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Harkin bill and child workers in Bangladesh garments
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By: Shahidul Alam
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No photographs. Saleha is scared. Many a time she
has hidden under tables, been locked up in the
toilet or been sent to the roof in the scorching sun
for two or three hours. It happens whenever foreign
buyers enter the factory. She knows she is underage, and doesn't want photographers messing
things up - she needs the job. The whole industry
has suddenly become sensitive. Owners want their
factories open. The workers want their jobs. The
special schools for former child labourers want aid
money.
No photographs. Neither Saleha nor any of the
other child workers I have interviewed have ever
heard of Senator Tom Harkin. All they know is that
pressure from the US, which buys most of
Bangladesh's garments, has resulted in thousands
of them losing their jobs at a stroke. According to a
press release by the garment employers in October
1994: '50,000 children lost their jobs because of the Harkin Bill'. A UNICEF
worker confirms 'the jobs went overnight'.00
The controversial bill, the 'Child Labour Deterrence Act', had first been introduced
in 1992. A senior International Labour Organisation (ILO) official has no doubt
that the original bill was put forward 'primarily to protect US trade interests' - Tom
Harkin is sponsored by a key US trade union, and cheap imports from the Third
World were seen as undercutting American workers' jobs. 'When we all objected
to this aspect of the Bill,' says the ILO official, 'which included a lot of resistance
in the US, the Bill was amended, the trading aspect was toned down, and it was
given a humanitarian look.' It was when it was reintroduced after these
amendments in 1993 that the Bill had its devastating impact in Bangladesh.
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The child workers themselves find it particularly hard to interpret the US approach
as one of 'humanitarian concern'. When asked why the buyers have been
exerting such pressure against child labour, Moyna, a ten-year-old orphan who
has just lost her job, comments: 'They loathe us, don't they? We are poor and not
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well educated, so they simply despise us. That is why they shut the factories
down.'
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Moyna's job had supported her and her grandmother but now they must both
depend on relatives.
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Other children have had no alternative but to seek new kinds of work. When
UNICEF and the ILO made a series of follow-up visits they found that the children
displaced from the garment factories were working at stone-crushing and street
hustling - more hazardous and exploitative activities than their factory jobs.
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'It is easier for the boys to get jobs again,' Moyna complains, pointing to exgarment boys who have jobs in welding and bicycle factories. Girls usually stay at
home, doing household work and looking after smaller children; many end up
getting married simply to ease money problems. In the wake of the mass
expulsion of child garment workers it was plain that something had gone very
wrong. UNICEF and the ILO tried to pick up the pieces. After two years of hard
talking with the garment employees they came up with a Memorandum of
Understanding. This guaranteed that no more children under 14 would be hired,
that existing child workers would be received into special schools set up by local
voluntary organizations and would receive a monthly stipend to compensate them
for the loss of their wages.
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Some garment owners feel that, instead of doing a deal, they should have called
the US bluff and continued employing young children. 'We export 150 million
shirts a year to the US,' says one. 'The K-mart $12 shirt would have cost $24. Bill
Clinton would have lost his job.'
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Saleha is tall for her age. Though in her factory there are quite a few under-age
children, in most factories children that look small are no longer taken. This is
what Moyna and Ekram and the other children repeatedly say: 'We didn't make
the size.' In a country where births are not registered there is no way of accurately
determining a person's age. Children with good growth keep their jobs. Children,
who look smaller, perhaps because they are malnourished, do not.
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The reliance on size rather than age means that many children are still at work in
the factories - and many have no inclination to take up a place in one of the
special schools. Take Sabeena. Her factory is colourful with tinsel when I visit and
many of the girls have glitter on their faces. It is the Bangla New Year and Eid all
in one and they are celebrating. Sabeena proudly shows me the machine she
works on. She is almost 14 and, likes Saleha, big for her age. She has been
working at a garment factory ever since she finished Grade Five, about 18
months ago. Until then, schooling was, free. There was no way her parents could
pay for her to go to school and, with her father being poorly, Sabeena needed to
work to keep the family going.
