Death by Youth

Child labor creates quite a conundrum. In the poorest societies, there is a predominance of children working. This blog is about manual labor, not child sex trafficking, which is obviously horrendous, but I am tackling a different topic today. UNISEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) tells us that in the poorest nations, a quarter of children aged 5 thru 17 have to work. “Sub-Saharan Africa has the largest proportion of child labourers (29 per cent of children aged 5 to 17 years). In the Middle East and North Africa, fewer than 1 in 10 (7 per cent) of children in this age group are performing potentially harmful work compared to 11 per cent of children in Latin America and the Caribbean,” according to UNISEF’s website.

Sure, we can refuse to import products that might involve child labor, demand that factories overseas cease engaging children… and watch their families starve to death. When you are on the edge of starvation, the contributions to the family from even small children just might be the difference between life and death. Survival is one of the essential ingredients in most of the world’s child labor. So, when we tell companies to stop hiring children but do not replace the income lost to a desperate family, exactly how have we improved the lot of the displaced kids?

Further, to so many Americans, the notion of socially acceptable child labor is always “over there” in developing nations, not here in the good old U.S.A. Sorry fairness fans, it happens here all the time, and so much of it is legal, particularly when kids work in their parent’s family business. “Child labor exists in the United States in the 21st century. It’s legal and widespread, and it’s also, in some cases, dangerous… Children were killed on the job in construction, retail, transportation and even manufacturing and logging. But most of them, 52%, died working in agriculture.” Los Angeles Times, December 22^nd.

It’s almost an American tradition for farm kids, especially on family farms, to do “chores.” Milking the cows, baling hay, feeding the chickens and collecting the eggs and helping mom or dad do more complicated tasks. Increasingly, children too young to get drivers’ licenses are operating tractors, harvesters and other very powerful machinery, some of which is old and not completely properly functional. According to the United Farmworkers, there are somewhere between two and three million farmworkers in the United States, most (75%) of whom were born in Mexico. 53% of all farmworkers are undocumented (a number calculated before Trump’s immigrant purge), 25% U.S. citizens and 21% are legal residents.

As Donald Trump is pushing undocumented farmworkers out of the United States, given that most U.S. citizens seems to be unwilling to perform the most menial farm labor given to such workers, there is increased pressure for the farm-owners’ children to do more. But don’t “kid” yourself, U.S. children-citizens are all over our workforce.

The LA Times tells us that: “We can piece together a picture of the nation’s entire child workforce from several sources… Labor Department figures show the number of children working in the United States hit a post-recession high of 2.5 million in the summer of 2017, the most recent year for which numbers are available. We have the most data for children ages 15 to 17. They are covered by the Labor Department survey that provides data for statistics such as the unemployment rate.

“The figures probably undercount child labor in agriculture, as it leaves out large populations of household workers and workers younger than 15. Most children injured on farms were younger, below age 14. Two out of three of those injured were hurt while working on their family farm…

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Child Agricultural Injury Survey separately found about 524,000 children worked on farms in 2014. The survey found about 375,000 ‘working household children’ that same year. Two-thirds of them were 14 or younger, according to the GAO’s analysis.

“The law includes protections for child laborers, although oversight varies. Specific states may be more strict… But for the first time since 2012, 2016 marked a rise in Labor Department investigations of child labor and in the number of violations. Most violations were found in leisure and hospitality, a large sector that includes restaurants, recreation and the performing arts.

“The Labor Department allows children ages 16 and 17 to work, but it bars them from hazardous tasks such as mining coal, operating a lathe, roofing a house or handling radioactive materials… Children ages 14 and 15 can work for limited hours in less dangerous jobs such as office work, food service and pumping gasoline…

“A total of 452 children died as a result of workplace injuries from 2003 to 2016, according to the Government Accountability Office. Seventy-three of those who died were age 12 or younger… Children working in agriculture are killed at a far higher rate than their peers in other industries. Farmworkers make up less than a fifth of America’s child workforce — perhaps much less — yet they suffered more deaths in 2003 to 2016 than all other child workers combined.

“Young workers made up a small fraction of all those injured on the job. The government doesn’t have a comprehensive measure of the child workforce, but it tracks deaths carefully… Among workers ages 15 to 17, 52% of those employed in the summer of 2017 were female… About 87% of child workers who died from 2003 to 2016, of all ages, were male.”

