Child Labor
The United Nations agency that moniters labor rights, the ILO, estimates that 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working. About 120 million of these work full-time. These are not children with paper routes, they work because their wages are needed to feed their desperatly poor families. These children are valued, not because they possess unique skills or talents, but because they are cheap, docile and expendable. Their governments are not going to protect them because they are eager to attract multinational corporations and it means nothing to them that the children are employed in some of the worlds most dangerous and degrading forms of work and many suffer from injury, illness and disease, working long hours under terrible conditions for 20 to 60 cents an hour.
It is hard for us to believe, but today 1.3 billion people in the world exist on less than a dollar a day. Labor and human rights groups believe that labor violations - including child labor, forced labor, and denial of the right to organize - has gone up significantly as free trade has expanded. Examples are to be found in Central America’s sweatshops making clothing for Kathy Lee Gifford and well known firms like Nike and Gap having their subcontractors mistreat their workers in their third world sweatshops. Brutal crackdowns on religious groups and political dissidents, including torture, go hand in hand with China’s desire to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) and break down trade barriers. One thing we should learn is - that trade will not secure improvements in human rights. The USA is China’s best customer, yet we don’t have any human rights policy attached to our trade with that despotic nation.Wealth generated from trade strengthens China’s military, not their middle class.
The heart of the question is how and where trade should be used as an instrument to advance labor and human rights; and it is up to us, the working people who live in a society where we still have the liberty and freedom of speech to use our rights and freedoms in lifting the oppression of others - before their yoke becomes our own. We must become increasently resistant to the idea that there is “nothing we can do about it” Our attitude, first has to change, do I want to live in a democracy or a slave state controlled by multi-national corporations? If the answer is democracy; it is going to require that you spend some of your time, energy and money on developing and maintaining it. To do nothing, is to become a slave.