Why the children of the poor must not be allowed to work in family enterprises

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Why the children of the poor must not be allowed to work in family enterprises

Allowing children to labour is a collective crime in which each of us is culpable.

The shocking decision of the Union Cabinet to legalise child work after school hours in family enterprises must compel us to turn an unflinching spotlight on one of our gravest, and collectively forgotten, cruelties: the theft of the childhood and hopes of Indian children whose only crime is to be born into poverty and disadvantaged castes and religions. Even today, the majority of children in the world who are still trapped in labour are born and raised in India.

Unconscionably, the law outlawed child work only in notified “hazardous” occupations, a list to which domestic help was added only a few years ago. Beyond 14 years, even this prohibition disappeared. Both the middle classes and governments did not find it problematic that children of disadvantage are being forced to squander their childhoods labouring on farms and in factories, in waste heaps and roadside eateries and in our homes, while we aspire for the best for our own children.

In the United States, a couple filed a suit against the Department of Labour for opposing their children working in the family business of a pizzeria. The parents’ argument was similar to that of the government here: the children are not being paid, they go to school, and they are learning to be a part of family enterprise. But as a legal expert argued in that case: parents aren’t alone in having a stake in children. Society does, too. The children of the poor indeed are also all our children.

The social fabric

The previous United Progressive Alliance government, responding to decades of child rights activism, belatedly proposed amendments to the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986. These sought to ban all child work until the age of 14 years. The amendments also proposed prohibiting children between the ages 14 and 18 from employment in hazardous employment. (It is scandalous that there is no legal bar until then to such employment.)

But sadly because of the stalling of Parliament in the twilight months of the last government, and low public priority to child issues, this amendment never came up for voting.

Recently, the Union cabinet approved one progressive aspect of those proposed amendments: the ban on employment of children between 14 and 18 years in hazardous employment. I would have liked to see a complete ban on all child work.

But while requiring every child below 14 years to study in regular school, the new amendment disgracefully seeks to legalise child labour in “non-hazardous” work after school hours or during vacations, helping the family in fields, forests and home-based work. “We don't want to redraw the social fabric of Indian society where children learn by participating in work with family elders,” a government official is quoted as saying. Another senior officer I spoke to asked, “What is wrong with this? Should not the son of a lohar or ironsmith, learn to be an ironsmith, or of a weaver to be a weaver?”

Casteist worldviews

My answer is: why indeed should the son of a blacksmith learn to be a blacksmith or a rag-picker’s daughter to pick waste? Why can’t he learn to be a poet and she a nuclear scientist, if these are where their dreams soar? And why can’t your son or my daughter learn to be an ironsmith or a weaver?

And secondly, when your child and mine come home from school, they rest, play, watch television, receive tuitions, do their homework, and in general enjoy the delights of carefree childhood. During their vacations, we plan for their travel, recreation, leisure reading, sports and hobbies, the best that money can buy. They never spend these post-school hours, weekends and holidays labouring in farms and shops, in embroidery or weaving, cleaning dishes and sweeping floors, moulding bricks, and sorting waste.

Why then are we so comfortable with such different childhoods for children born elsewhere? Why is it alright for children of the poor to labour after school and for our children to rest and play? And why must working-class children be trained specially in the trade of their parents and children born to the middle-classes exempted from all working class responsibilities and options?

This is nothing if not the idea of caste which remains deeply embedded in the worldviews of the upper-caste middle classes. The social commonsense persists that children of the poor and disadvantaged castes basically need to be trained not to work their minds but their hands, and upper-caste and upper class children for intellectual vocations. The alternate democratic idea that the potential for intellectual achievement is likely to be evenly distributed within all social, economic and religious groups has not permeated.

New economics

We must indeed argue for the dignity of labour. Let us conduct a social debate about including work with one’s hands as an intrinsic part of school education. This was an idea which Gandhi favoured in his nai taleem. But for this, first let children of the rich labour with their hands during or after school hours. Let them sweep floors and toilets, mould iron and bricks, weave cloth. I think this would be a magnificent education for them. Only then would I be content in endorsing these exertions for children of poor and low-caste parents.

The new economic growth model is pushing more and more work from factory floors to homes. In cramped, poorly lit and barely ventilated slum shanties, children bend over for hours moulding, stitching, embroidering, weaving and folding. Farm work entails continuous contact with toxic pesticides and fertilisers. All such work is hazardous. No labour is non-hazardous for children.


