There are a lot of countries that have all different cultures and beliefs. In this paragraph we will talk about the countries that have been discussed in the former paragraph.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is a country that is in a conflict with its own culture. The Ethiopian culture encourages children to work and develop skills because of it. Children are considered an asset to the family so that they can make money. They are obliged to assist parents at home at an early age so that the homework will be less. Even while Ethiopians think of child labour as normal, a lot of people can not ignore the fact that we live in a new age where no education will get you nowhere. The government of Ethiopia has been trying to make the circumstances for children better and protect them from abuse.
Pakistan
There are cultures that condone child labour but in the Pakistani culture it is just normal. The earnings of one person will feed 10 people, and with how high the inflatie is, it is very hard for the population to survive. Pakistan is a very poor country and the education is also not on its best. It would be very hard to change the way how things are in Pakistan. Parents would have to earn a little more so that the can afford to send a child to school. But that would not do any good if the education is not on its best.
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Sub-Saharan Africa is a large part of Africa. Every country in Africa has its own culture, but they all have a lot of similarities. That is why they call it the sub-saharan Africa culture. From the countries that were discussed in the former paragraph Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Somalia are within the Sub-Saharan Africa. It is very normal for children to do household chores. Children start at a very young age so they will learn responsibility. Out of the six big cultures in the world, African children carried out more household than the other five cultures. They see children’s work as a part of the childhood.
Afghanistan
In Afghanistan children from the age of 14 are allowed to work up to 35 hours a week, but they are not permitted to do any kind of hazardous work like working in a textile factory. Children from the age of 14 are allowed to work so much because Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world and also are half of the population of Afghanistan children. That is what will happen if a country has had more than 30 years of conflict. Working children are now more than common in Afghanistan. The government is not in a hurry to help these children, even if they wanted to help they would not have the resources.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh is a small agricultural country where Child labour is one of the biggest income that the poor families have.
Thailand
Thailand has a history full of prostitution. As shocking as it may be, it has been part of Thai culture for a long time. It can be dated back all the way to the 14th century, when it was legal and the government imposed taxes. Even tho it is such a big part of their culture, in 1905 forced prostitution was made illegal. But child prostitution is still present in Thailand and it probably will be for a long time, because it is very hard to change the beliefs of people.
Chapter 4
The effects of child labour on the economy
What kind of effect does child labour have on the economy?
In the previous sections we have talked about what child labour is, the reason of it existence, the forms of child labor and the rights the children have and where child labour is used the most and why there. By answering these question we came to the conclusion that child labor is on the social aspect very negative. But to get to our conclusion and answer to the main question ‘Child labour, should we solve it or let it be?’ we should also look at the other side of it. So we have finally come to the other part of this report: the effects of child labor on the economy.
To answer this question we will not look if child labor is “bad” according to moral standards but we will only focus on the positive or negative effect from it in the economic sector. Then after this chapter we will put our results of the survey about child labor with questions about both aspects, economic and social. We will draw a conclusion from that, give our personal opinion about this subject and then an overall conclusion from our report.
To know what the effects are we first have to look at the current economy. Because of the international business and the global trade, countries have to compete with each other for jobs, investment, and industry. These are all obstacles for a multinational corporation and to keep their products low they have to seek for low labor costs. Unfortunately there is a possibility that they will see child labor as a solution because of the low loans and production.
Besides that, the poor countries rely heavily on the export of primary commodities. And to keep the export well-going they have to have low prices. The next thing what will happen is: extreme low prices in a poor country, export of the market of the product will increase. Because the corporations want to make many products for the same low price so they will use more child labour. The coffee exports of Central America and Africa are an example of that. And the use of children has also an economic impact at the family level to increase the income. The parents sent their children to work because what they earn is not enough to guarantee the survival of the family. This due to the poverty. The work that they have to do does sometimes not even pay. A paid or unpaid family activity is enough. Moreover children, and then especially girls are often engaged in unpaid family activities in order to free their parents from housework. When the parents are at work the children can do the household chores like cooking and cleaning. So when the parents get home after a long day of work they do not have to think about the household chores. Because of this the parents can work longer and maybe earn more.
But unfortunately, the children also have to work in hazardous activities which is much heavier for them. They have to make long working days for a little earning. This is used more because the demand for children is higher than adults. While the parents can not find work, there are so many vacancies for little kids. The ILO research about the use of children in hazardous activities, and came to the the conclusion that 111 million children under 15 years old are working in this sector.