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Taking home 2200 taka ($52) a month (with overtime) Sabeena, at 13, is now the
main breadwinner in the family. She is lucky to have work though she would
rather study. She laughs when I talk of her going to school. She has mouths to
feed, and to give up her job for a 300-taka-per-month stipend for going to school
simply wouldn't make sense. Besides, the special schools only teach up to Grade
Five. The better students, who have studied that far, find they have neither jobs
nor seats in the school. So Sabeena's studies begin at around 11 at night, with a
paid private tutor, usually by candlelight. At seven in the morning she has to leave
for work. Seven days a week.
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Money is a key concern even for those children who
have been received into the special schools. At the
school run by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement
Committee (BRAC) in Mirpur the children gather
round a worker doing the rounds. 'When do we get
paid, sir?' they keep asking.
Despite the promises, not a single child that I have
interviewed has received the full pay they are owed.
In some cases field workers, eager to improve their
admission rates, have promised considerably more
than the stipulated 300 taka ($7) per month. In
others, unfounded rumours have created
expectations that the schools cannot meet.
Shahjahan was one of the lucky ones admitted to a BRAC school. The 300 taka
per month is a small sum for him too, but he works in a tailoring shop from nine till
11 in the morning and again from two-thirty in the afternoon till ten at night. He
doesn't complain. Though the scheme does not encourage it, he feels he is
getting the best of both worlds: free schooling, including a stipend, as well as paid
work and a potential career.
Did they like working in garment factories? The children find this a strange
question. They earned money because of it, and it gave them a certain status that
non-working children did not have. They put up with the long hours. The
exceptions remind me that it is children we are talking about. 'I cried when they
forced me be do overtime on Thursday nights,' says Moyna. 'That was when they
showed Alif Laila (Arabian Nights) on TV.'
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Child workers are popular with factory owners. 'Ten-to twelve-year-olds are the
best,' says Farooq, the manager of Sabeena's factory. 'They are easier to control,
not interested in men or movies, and obedient.' He forgets to mention that they
are not unionised and that they agree to work for 500 taka ($12) per month when
the minimum legal wage for a helper is 930 taka.
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Owners see Tom Harkin as a well-meaning soul with little clue about the realities
of garment workers' lives. 'As a student, I too hailed the Bill,' says Sohel, the
production manager at Captex Garments. 'I was happy that someone was fighting
for children's rights. But now that I work in a factory and have to turn away these
children who need jobs, I see things differently. Sometimes I take risks and, if a
child is really in a bad way, I let them work, but it is dangerous.'
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The notion that a garment employer might be helping children by allowing them to
work may seem very strange to people in the West. But in a country where the
majority of people live in villages where children work in the home and the fields
as part of growing up, there are no romantic notions of childhood as an age of
innocence. Though children are cared for, childhood is seen as a period for
learning employable skills. Children have always helped out with family duties.
When this evolves into a paid job in the city neither children nor their families see
it as anything unusual. In poor families it is simply understood that everyone has
to work.
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The money that children earn is generally handed over to parents, who run the
household as best as they can. Most parents want their children to go to school.
But they also feel that schooling is a luxury they cannot afford. The garment
industry has increased the income of working-class families in recent years and
these have also led to a change in attitudes. Many middle-class homes now
complain that it is difficult to get domestic 'help' as working-class women and
children choose to work in garment factories rather than as servants.
The choice- made on the grounds not just of
better economics, but of greater self-respect- is
one many children have lost because of the
Harkin Bill.
The US is wielding power without responsibility.
A nation with a history of genocide and slavery,
and the reputation for being a bully in
international politics, suddenly proclaims itself a
champion of peoples' rights, but refuses to make concessions over the rates it will
pay. The dollar price tags on the garments produced in some factories suggest a
vast profit being made at the US end. The buyers claim that what they pay for the
garments is determined by 'market forces'. The garment owners make the same
claim with regard to th*e condition of employment for their workers. Both are
simply justifying their own version of exploitation- and to adjust to be replaced by
address child labour without addressing exploitation is to treat the symptom, not
the disease.
