From the comfort of their plush offices and five to six figure salaries,
self-appointed NGO's often denounce child labor as their employees rush
from one five star hotel to another, $3000 subnotebooks and PDA's in
hand. The hairsplitting distinction made by the ILO between "child work"
and "child labor" conveniently targets impoverished countries while
letting its budget contributors - the developed ones - off-the-hook.
Reports
regarding child labor surface periodically. Children crawling in mines,
faces ashen, body deformed. The agile fingers of famished infants
weaving soccer balls for their more privileged counterparts in the USA.
Tiny figures huddled in sweatshops, toiling in unspeakable conditions.
It is all heart-rending and it gave rise to a veritable not-so-cottage
industry of activists, commentators, legal eagles, scholars, and
opportunistically sympathetic politicians.
Ask the denizens of
Thailand, sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil, or Morocco and they will tell you
how they regard this altruistic hyperactivity - with suspicion and
resentment. Underneath the compelling arguments lurks an agenda of trade
protectionism, they wholeheartedly believe. Stringent - and expensive -
labor and environmental provisions in international treaties may well
be a ploy to fend off imports based on cheap labor and the competition
they wreak on well-ensconced domestic industries and their political
stooges.
This is especially galling since the sanctimonious West
has amassed its wealth on the broken backs of slaves and kids. The 1900
census in the USA found that 18 percent of all children - almost two
million in all - were gainfully employed. The Supreme Court ruled
unconstitutional laws banning child labor as late as 1916. This decision
was overturned only in 1941.
The GAO published a report last
week in which it criticized the Labor Department for paying insufficient
attention to working conditions in manufacturing and mining in the USA,
where many children are still employed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
pegs the number of working children between the ages of 15-17 in the USA
at 3.7 million. One in 16 of these worked in factories and
construction. More than 600 teens died of work-related accidents in the
last ten years.
Child labor - let alone child prostitution, child
soldiers, and child slavery - are phenomena best avoided. But they
cannot and should not be tackled in isolation. Nor should underage labor
be subjected to blanket castigation. Working in the gold mines or
fisheries of the Philippines is hardly comparable to waiting on tables
in a Nigerian or, for that matter, American restaurant.
There are
gradations and hues of child labor. That children should not be exposed
to hazardous conditions, long working hours, used as means of payment,
physically punished, or serve as sex slaves is commonly agreed. That
they should not help their parents plant and harvest may be more
debatable.
As Miriam Wasserman observes in "Eliminating Child
Labor", published in the Federal Bank of Boston's "Regional Review",
second quarter of 2000, it depends on "family income, education policy,
production technologies, and cultural norms." About a quarter of
children under-14 throughout the world are regular workers. This
statistic masks vast disparities between regions like Africa (42
percent) and Latin America (17 percent).
In many impoverished
locales, child labor is all that stands between the family unit and
all-pervasive, life threatening, destitution. Child labor declines
markedly as income per capita grows. To deprive these bread-earners of
the opportunity to lift themselves and their families incrementally
above malnutrition, disease, and famine - is an apex of immoral
hypocrisy.
Quoted by "The Economist", a representative of the
much decried Ecuador Banana Growers Association and Ecuador's Labor
Minister, summed up the dilemma neatly: "Just because they are under age
doesn't mean we should reject them, they have a right to survive. You
can't just say they can't work, you have to provide alternatives."
Regrettably, the debate is so laden with emotions and self-serving arguments that the facts are often overlooked.
The
outcry against soccer balls stitched by children in Pakistan led to the
relocation of workshops ran by Nike and Reebok. Thousands lost their
jobs, including countless women and 7000 of their progeny. The average
family income - anyhow meager - fell by 20 percent. Economists Drusilla
Brown, Alan Deardorif, and Robert Stern observe wryly:
"While
Baden Sports can quite credibly claim that their soccer balls are not
sewn by children, the relocation of their production facility
undoubtedly did nothing for their former child workers and their
families."
Such examples abound. Manufacturers - fearing legal
reprisals and "reputation risks" (naming-and-shaming by overzealous
NGO's) - engage in preemptive sacking. German garment workshops fired
50,000 children in Bangladesh in 1993 in anticipation of the American
never-legislated Child Labor Deterrence Act.
Quoted by Wasserstein, former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, notes:
"Stopping
child labor without doing anything else could leave children worse off.
If they are working out of necessity, as most are, stopping them could
force them into prostitution or other employment with greater personal
dangers. The most important thing is that they be in school and receive
the education to help them leave poverty."
Contrary to hype,
three quarters of all children work in agriculture and with their
families. Less than 1 percent work in mining and another 2 percent in
construction. Most of the rest work in retail outlets and services,
including "personal services" - a euphemism for prostitution. UNICEF and
the ILO are in the throes of establishing school networks for child
laborers and providing their parents with alternative employment.
But
this is a drop in the sea of neglect. Poor countries rarely proffer
education on a regular basis to more than two thirds of their eligible
school-age children. This is especially true in rural areas where child
labor is a widespread blight. Education - especially for women - is
considered an unaffordable luxury by many hard-pressed parents. In many
cultures, work is still considered to be indispensable in shaping the
child's morality and strength of character and in teaching him or her a
trade.
"The Economist" elaborates:
"In Africa children are
generally treated as mini-adults; from an early age every child will
have tasks to perform in the home, such as sweeping or fetching water.
It is also common to see children working in shops or on the streets.
Poor families will often send a child to a richer relation as a
housemaid or houseboy, in the hope that he will get an education."
A
solution recently gaining steam is to provide families in poor
countries with access to loans secured by the future earnings of their
educated offspring. The idea - first proposed by Jean-Marie Baland of
the University of Namur and James A. Robinson of the University of
California at Berkeley - has now permeated the mainstream.
Even
the World Bank has contributed a few studies, notably, in June, "Child
Labor: The Role of Income Variability and Access to Credit Across
Countries" authored by Rajeev Dehejia of the NBER and Roberta Gatti of
the Bank's Development Research Group.
Abusive child labor is
abhorrent and should be banned and eradicated. All other forms should be
phased out gradually. Developing countries already produce millions of
unemployable graduates a year - 100,000 in Morocco alone. Unemployment
is rife and reaches, in certain countries - such as Macedonia - more
than one third of the workforce. Children at work may be harshly treated
by their supervisors but at least they are kept off the far more
menacing streets. Some kids even end up with a skill and are rendered
employable.