The need of children to work is because of the essential needs of the family. Otherwise they will not have enough money to survive and certainly not for education.
What is the influence on the economy on the short and long term?
Child labour will be more and more an integrated part of life. Whole families are depending on the income earned by their children. As long as there are no changes there will be no changes on the economy in the long or short term.
But say there would be a change and children stopped working:
Short term
Families would not be able to provide in their needs. They would spend less money on primary and secondary goods. This would impact the local economy, because the whole distribution chain would be impacted starting at the farmer with his raw materials to the local vendor. Everyone within the chain would be affected in a financial way. No spending is a downward spiral for the whole (local) economy.
Looking for alternatives
The factories where the children are working are facing higher costs, because the low cost workers – the children – aren’t available anymore (due to legislation or pressure from external parties). Depending on the business model this will have impact:
Buyers will be looking for alternative cheaper products
Producers will be looking for alternative cheaper workers
This could mean that total regions where child labour is the core of their production will vanish, because the demand for their product will move abroad or to the cheaper competitors.
Long term
But it could also turn out differently. Sure in the beginning the economy would collapse a little. The products will become more expensive, because the employers have to pay the workers more than children. But eventually the economy will grow again. The children who would be child workers have an education now. They will contribute in society by having a normal job and invest in the economy by buying (luxury) products. Because of this the GDP per capita will increase.
Better educated
Children that don’t need to work might go to school and get more educated. On the long run this will mean that these children – now adults – will be more knowledge workers and have a different future ahead instead of working in a factory. This will have impact on the economy.
Possibly, when better educated – adults have more money to spend – if they are employed in a job that suits their skills. More money is more consumption is positive for the economy.
Laws and legislations
Due to changed laws and legislation a company that says no to child labour will attract a different kind of customer that is focused on child well being, sustainability, environmental issues and so on. A country’s government can have influence when creating and upholding the law.
Sustainability
Global awareness is growing and faces the consuming parties like H&M to act on the perception of their customers:
An example: The whole distribution chain demands a child labourless producing process
From H&M’s website
As described in the example above, a producer cannot afford to have children work for them. They might lose their customer and are facing being an image like a “black sheep” in the industry.
Health
People will live longer if they don’t work in polluted and overcrowded dangerous factories. They can live and work longer, which has a positive effect on consumption.
Furthermore people will be physically and mentally healthier. This means less need for healthcare related issues.
To illustrate this:
Article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
"to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development."
From Poverty to more poverty
Earning money – even though children – provides basic living. A lot of parents that let their child or children work face poverty. If their children are not able to earn money more poverty will emerge.
To summarize.
Will a change create a better economic situation for the now child and later to be adult? This cannot be answered with an easy yes or no.
Child labour is an essential part of the society. It’s a pillar on which a total system is built.
How is it that there is still child labour?
In the 19th century we abolished child labour from the western counties. Now we wonder why Asia and South-America can not do the same. But there are several factors to why there is still child labour in the world.
The first factor is poverty. It is because of the poverty parent can not take proper care of their children without the children working to. But it was also the beginning of child labour. Because of the poverty children had to start working so that there would be enough food on the table.
The second factor is culture and tradition. Some cultures are very old, like in Africa. Child labour or children’s work is considered a part of the childhood. It is very hard to change a whole culture. It will not just happen when the United Nations make a few rights or laws. You have to change the way the people think, to change the only way they know how to live.
The third factor is in demand. There is a lot of demand for child labour. Families who have their own farming business need there children to work. They believe that education is not as important as working on the fields. They need the money now and do not think about the future. The family needs the money and children can not work if they got to school.
The fourth factor is cheap and obedient. Employers prefer children over adults because children are cheaper. Sometimes they even work unpaid, particularly as domestic workers. They work in conditions that would be termed “slavery”. Employers also prefer children more because they are more obedient and they are easily intimidated. Employers can force the children workers in submission when the children are dependent on them for lodging, food or even emotional support. It is also still normal for parents to beat their children in many parts of the world. Employers make use of this acceptance to beat the children saying it is to controlling them.
The fifth factor is nimble fingers. This is all about the beliefs of the employers. Saying that children can do work that adults can not, like working in small places. They say this to justify why they use child labour.