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The garment-industry experience has lead to an active debate amongst
development workers and child-right activists. 'What we have done here in
Bangladesh is described as fantastic,' said a senior ILO worker. 'I wonder how
fantastic it really is. How much difference will this two or three years in school
make to these children? In three years, the helper could have been an operator,
with better pay and more savings. Even if the manufacturers keep their word and
give them back their jobs at the end of their schooling, the memorandum children
will hardly be better off, while their peers will have gotten on with their careers.
We have spent millions of dollars on eight thousand children. The money itself
could have transformed their lives. This is an experiment by the donors, and the
Bangladeshi children have to pay.'
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The children's names have been changed to protect them.
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Banner photo : Main Uddin / Drik
Indside photos : Shahidul Alam/ Drik
Copied webpage, just in case, source:
http://www.banglarights.net/HTML/garmentsworkers.htm
More on the Harkin Bill and BGMEA MOU:
The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers' Association (BGMEA)
It was an unprecedented call for help. On October 1994, some 53 children in the Bangladesh garment industry appealed directly to the
ILO and to UNICEF. The threat of an American boycott of goods from factories employing children had resulted in mass dismissals.
In less than one year this call for help led to one of the most innovative ILO-IPEC projects - the phasing out of all child labor in an
industry which accounts for two thirds of Bangladesh's total earnings. Such an ambitious project could hardly have been set in motion
without the active support of the Bangladesh Government and the garment manufacturers themselves. Many manufacturers and
employers in the garment industry wanted to rid themselves of child workers as soon as possible to avoid the threat of a potentially
ruinous boycott. Ironically, they had to be convinced by ILO-IPEC that no under-age child workers were to be taken away from work
until appropriate education programs and other rehabilitation measures were in place.
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The first time that an entire industry enters into an agreement to make their workplaces free of child labor and
to keep them child labor free;
Over 8,000 children withdrawn from 800 factories and placed in schools;
Systems of internal and external monitoring and verification have been developed and tested;
Surprise monitoring indicates a positive trend: In 1995, the pre-monitoring survey found 43 per cent factories
employing children; In early 1997, surprise monitoring found only 12 per cent of the now more than 1,300
factories employing children.
On 4 July 1995, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Export Association (BGMEA), signed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) with UNICEF and the ILO, aimed at the elimination of child labor in the garment industry. This was, and is, an historic
agreement, because it marks the first time that an entire industry has cooperated so closely to phase out child labor while ensuring that
credible alternatives are provided. Under the MOU, the three parties agreed to: conduct a survey to determine the number of children
under 14 working in the garment industry; devise and implement a verification and monitoring system for the garment industry; set up
education programs for the children removed from work in the garment industry; provide compensation to the former child workers
and their families for part loss in income; raise public awareness on child labor and the importance of education.
As its contribution to this effort, ILO-IPEC developed and implemented an experimental monitoring and verification system to
remove child workers under the age of 14 from garment factories and to prevent other children from entering employment in garment
factories. After conducting a survey to identify the children working in the garment industry, more than 8,000 children under the age
of 14 years of age have been successfully withdrawn from 800 garment factories and enrolled in special education programs.
Twenty eight child labor monitors were carefully selected and trained for the regular inspection of factory sites in Dhaka and
Chittagong, and for monitoring the school attendance of the children. In the event of any infractions, violating manufacturers face a
penalty of either a fine of US $1,000, or, in the case of a repeat violation, a temporary withdrawal of the manufacturers' export license.
Close collaboration has been successfully forged between the ILO, the BGMEA, and the Government of Bangladesh. The BGMEA
model is an example of how employers and UN organizations have been able to work together to phase out child labor in the industrial
sector, and has demonstrated clearly how child labor can be phased out from the industry and the children placed in education
programs.