Making our children labour is a collective crime in which each one of us is culpable. The true reason for remaking child work lawful is the belief that in the global market, India benefits by lower-priced goods produced by children. Children are preferred to adult workers because they are submissive and low-paid, or because adults refuse work which is very unsafe and poorly paid. But do we really wish to build India’s growth on the thin shoulders of impoverished working children?

A childhood lost in ‘zari' making

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A childhood lost in ‘zari' making

PAVITHRA S. RANGAN

Ten-year-old Ahmed works for over twelve hours a day, to earn Rs.500 a week, in an embroidery unit at old city in Hyderabad. Photo: Surya Sridhan.

Many children are trained in zardosi designs in several city-based workshops

Squatting on the floor of a faintly lit room, his eyes are fixed on the cloth lain ahead of him, and his frail fingers work with inconceivable nimbleness. With a largely stoic expression, 10-year-old Aarif spends 14 hours each day, in weaving patterns that would barely fetch him Rs. 70 a day.

He is among hundreds of children who are losing their childhood in numerous ‘zari' (embroidery) units, in narrow corridors and claustrophobic by-lanes in the city, to earn that little to feed themselves and their families.

“I have been working here for nearly two years and get Rs. 500 a week. My family needs that money,” said Aarif, who works in a ‘zari' unit at the old city. Almost all children engaged in the activity have never been enrolled into a school. Children, as young as eight years, being trained to work on intricate zardosi designs is a household phenomenon in several city-based zari workshops. Economic necessities drive most parents, also engaged in zari work, to coerce their children into the wearisome activity, even for a pittance. Adults engaged in the work are only about Rs.1,200 a week.

On joining a unit, both children and adults, are given an advance that could range anywhere between Rs.5,000 and Rs.1,00,000, depending on the size of the unit. They can leave ‘if and when they choose to' only on repayment of the advance.

“We take the advance and join because we are in dire need of money. Adults in this kharkhana earn Rs.200 a day and have taken an advance of at least Rs.30, 000. It is impossible for us to pay that amount all at once. So we have to work here,” said 22-year-old Syed Rehan, who was absorbed by the industry at the age of seven.

Twelve-year-Ahmed, working in the same unit, has also taken an advance of Rs. 10,000 for his family and cannot think of a future beyond the workshop. He, akin to most workers in the field, is a virtual slave to his ‘seth' (or master). Workers in the units also said that besides providing cheap labour, children are chosen to work in the field as they can be retained for long periods, because they acquire no other skill throughout their childhood, expect weaving.

HEALTH HAZARDS

Working sometimes until four in the morning, workers, including children, complained about problems of the spine and the eye that come along with their work.

Having acquired a dubious reputation of having the highest incidents of child labour, the State also has children employed in a variety of activities, including domestic labour, making of fire crackers, bangles and incense sticks. “Since the activity is passed on to children by their families and is conducted mainly within households, cracking down on the employers is very difficult,” said Isidore Philips, Chairman, Child Welfare Committee.


When contacted, officials of the Labour Department in the old city, however, said that they were unaware of the activity and that they would look into the matter.

The Dark Side of Chocolate

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The Dark Side of Chocolate

While we enjoy the sweet taste of chocolate, the reality is strikingly different for African children.
In 2001 consumers around the world were outraged to discover that child labor and slavery, trafficking, and other abuses existed on cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast, a country that produces nearly half the world's cocoa. An avalanche of negative publicity and consumer demands for answers and solutions soon followed.
Two members of US Congress, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative Eliot Engel of New York, tackled the issue by adding a rider to an agricultural bill proposing a federal system to certify and label chocolate products as slave free.
The measure passed the House of Representatives and created a potential disaster for Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland Mars, Hershey's, Nestle, Barry Callebaut, Saf-Cacao and other chocolate manufacturers. To avoid legislation that would have forced chocolate companies to label their products with "no child labor" labels (for which many major chocolate manufacturers wouldn't qualify), the industry fought back and finally agreed to a voluntary protocol to end abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by 2005.
The chocolate industry fought back. Ultimately, a compromise was reached to end child labor on Ivory Coast cocoa farms by 2005. In 2005 the cocoa industry failed to comply with the protocol’s terms, and a new deadline for 2008 was established. In 2008 the terms of the protocol were still not met, and yet another deadline for 2010 was set.
Almost a decade after the chocolate companies, concerned governments and specially foundations spent millions of dollars in an effort to eradicate child labor and trafficking in the international cocoa trade, has anything changed?

