CHILD LABOR:

Child labour, or child labor, refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained
labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal
in many countries. Child labour was utilized to varying extents through most of history, but

entered publlic dispute with the beginning

of universal schooling, with changes in working conditions during industrialization, and with the
emergence of the concepts of workers' and children's rights.
Child labour is common in some parts of the world, and can be factory work, mining[1],
prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's own small
business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for
tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they
may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as:
assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than
in factories and sweatshops, most child labour occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things
on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses—far from the reach of official
labour inspectors and from media scrutiny." And all the work that they did was done in all types
of weather; and was also done for minimal pay. As long as there is family poverty there will be
child labor. [2]
According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour
worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.[3]
CHILD LABOR:

RECENT CHILD LABORS:

After the news of child labourers working in embroidery industry was uncovered in the Sunday
Observer on 28 October 2007, BBA activists swung into action. The GAP Inc. in a statement
accepted that the child labourers were working in production of GAP Kids blouses and has
already made a statement to pull the products from the shelf. [4] [5] In spite of the documentation
of the child labourers working in the high-street fashion and admission by all concerned parties,
only the SDM could not recognise these children as working under conditions of slavery and
bondage. Distraught and desperate that these collusions by the custodians of justice, founder of
BBA Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson of Global March Against Child Labour appealed to the
Honourable Chief Justice of Delhi High Court through a letter at 11.00 pm. [2]
This order by the Honourable Chief Justice comes when the government is taking an extremely
retrogressive stance on the issue of child labour in sweatshops in India and threatening
'retaliatory measures' against child rights organisations. [3]
In a parallel development, Global March Against Child Labour and BBA are in dialogue with the
GAP Inc. and other stakeholders to work out a positive strategy to prevent the entry of child
labour in to sweatshops and device a mechanism of monitoring and remedial action. GAP Inc.
Senior Vice President, Dan Henkle in a statement said: "We have been making steady progress,
and the children are now under the care of the local government. As our policy requires, the
vendor with which our order was originally placed will be required to provide the children with
access to schooling and job training, pay them an ongoing wage and guarantee them jobs as soon
as they reach the legal working age. We will now work with the local government and with
Global March to ensure that our vendor fulfils these obligations." [4] [5]
BBC recently reported[6] on Primark using child labor in the manufacture of clothing. In
particular a £4.00 hand embroidered shirt was the starting point of a documentary produced by
CHILD LABOR:
BBC's Panorama (TV series) program. The program asks consumers to ask themselves, "Why
am I only paying £4 for a hand embroidered top? This item looks handmade. Who made it for
such little cost?", in addition to exposing the violent side of the child labor industry in countries
where child exploitation is prevalent. As a result of the program, Primark took action and sacked
the relevant companies, and reviewed their supplier procedures.

Young girl working on a loom in Aït Benhaddou, Morocco in May 2008.

The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company operate a rubber plantation in Liberia which is the
focus of a global campaign called Stop Firestone. Workers on the plantation are expected to
fulfill a high production quota or their wages will be halved, so many workers brought children
to work. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Firestone (The International
Labor Fund vs. The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company) in November 2005 on behalf of
current child laborers and their parents who had also been child laborers on the plantation. On
June 26, 2007, the judge in this lawsuit in Indianapolis, Indiana denied Firestone's motion to
dismiss the case and allowed the lawsuit to proceed on child labor claims.
On November 21, 2005, An Indian NGO activist Junned Khan, with the help of Police, Labour
Department and NGO Pratham mounted the country's biggest ever raid for child labor rescue in
the Eastern part of New Delhi, the capital of India. The process resulted in rescue of 480 children
from over 100 illegal embroidery factories operating in the crowded slum area of Seelampur. For
next few weeks, government, media and NGOs were in a frenzy over the exuberant numbers of
young boys, as young as 5-6 year olds, released from bondage. This rescue operation opened the
eyes of the world to the menace of child labor operating right under the nose of the largest
democracy in the world.
On October 28, Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, responded, "We strictly
prohibit the use of child labor. This is a non-negotiable for us – and we are deeply concerned and
CHILD LABOR:

upset by this allegation. As we've

demonstrated in the past, Gap has a history of addressing challenges like this head-on, and our
approach to this situation will be no exception. In 2006, Gap Inc. ceased business with 23
factories due to code violations. We have 90 people located around the world whose job is to
ensure compliance with our Code of Vendor Conduct. As soon as we were alerted to this
situation, we stopped the work order and prevented the product from being sold in stores. While
violations of our strict prohibition on child labor in factories that produce product for the
company are extremely rare, we have called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to
reinforce our policies."[7]
In early August 2008, Iowa Labor Commissioner David Neil announced that his department had
found that Agriprocessors, a kosher meatpacking company in Postville which had recently been
raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had employed 57 minors, some as young as
14, in violation of state law prohibiting anyone under 18 from working in a meatpacking plant.
Neil announced that he was turning the case over to the state Attorney General for prosecution,
claiming that his department's inquiry had discovered "egregious violations of virtually every
aspect of Iowa's child labor laws." [8]. Agriprocessors claimed that it was at a loss to understand
the allegations.
CHILD LABOR:
Child labor is used in the production of cocoa powder, used to make chocolate. See Economics
of cocoa.[9]
Child laborer, New Jersey, 1910

they were paid minmum wage

Defense of child labour:

According to Friedman's theory, before the Industrial Revolution virtually all children worked in
agriculture. During the Industrial Revolution many of these children moved from farm work to
factory work. Over time, as real wages rose, parents became able to afford to send their children
to school instead of work and as a result child labor declined, both before and after legislation.[10]
Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard also defended child labor, stating that British and
American children of the pre- and post-Industrial Revolution lived and suffered in infinitely
worse conditions where jobs were not available for them and went "voluntarily and gladly" to
work in factories.[11]
However, the British historian and socialist E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English
Working Class draws a qualitative distinction between child domestic work and participation in
the wider (waged) labor market.[12] Further, the usefulness of the experience of the industrial
revolution in making predictions about current trends has been disputed. Economic historian
Hugh Cunningham, author of Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500, notes that:
"Fifty years ago it might have been assumed that, just as child labor had
declined in the developed world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, so it would also, in a trickle-down fashion, in the rest of the world.
Its failure to do that, and its re-emergence in the developed world, raise
questions about its role in any economy, whether national or global."[10]

Child laborers on a farm in Maine, October 1940

Big Bill Haywood, a leading labor organizer and leader of the Western Federation of Miners and
a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World famously claimed "the
worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children!" [13]
CHILD LABOR: