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.