The sixth factor are inadequate laws. Even though there are a lot of laws against child labour around the world that state that children under the age of 14 are not allowed to work. But these laws are often ignored. More than 130 countries have signed the international convention on the rights of children saying that children under the age of 14 or 15 are forbidden to work full-time. But in some countries the laws against child labour are confusing or vague and are not enforced. Employers can find a loophole to explain why children are working for them.
Also there are some counties who do not have a uniform birth registration system, because of this many people do not have a birth certificates. Children’s ages can not be established for certain and without the documents children may be denied access to state services like school.
The last factor is the role of education. Not having a education is one of the main reasons of child labour. In a lot of countries education is not free, parents still have to pay feeds for primary school while in other countries this is free. Parents also have to pay for the school books and an uniform. For a poor family this can be a lot of money, also will the family miss the income of the child if it goes to school.
Which companies use child labor/prevent child labor?
In this paragraph we will talk about specific companies, some very well known like Nike, Primark, Prada and H&M. We will give some information about the background of the companies and the way they produce their products. Some of the companies I have mentioned above are accused of using child labor and others are known as companies that provide good working conditions and prevent child labor.
So we looked up on every site of the enterprise to get as much as information about this. And some information really surprised us.
Does Primark use child labor?
Primark is known as one of the companies who use child labor. But according to their own site and RankaBrand is that not true. Primark says that they know their responsibility towards their workers and has an ethical policy. This policy contains three steps:
1) Their Code of Conduct prohibits child labor
Every factory is controlled by external inspectors. They go once in awhile to every branch to check up the work conditions like the minimum legal age.
2) They support the rights of children
Primark provides information to suppliers, workers and communities to ensure that they understand that it is better to give children a good education rather than sending them to work.
3) They work together with specialists
They work with international organizations and local partners. Thanks to the partnerships they know where the risks in their supply chain are , from the field to the cotton farm. Thus, Primark can put together programs that help to solve this problem.
So according to Primark they do everything to make sure that the production is not been done by children and that the work conditions are good. But the question then is: How can Primark offer clothes at such low prices?
They put their answers on their site and if you think about it, it is actually very simple and smart.
1) No expensive advertising campaigns
They rely on word-of- mouth advertising. Unlike other brands, they do not spend money on expensive advertising . Actually they do not advertise at all , except when they are opening a new store somewhere.
2) Large quantities, small profit margins
They place large orders with their suppliers because they are a profitable retail chain. Primark place orders for their most popular products long before they are sold in stores , so the suppliers can offer them the best prices. They keep fixed costs as low as possible and give the savings to the Primark customers.
3) We design and manufacture our clothes in an efficient manner.
Fantastic fashion for fantastic prices. This is their slogan for their products.
Their suppliers use streamlined production processes and well-trained staff to make the most efficient fashion clothing for Primark and what help to keep costs down . In this way the company can offer their customers fantastic fashion fabulous prizes. Besides that, instead of the usual plastic bags in the most stores, Primark uses 100% recycled paper bags.
There is a short video about the printing of the Primark T -shirts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cwGKU3eqLc
Primark also says the following thing about itself: “Low prices do not necessarily mean low wages. We offer clothing at attractive prices by keeping our overheads low. Most factories producing garments for some apparel brands and workers earn the same wages , whether they make clothes for us or for an expensive brand . We can offer clothes at competitive prices because we were keeping our own costs and place large orders with our suppliers so they.”
The first sentence is very important to know. A lot of people think that when the label says ‘Made in China/Bangladesh/India etc’ that it is automatically made by children or that the workers do not earn that much. Low prices do not only dependent on the low wages!
However, this information came from Primark site. Many different articles and websites are saying the complete opposite of Primark. According to the UK news Independent, does Primark certainly use child labor for their production. They came to this conclusion when a dress was bought with a sewn in label with the message “forced to work exhausting hours”. But this was not the only note found in clothing. From the same store where the first note was found, another was discovered with the message “Degrading sweatshop condition” and in 2011 a woman claimed to have found a handwritten note from China.
In 2008 BBC made a documentary about three factories from Primark in India. They did this because they wanted to investigate the true production of Primark. After this documentary it became clear that Primark was using children for their products and after another investigation, Primark fired these Indian suppliers. The company said the following thing about the situation: "Under no circumstances would Primark ever knowingly permit such activities, whether directly through its suppliers or through third party subcontractors."
