. "Most children are employed as domestic child workers in Bangladesh and this is a very low-paying, low social-status occupation and many of those children in domestic service get abused." Many of these jobs offer nothing more than room and board as payment.