Miki Mistrati and U Roberto Romano launch a behind-the-scenes investigation and verify if these allegations of child labor in the chocolate industry are present today.

Watch the full documentary now

Child labour a complex issue looking for innovative solution

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Child labour a complex issue looking for innovative solution:

Pakistani boys sitting in a wheelbarrow wait for customers at a food market in Islamabad.—AFP Photo

PESHAWAR: Like any other day, June 12 also passed bringing no change to the life of Waqas.

Waqas, a vendor, has grown up in the streets and markets of Saddar in Peshawar. Sometimes you would see him sell combs and at other times sweets and balloons. His parents are so poor that he supplements the family income by working as a vender after school.

He is in 8th grade and has dreams of a bright future. Since he knows he is to excel in life on his own, he has matured faster than those who have parents to take care of their education and other expenses.

Like him, there are thousands of children, who straight away enter a life full of labour and hardships. They lose their right to education and instead of going to school for learning, streets, markets, auto-workshops and shops are their classrooms to teach them hard lessons of life. They miss out of simple joys of childhood and mature quite fast.

Underweight, malnourished and dirty-faced beautiful children sitting on footpath in Saddar market requesting you to weigh yourself on their weighing scales can be quite embarrassing for those potbellied parents, who bring their children for shopping but regrettably, who cares for these children of the poor.

It is ironic that non-governmental and even government labour departments hold news conferences to raise public awareness of the issue of child labour on World Day against Child Labour instead of striving every single day throughout the year to fight against factors, which force children into labour at such tender age.

Child rights activists count poverty as one of the main reasons of this curse on children and saddening fact is that the government has no strategy or effective policy to save children from becoming labourers.

Different organisations give different figures to show how grave this child labour issue is in the country.

According to child rights activists, they still rely on a figures compiled by ILO and Bureau of Statistics in 1996 that show that 3.3 million children are in child labour in the country. Look at the number of child labourers in auto-workshops and markets and severity of the problem is quite visible.

Data compiled by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its 2005 report say 10.2 million children are forced to do labour and shocking fact is that half of these children are said to be of less than 10 years of age.

If there are no fresh data available, one could only imagine looking at the population growth of the country that in the last decade or so the number of children doing different kinds of labours, too, might have risen.

Child rights activists confirm these concerns and say it was ironic that while in the rest of the world child labour was on decline, in Pakistan it was on rise due to rise in poverty and also due to man-made and natural disasters. Children who went to schools were now going to work as their families have been affected by conflict and militancy in the last decade, especially in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata.

The government, which is supposed to ensure that a child had access to basic right of education and other facilities for his overall development no doubt, seems to have failed in its responsibility when you see almost 10 million children work in auto-mobile shops.

No doubt, the government can’t just pull these children out of auto-workshops and force them to enroll in a government school. However, it can ensure that a child who is getting technical training as a Shagird at an auto-workshop also gets basic education and in the end, come out as a diploma holder having the skill as well as education to earn a decent living in his remaining life.

The government needs to ensure that labour laws are properly implemented at a workplace where children are employed. It should also ensure that children are not involved in labour hazardous to their health. The law relating to their working hours and wages should also be effectively implemented so that children could give more time to their education and other activities needed for their normal development.

Since child labour is a reality in our country, it is natural to blame the government for not being able to bring some kind of strategy to cater to the needs of these children coming from poor families. However, parents giving birth to a child every other year without having enough resources to properly bring them up should also be made aware of how to properly plan family. If that is not a solution, then they should at least not put their economic burden on the weak and delicate shoulders of their children but vote for a government in the upcoming election, which gives priority to their basic issues. Child labour, which is a complex issue, can be resolved if the government and parents have a strong resolve to do so.

The scandal of child labour in US farming... By Susana Adame...

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The scandal of child labour in US farming; The false representation of immigrants 'stealing' farm jobs paints out the reality that children are being exploited to do the work...

Earlier in the month, Human Rights Watch (HRW) announced the beginning of its campaign to end child labour in US agriculture. The campaign, among other things, calls for the "same age and hour requirements to children working in agriculture that already apply to all other working children" and for the government to "strengthen provisions regarding children's exposure to pesticides".

HRW's campaign begins just as anti-immigrant action in the US has heated up. Arizona recently passed the draconian SB 1070 legislation that requires local police to check the immigration status of anybody they have a "reasonable" suspicion of being undocumented. Arizona also outlawed ethnic studies classes shortly thereafter and is forbidding teachers with heavy accents from teaching English.

Most of these actions (and subsequent actions in other states) are being justified based on the state of labour in the US. That is, undocumented workers are "stealing" the jobs of citizens and as such, we need to come down particularly hard on any who might be undocumented. The Southern Poverty Law Centre (an organisation that monitors hate groups), has done an excellent job in documenting how labour gets centred in the immigration debate:

"[The Coalition for the Future American Worker] ran an ad featuring a couple sitting at a kitchen table with a baby crying in the background. The husband tells his wife that he failed to get a job because 'they hired all foreign workers'. During a 2004 Texas congressional race, it ran television ads that included images of dark-skinned men loitering on street corners and running from police cars."

But the HRW campaign exposes a conflict between how immigration and labour is represented – and what it is in reality. HRW estimates that at least 9% of farm workers are children, and this number may be significantly higher. What this means is that a very big percentage of the actual people doing the "stealing" are kids rather than grown men, and those kids, more often than not, may actually be citizens, having been born in the US after their parents immigrated.

Unfortunately, the false representation of adult male labourers "stealing" jobs of citizens is becoming more mainstream, with the result being that consumers are largely ignorant of the immensity of the problem, or oddly, they even regard child labour as a good thing. Drawing on a mythical past where youth spent their summers on family farms working for a little spending money, the argument is that what was good for grandparents then is good for children today. It "builds strength of character" and teaches good lessons.

The problem here is that there is a significant difference between an agricultural industrial farm and a family owned farm. Most farms in the US today are owned by massive corporations that use tools, heavy machinery and engage in extensive pesticide spraying. Child labourers (who are often as young as seven or eight) working on these industrial farms can expect to work 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week. Lunch breaks are often only a half hour and as with most farm workers, bathrooms and even clean water to drink are rarely supplied by the growers. Federal minimum wage is $7.50 an hour, but because farm workers are paid by the bucket rather than by the hour, their wages often average out to as low as $2.38 an hour.

For children, payment for labour presents a unique problem. Because children are often too young to collect their own pay, parents are paid instead. While it may not necessarily be a bad thing for kids to give their earnings to parents to help with bills, it does seem ironic at best that children are working full-time jobs but because they are not officially on the books, they are not eligible for worker's compensation should they get sick or hurt, unemployment benefits during any period they aren't working, nor are they even getting credit for paying into social security. If we have no problem "teaching" kids the benefits of working full time, then shouldn't we also be teaching them what rights they have as workers?

When I first read HRW's stance against child labour violations, I did not feel that the campaign went far enough to protect children. But given the context of the US political atmosphere in which the campaign was announced, I think it's a beneficial campaign if only for the education and worker testimony it provides to consumers who are being bombarded by messages that simply don't reflect reality. Whether this campaign will gain any meaningful momentum towards achieving the goals it calls for, however, remains to be seen.

Child Labor Still America’s Shame...

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Child Labor Still America’s Shame...



The many social evils and economic contradictions that capitalism engenders are for the most part insoluble and endless. No matter what reform efforts are made to mitigate the impact of those evils and contradictions, they continue to plague society in varying degrees. Some of those problems may at times and on the surface even appear to have been mitigated only to have them flare up again. The vicious and unconscionable exploitation of child labor provides a case in point.


Although child labor existed in varying degrees in many enterprises in different parts of the world during the 17th century and earlier, it did not really receive recognition as a social evil until the factory system was introduced in England in the late 18th century. There, in a relatively short time, child labor became a major factor in production, particularly—but not exclusively—in the cotton mills.


Children as young as six were widely employed and were subjected to merciless exploitation under working conditions that amounted to virtual slavery in its most oppressive forms. They were not only worked to exhaustion, they were beaten, ill-fed and paid a pittance. Many were driven to early alcoholism and other degradations, and in not insignificant numbers even driven to early death. As Frederick Engels noted in his work, The Condition of the Working Class in England:


“The great mortality among children of the working class, and especially among those of the factory operatives, is proof enough of the unwholesome conditions under which they pass their first years.”


Throughout that work Engels paints a vivid picture of those unwholesome conditions, as does Karl Marx in Capital, in the section dealing with “The Working Day.”