But then in 2011 there came a report were BBC had to apologise to Primark. Because a e in a Panorama documentary showing boys in Bangalore clothing workshop was “not genuine” and the journalist Dan McDougall who filmed the footage said the finding was “unjust and flawed”. BCC had to apologised to Primark and the audience for a “rare lapse in quality”.
Also according to RankABrand does Primark score a ‘good’ for not using child labor and has good work circumstances.
Yet, there are a lot of people who still believes that Primark use child labor for their production. But according to their own site, the apology from BBC for accusing Primark for the use of children and the RankABrand says the opposite and these are trustworthy articles. So as for now we can say that Primark does not use child labor for their production. So now you can shop without feeling guilty!
Does Nike use child labor?
In chapter 2 I have mentioned that Nike uses child labor for their production of soccer balls in Pakistan. So if you buy a Nike ball for your kid, there is a
possibility that is has been made by a 4 or maybe 5 year old child.
It was a shock that a successful company like Nike use children for their production. They make enough money to hire adults and give them enough loan. Still they choose for child labor. But according to a columnist Stephen Chapman, for the Libertarian newspaper is child labor not that bad. He said the following thing: "But why is it unconscionable for a poor country to allow child labor? Pakistan has a per-capita income of $1,900 per year – meaning that the typical person subsists on barely $5 per day. Is it a revelation – or a crime – that some parents willingly send their children off to work in a factory to survive? Is it cruel for Nike to give them the chance?"
Stephens opinion about the best way to end child labor, is to buy more of the products that children produce. He thinks that doing this will increase their demand which leads to more production. And when they produce more, they will earn more money and their income will increase. This will benefiting the families of the children but also the nation.
Saying this is very easy but unfortunately the issue is not that simple. By doing this, it means that we are encouraging more child labor. For that to happen, there have to be more children, in other words, encouraging more birth rates. And if children have to work they can not go to school and the parents want their children to work because they will have more income, so you are also discouraging education. So this is not a solution to the problem, it will only make it worse.
So after this accusation against Nike their profit had decreased and their image has been damaged. They are still trying to fix that. One of the things they did was publishing a complete list of the factories which contracts with Nike. They did this in 2005 and they were the first industry who did this. By doing this Nike wanted to show the world that they are willing to correct their mistakes.
But Nike was very aware of the situation in Pakistan and other countries like Vietnam, Indonesia, China. By closing their eyes for it and letting it happen a lot of people are very sceptic about the company. Are they improving the work circumstances because they got caught or because they really want to do that?
However, Nike is doing everything to get his good reputation back.
While Nike has been accused their official site and RankaBrand says that they do not use child labor. According to their site Nike claims that they require contract manufacturers to comply with Nike’s Code of Conduct and have taken active steps to prevent that children have to work. They also requires their suppliers to pay their employees at least the minimum wage and provides them with education so that the management capabilities can improve the workers engagement and well-being.
But the question is: does Nike still use child labour? We can not say for sure, but we do think that they are using it way less than before. However, we think that the work conditions are still very bad.
Does Prada use child labor?
Hearing an expensive brand like Prada and using child labor does not seem logic. It is such a famous brand and it makes so much profit. However, the well known company scores the lowest ranking on RankaBrand. This brand does make a lot of money and they have much regard, but when you look at the production of it, Prada is a horrible product. You pay so much for the product while the production is not even that expensive. In other words, you are just paying the brand name. They use child labor, have terrible working conditions, do not think about the environment. But Prada is not the only one. All those famous, high brands do score very low. Chanel, DKNY, Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Chloé. Very weird and unbelievably. So are those €550 for one simple bag really worth it?
Many people do not want to buy the original one because it is too expensive. However, buying a fake bag from Louis Vuitton is way worse! There are some reasons for that. First of all the fake ones are very populair. Instead of buying a bag with a pricetag of €400 you can buy a lookalike for €40. The choice is easy to make when you do not want to spend so much money. And the most consumers think that buying fake products is harmless, but that is it not at all.
But because this market is very populair a lot of people start a small business where they hire children to work. And in most causes the working conditions are terrible. These fake ones are easy to sell and nobody looks at the production because it does not have a real brand. So it is very easy to produce it as cheap and bad the owners wants it to be.
Luckily there are many organisations fighting against the fakes.
So it actually does not really matter if you buy an original one or a fake one, they are both produced by children and under bad circumstances.
Does H&M use child labor?
Just like Primark has H&M a reputation as a company who uses child labor. To answer the question if H&M use children to produce their products we had to collect a lot of information.
In 2012 an article appeared in The Guardian about child-labor in the cotton industry. This kind of industry is mostly done in Uzbekistan. This country is one of the world’s largest exporters of cotton. Unfortunately, the government supports the use of child labor for the production of this big export income. The Anti-Slavery International did some research to this industry and tells well-known brands to stop buying clothing from suppliers that source cotton from Uzbekistan. So this time they told H&M to stop.
"Unless H&M implements the practical steps set out by the cotton campaign, it is near impossible for us to be confident that H&M's goods are truly free from state-sponsored forced labour," a spokeswoman for the charity said. "By implementing these steps, we can be confident that H&M is doing everything it can to support an end to the use of forced labour."
Because H&M has been accused of using child labor several times, they are now forced to act against the cotton industry otherwise it would look like it does not bother them.
Human Rights Watch did last year investigation in Cambodian factories. The outcome was that the discriminatory labor conditions were very high. HRW claimed in its report that H&M, uses child labor. They went to one of the factories of H&M and saw children below the age of 15 working as hard as the adults while kids under 15 are legally forbidden to work in Cambodian factories. Besides that, almost 30 per cent of the workers are children.
“Some of the worst employment-related crimes happen at the larger factories’ smaller suppliers. The reason is that nobody really investigates them. These factories do not care about the law, they only care about the production.”
While HRW accused H&M for using child labor, H&M claims that they stand up against child labor. According to their site they say: “Today it is rare that we discover any workers below the statutory minimum age in our supplier factories.”
To prevent the use of child labor at their suppliers they have a policy. This implies that when they discover underage workers, they will try to find a solution that is the best for the child. One of those actions is contacting the family and to persuade the parents for sending their kids to school until they are 15. To stimulate the parents, the children will be paid during the study so that the family does not lose its income. Another solution is offering an older member of the household the work instead of the child.
On other thing that H&M does is building up networks of local contacts, such as schools and voluntary organisations. By doing this they can offer the children a better future, where they can get education instead of starting to work in factories or even worse, ending up in the prostitution.
In some factories the do not have documentation of some workers. The lack of this can be a big problem because it is very difficult to estimate the age of some children. So H&M has contacts with doctors who can help them to judge the ages of the kids. But that is not enough so they are constantly working on getting their suppliers to improve their routines. In this way they can have serious assurance that there are no underage children in their factories. They require some kind of proof of age to be checked on the employment.
To make sure that their suppliers will stick to these terms, H&M came with big consequences for those who do not follow them. They are very strict with their suppliers and when there is use of child labor in one of the suppliers, H&M demand that they will take their responsibilities seriously and will find for a solution that is the best for the child. And because they take child labor very seriously, if H&M finds children in the same supplier they will cease co-operating with the supplier for good. This already has happened to a few suppliers.
It is not difficult to say that H&M does use child labor. However they are taking actions against it and according to the RankABrand they are making big progres. H&M also supports unicef for protest against child labor. It is still unfortunately that they use children for their production, but luckily they have taking steps to stop that. Who knows, in a couple of years we might buy child labor-free clothing by H&M.
After we have zoomed in on these companies you see that things as prices, production or famous brand names nothing says about the production. For example, Primark does not advertise and uses recycled paper bags to keep the price low while Nike has higher prices however they use children for their production.
But if the production does not really affect the price, then why can the workers not get more loan? It is more difficult than you would think. Clothing companies are one of the hundreds clientage in one factory. This is why they can not decide about the wages and besides that, it sounds strange, but increase of the wages is not always better. After the Rana Plaza disaster,(the collapse of an eight floor high building) the government of Bangladesh increased the minimum wage from $28 to $50 dollars a month. This sound positive, except for the fact that the rent also increased.
But can we, as consumers, stop child labor by boycotting the clothing made by children. Although this sounds like a good idea, it actually is not. How “wrong” or “bad” child labor is, it is an important income for poor families and countries. For example, Bangladesh. 80 percent of the income is due to the export and it provides work for four million people. If we boycott their products, they will get more poverty.
Child labor is a complicated issue. If you buy product made through child labor, you are stimulating the market. But if you do not, the people will not have an income. So it is a battle between what is moral good and what is good for the economy.