From the comfort of their magnificent offices and the salaries of five to six people, private organizations often criticize child labor as their employees run from one five-star hotel to another, $ 3,000 handbooks and PDAs in hand. The ILO's hair-splitting distinction between "child labor" and "child labor" has easily targeted poor countries while releasing its budget providers - the developed ones - outside the gate.
Reports about child labor appear periodically. Children crawling in the mines, face ash, body paralyzed. The aging fingers of hungry children weave soccer balls to their most privileged colleagues in the USA. Young people are sweating, working hard in unexplained situations. It all touches the heart and creates an industry of activists, analysts, official eagles, academics, and aspiring opportunistic politicians.
Ask citizens of Thailand, sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, or Morocco and they will tell you how they view this arbitrary action - with suspicion and resentment. Under the compelling arguments on the trade protection agenda, they believe wholeheartedly. Strong - and expensive - labor and environmental provisions in international agreements may be a ploy to curb imports based on cheap labor and the competition they create in well-off domestic industries and their political leaders.
This is especially surprising as the holy West has accumulated its wealth on the broken backs of slaves and children. A 1900 census in the USA found that 18 percent of all children - about two million in total - were employed on a profitable basis. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the constitutional ban on child labor in late 1916. This decision was reversed only in 1941.
GAO published a report last week criticizing the Department of Labor for not paying enough attention to working conditions in production and mining in the USA, where many children are still employed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the number of working children between the ages of 15-17 in the USA at 3.7 million. One of the 16 worked in factories and in construction. More than 600 young people have died in work-related accidents over the past decade.
Child labor - not to mention prostitution, child soldiers, and child slavery - are incidents that are best avoided. But they cannot and should not deal with them alone. Also, young people should not have to work hard in bedding. Working in gold mines or fisheries in the Philippines is almost as bad as waiting at tables in a Nigerian area or, in that case, an American restaurant.
There are gradations and colors for children’s work. That children should not be exposed to dangerous situations, long working hours, use as a means of payment, physical punishment, or working as slaves is often agreed upon. That they should not help their parents to plant and harvest may be discussed.
As Miriam Wasserman notes in "Eliminating Child Labor", published in the Federal Bank of Boston's "Regional Review", the second quarter of 2000, it is based on "family income, education policy, production technology, and cultural norms." About a quarter of the world's children under the age of 14 are regular workers. This figure closes the gap between regions such as Africa (42 percent) and Latin America (17 percent).
In many impoverished communities, child labor is the lifeblood of the entire family, life-threatening, and destitute. Child labor decreases dramatically as individual earnings increase. To deprive these breadwinners of the opportunity to elevate themselves and their families above malnutrition, disease, and hunger — is the culmination of immoral hypocrisy.
Quoted by “The Economist”, a representative of the Ecuador Banana Growers Association and the Ecuadorian Minister of Labor, he summed up the situation nicely: . You can't just say they can't work, you have to provide alternatives. ”
Sadly, this argument is so full of emotions and selfishness that the facts are often ignored.
Complaints against children's soccer stitches in Pakistan led to the relocation of workshops hosted by Nike and Reebok. Thousands lost their jobs, including many women and their 7,000 offspring. The average family income - however small - dropped by 20 percent. Economists Drusilla Brown, Alan Deardorif, and Robert Stern commented unequivocally:
"While Baden Sports does not explicitly state that their balls are not sewn for children, the relocation of their production area has undoubtedly not affected their former employees and their families."
There are many examples. The producers - fearing legal retaliation and "dangers to dignity" (naming and insulting extremist NGO's) - are embroiled in premature dismissal. German clothing workshops expelled 50,000 children from Bangladesh in 1993 in anticipation of the American Child Protection Act never approved.
Quoted by Wasserstein, former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, states:
“Stopping child labor without doing anything can leave children vulnerable. If they do so out of necessity, as most of them do, banning them may force them to engage in prostitution or other high-risk activities. The most important thing is for them to be in school and to receive an education that will help them to overcome poverty. ”
Contrary to hype, three-quarters of all children work in agriculture with their families. Less than 1 percent are miners and another 1 percent are construction workers. Most of the others work in stores and services, which include "personal services" - the epilepsy of prostitution. UNICEF and the ILO are in the process of establishing schools for working hard and providing alternative employment for their parents.
But this is a drop in the ocean of neglect. Poor countries rarely provide regular education.
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