There were, of course, some who declaimed against the evils of child labor, and from time to time laws were enacted ostensibly to mitigate the problem, but to little avail. As Marx noted in Capital: “Parliament passed five Labor Laws between 1802 and 1833, but was shrewd enough not to vote a penny for their carrying out, for their requisite officials, etc.”


Here in the United States, child labor was introduced on a major scale in cotton mills by Samuel Slater, who came to this country from England in 1790. As Mitchell Wilson noted in his excellent and interesting work, American Science and Invention, Slater drew “on his English training” and “staffed his factory with children from four to ten years old.” However, compared to the working conditions imposed on children in England, the working conditions in Slater’s factory were relatively benign, though the hours were long, the pay low and the exploitation intense. However, at a time when children in America generally were given chores on the family farm practically as soon as they could walk, Slater’s child-labor practices elicited little objection. In fact, it was not until Slater established the American Sunday School for his child employees that people became offended, charging that he was profaning the Sabbath.


One of the early proponents of the “virtues” of child labor was Alexander Hamilton, who on one occasion declared that “women and children are rendered more useful, and the latter more early useful, by manufacturing establishments, than they otherwise would be.”


However, it was in the post-Civil War period that child labor became a factor in American industry and was recognized as a growing social problem. By 1900, according to Roger Butterfield in his history, The American Past, there were over 1,752,000 children under the age of 16 employed in American industry. One-fourth of the “hands” in southern cotton mills were children, 20,000 of whom were under the age of 12. And there were some girls six and seven years old who worked 13 hours a day.


There were growing demands for measures to regulate child labor. Politicians included promises in their campaign platforms to do something about it. Finally, in 1918, and again in 1922, Congress enacted laws intended to set up minimum age standards and regulate working conditions. These were not intended to eliminate child labor but to mitigate its most terrible aspects under which the health and education of those children employed in industry were not merely undermined but often destroyed. On both occasions the U.S. Supreme Court declared those laws unconstitutional.


In 1924 Congress acted again in response to growing demands that something be done about child labor. This time it passed a constitutional amendment to regulate it. But the proposed amendment failed to receive the approval of enough states to become part of the U.S. Constitution.


In 1938 the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed. It set specific requirements with which employers were to comply—i.e., a minimum age limit of 16 for children employed in the production of commodities for interstate or foreign commerce, the employment of 14- and 15-year-olds in occupations other than mining and manufacturing only if such employment did not interfere with their education or threaten their health, etc. In 1941 the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that the act was constitutional.


Since then, there have been a host of state and local laws generally intended to minimize and regulate the employment of children in industries, commercial enterprises, street trades, agriculture, household work and various aspects of the public amusement trades. Despite all that, child labor and many of its evil aspects have not only remained a part of the American industrial scene, they are enjoying a resurgence. Fortune magazine noted that in a fairly lengthy article in its issue of April 5, 1993. Written by one of its associate editors, the article is entitled “Illegal Child Labor Comes Back.” And it presents ample convincing evidence to justify the headline.


Among other things, it cites instances of children being “exploited,” “exposed to danger,” subjected to working long hours, paid less than the minimum wage and otherwise being abused in sweatshops, on farms, in fast-food outlets and in such new scam operations as door-to-door candy selling that sends young children out “late at night, unsupervised and in strange neighborhoods.”


All in all, the Fortune article paints a sordid picture of children across the country being victimized by unscrupulous employers who violate existing child labor laws with impunity. In 1992 the U.S. Department of Labor recorded 19,443 such violations, “about twice the 1980 level.” Moreover, there is little reason to doubt that for every such recorded violation, there are many more that go unrecorded or are simply overlooked. As the article notes, “Child labor laws...are rarely enforced.” That squares with the historic record, and there is every reason to expect that such will continue to be the case.


No social problem can be eliminated unless its cause is uprooted. That fact alone guarantees that child labor and its abhorrent consequences will remain as long as capitalism—its cause—remains. As Daniel De Leon succinctly put it in an editorial he wrote on the subject 90 years ago:


“Capitalist conditions, created and maintained by the capitalist class, cause and promote child labor....We also have the evidence to enforce the oft-made Socialist contention that child labor will not be abolished as long as capitalism prevails....Socialism alone is the remedy for child labor.”


(1994) 
Socialist Labor Party of America, P.O. Box 218, Mountain View, CA 94042-0218 • www.slp.org • socialists@slp.org

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