The rules for American children legally in the workforce vary by industry: “The Labor Department allows children ages 16 and 17 to work, but it bars them from hazardous tasks such as mining coal, operating a lathe, roofing a house or handling radioactive materials… Children ages 14 and 15 can work for limited hours in less dangerous jobs such as office work, food service and pumping gasoline… Children ages 13 and younger are allowed in just a handful of exempt, regulated professions. Most notably, they can baby-sit, deliver newspapers and act in plays or movies… But there are few restrictions to working on a family farm.

“According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, ‘youths of any age may work at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents.’ Keep this exemption in mind when reading the standards that follow… Children younger than 14 need a parent’s permission to work on a farm. They can’t work during school hours. Children younger than 12 can work only on farms so small that they’re not required to pay the minimum wage.

“Farmworkers ages 15 and younger can’t operate a combine harvester or most larger tractors, use dynamite or other explosives, or perform other hazardous tasks. There are exceptions for children who have been trained on certain tasks and machinery in a program such as 4-H.

“In 2012, the Obama administration backed off an attempt to protect children in more hazardous farm occupations. Critics claimed it ignored the realities of rural life and would prevent children from doing their chores. It exempted work on the child’s family farm.” LA Times. American traditions, those of hardworking, God-fearing folks who can take care of themselves and their own, are born in these rural roots. In terms of numbers, there are 2.1 million farms in the United States, and 99% of them are family-owned. Yet farming accounts for only about one percent of our gross domestic product. Our farms are among the most efficient and productive in the world.

As our country has shifted from a nation that was once 15% urban to one that is 85% urban, the conflict between progressive and conservative values has led to a level of polarization not seen since the Civil War. Our sympathy for child laborers, anywhere, is often a product of that rural/urban rift. We like cheap goods and are likely to turn away when we might discover that these were made with slave labor (see my recent Sew Bad! blog) or by children. Not all child labor is bad, and not all child labor is dangerous.

Rural values like to inculcate frugality, self-reliance, hard work, often religiously-driven, into young minds. Solid values. Urban values favor formal education and social integration. And so it goes. But to bring our nation together, to return to a world where the United States was a “giver” and welcoming nation, we need to understand our innate prejudices, our historical patterns and how the earth reconfigured in so many ways to make life harder for children.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and for Americans to reopen their hearts, they must first reopen their minds, starting with embracing kindness to children everywhere… including their own.

Sew Bad!

 

Could the clothing manufacturing sector even exist without slavery? It’s a question few of us consider when we purchase those bargains, even some upscale brands, but it is a relevant consideration. There is an organization, KnowTheChain, dedicated to bringing such forced labor into the light of day. Their Website explains: KnowTheChain is a resource for companies and investors to understand and address forced labor risks within their global supply chains. Through benchmarking current corporate practices and providing practical resources that enable companies to operate more transparently and responsibly, KnowTheChain drives corporate action while also informing investor decisions. KnowTheChain is committed to helping companies make an impact in their efforts to address forced labor.

They tell us, “[t]oday, an estimated 24.9 million people around the world are victims of forced labor, generating $150 billion in illegal profits in the private economy.” Sex trafficking is one of the worst parts of this statistic, but 16 million forced workers work for manufacturing companies. One of the most pernicious sectors, footwear/apparel, is the focus of their 2018 APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR BENCHMARK REPORT, which analyzes the $3 trillion global textile industry that overall employs an estimated 60 to 75 million people, two-thirds of whom are women.

“[The] apparel and footwear sector is characterized by globally complex and opaque supply chains and competition for low prices and quick turnarounds. As precarious employment increases, vulnerable workers, including women and migrant workers, are hit the hardest. Workers in the sector are likely to become even more vulnerable as migration flows continue to grow rapidly. The apparel and footwear sector is increasingly reliant on migrant workers. As such, it is crucial that companies have the right policies and processes in place to address the dynamic nature of forced labor risks in their supply chains, including the risks to migrant workers…  The number of international migrants worldwide has grown faster than the world’s population.” Benchmark Report.

Writing for the December 18^th FastCompany.com, looking at the Benchmark Report and other sources, Elizabeth Segran explains: “Prada, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton fared poorly on a new report about forced labor. Meanwhile Adidas, Lululemon, and Gap had the most slavery-free supply chains…

“There are many reasons that the manufacture of clothes and shoes tends to be so tainted by forced labor. One is that people in wealthy, developed countries, like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, have gotten addicted to cheap clothing. This is partly because global free trade agreements have made it easy for brands to make their products in places where labor is cheaper, then transport them across the world. This also made it possible for fast fashion to become a trend. Brands like Zara, H&M, and Century21 built their businesses around making off-the-runway looks available at rock bottom prices. As a result, KnowTheChain’s report says that ‘competition for low prices and quick turnarounds’ has led to ‘globally complex and opaque supply chains.’”

Desperate workers, promised jobs in apparel and footwear, are often saddled with “recruitment” fees by various “employment agencies” and labor contractors. They are shipped off to factories with horrible working/living conditions where they labor to pay off fees that often represent months if not years of the potential income. Many are thus often not paid at all for years.

“Today’s slave labor doesn’t look the way it did a hundred years ago. Instead, it involves poor people in developing countries trying to find work at clothing and shoe factories and finding themselves exploited.

“Take the case of one woman in India. KnowTheChain found that she had left her rural village in search of a job in Bangalore, a major city in South India. An agent found her a job at a clothing factory in exchange for a recruitment fee, although the details of how much it would be were murky. The agency then proceeded to take her entire paycheck until she had paid the fee back. Six months into the job, she still hadn’t received a single wage slip. And to make matters worse, the agent had promised her free room and board, but when she arrived, she discovered this was not the case.

“Many clothes sold in the United States are made in India. It’s possible that you or I bought a piece of clothing that she made. Yet few of us have any idea about the misery, exploitation, and forced labor that go into the clothes we wear every day.” Segran.

China’s notorious mass detention camps, where inmates are incarcerated to be “reeducated” to China’s social norms, are hotbeds of slave labor. If you know about the “Muslim” troubles among ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, you might also know that there are about one million Muslim “detainees” in such camps. A vast number of those prisoners, according to the December 18^th Los Angeles Times (Associated Press report), “are sewing clothes that have been imported all year by a U.S. sportswear company…

“Now, the Chinese government is also forcing some detainees to work in manufacturing and food industries. Some of them are within the internment camps; others are privately owned, state-subsidized factories where detainees are sent once they are released.

“The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory, Hetian Taida Apparel, inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, N.C. Badger’s clothes are sold on college campuses and to sports teams nationwide, although there is no way to tell where any particular shirt made in Xinjiang ends up.

“The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labor from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the United States. Badger Chief Executive John Anton said Sunday [12/16] that the company would halt shipments while it investigates…

“Men and women in the complex that has shipped products to Badger Sportswear make clothes for privately owned Hetian Taida Apparel in a cluster of 10 workshops within the compound walls. Hetian Taida says it is not affiliated with the internment camps, but its workforce includes detainees.

“Hetian Taida’s chairman, Wu Hongbo, confirmed that the company has a factory in a reeducation compound, and said it provides employment to those trainees who were deemed by the government to be ‘unproblematic.’… ‘We’re making our contribution to eradicating poverty,’ Wu said.

“Police told journalists who approached the compound this month that they could not take photos or film in the area because it was part of a ‘military facility.’ Yet the entrance was marked only by a tall gate that said it was an ‘apparel employment training base.’… Posters line the barbed-wire perimeter, bearing messages such as ‘Learn to be grateful, learn to be an upright person’ and ‘No need to pay tuition, find a job easily.’” But they’re not free to leave. Where they are paid anything, it’s 10% of what outside workers would earn. Local authorities say it is a “vocational training center.” It’s not.

“A former reporter for Xinjiang TV in exile said that during his month long detention last year, young people in his camp were taken away in the mornings to work without compensation in carpentry and a cement factory… ‘The camp didn’t pay any money, not a single cent,’ he said, asking to be identified only by his first name, Elyar, because he has relatives still in Xinjiang. ‘Even for necessities, such as things to shower with or sleep at night, they would call our families outside to get them to pay for it.’

“Rushan Abbas, a Uighur in Washington, D.C., said her sister is among those detained. The sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was taken to what the government calls a vocational center, although she has no specific information on whether her sister is being forced to work… ‘American companies importing from those places should know those products are made by people being treated like slaves,” she said. “What are they going to do, train a doctor to be a seamstress?’…

“Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, called on the Trump administration Monday to ban imports from Chinese companies associated with detention camps… ‘Not only is the Chinese government detaining over a million Uighurs and other Muslims, forcing them to revoke their faith and profess loyalty to the Communist Party, they are now profiting from their labor,’ Smith said. ‘U.S. consumers should not be buying and U.S. businesses should not be importing goods made in modern-day concentration camps.’” LA Times. Are you?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and most consumers do not have the slightest idea who made the very clothes off their backs… shouldn’t they?