The case studies below were originally prepared by the U.S. DOL after the Harken Bill controversy in Congress
Brazil: Goat-to-School Program
There are numerous health and safety risks involved in cutting and processing sisal, and resulting injuries can be debilitating. In one
sisal-producing municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia, a local union initiated a program to reduce the number of children
working in the local sisal industry. In 1996, the Union of Rural Workers of Retirolândia (Bahia), set up a pilot project to benefit
working children and their families. The union provided goats to families who agreed to send their children to school instead of to
work and instructed the families on the breeding of livestock. As part of the arrangement, parents agreed to use milk from the goats
to feed their children. Parents also agreed to repay to the union as many goats as were originally given to them, thereby enabling the
program to assist additional families.
Initially, more than 60 goats were distributed to about 30 families. As a result, more than 100 children were removed from hazardous
work and instead attended school.2 Initially financed by IPEC, the program is now self-sustaining, and the number of families it
serves continues to increase. The project has raised awareness of the hazards of child labor and the importance of education. It has
also been active in coordinating efforts among teachers and other education professionals to improve the municipality's educational
infrastructure.
3. Mexico: Program for Gradual Reduction of Child Labor in Agriculture in Sinaloa
Children working as agricultural day laborers on commercial fruit and vegetable farms in Mexico are subject to hazardous
conditions. In recent years, media coverage and campaigns by North American vegetable growers have focused particular attention on
the alleged use of child labor by growers of fruits and vegetables in Mexico's northeastern state of Sinaloa.3 To confront the child
labor situation, the Confederation of Agricultural Associations of the State of Sinaloa (CAADES), in cooperation with the federal,
state, and local governments, initiated a program in 1997-1998 to phase out child labor over a three-year period.4 In its first year, 46
of CAADES's 50 members, representing 122 farms, participated in the program. The program offers monthly compensatory food
packages worth 300 pesos (US$ 30.00) to families who remove their children from work and send them to school, an amount equal to
roughly 30 percent of an adult's monthly salary. The Sinaloa State Government's System for the Integral Development of the Family
(DIF) covers 70 percent of the cost of the food packages, and growers provide the remaining 30 percent. In some cases, growers also
contribute to the construction and furnishing of classrooms on their farms. The Department of Education provides teachers and school
materials.
During its first year, the program targeted child workers up to 10 years of age and included the participation of almost 2,000 children.
While the majority of the children were between the ages of six and 10, another seven percent were between the ages of 11 and 14.9
Teachers were responsible for taking attendance to ensure that participating children were not working. Each child who completed
120 days of schooling received a certificate from the Ministry of Education. By the end of the 1999-2000 season, the program will
broaden its target group to include children up to the age of 14.
4. Nepal: Programs for Bonded Children In Nepal, several programs aim to rehabilitate rural children working
under bonded conditions. The Informal Sector Service Center (INSEC), which has received ILO/IPEC funding, provides educational
opportunities to bonded children. INSEC provides children with nine months of nonformal education, focusing on basic language
and arithmetic skills, and then seeks to integrate these children into formal primary education. Through these activities, INSEC has
enrolled over 1,000 children in Nepalese schools. Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN), another NGO receiving ILO/IPEC support,
also provides nonformal education to bonded children, enabling many to be admitted
to government schools. In addition, RRN provides vocational orientation and
skills training to older children and their parents.
5. Pakistan: Project to Eliminate Child Labor from the Soccer (return to case study list)
In February 1997, the Pakistani soccer ball industry, the ILO, and UNICEF reached an agreement to remove children from
the production of soccer balls, provide them with educational opportunities, and create internal and external monitoring systems
for the soccer ball industry. Over 50 Pakistani soccer ball manufacturers and U.S. importers have signed the agreement, known as
the Partners' Agreement to Eliminate Child Labor in the Soccer Ball Industry in Sialkot, Pakistan. This agreement is closely modeled
on the Memorandum of Understanding, described above, between Bangladeshi garment manufacturers, the ILO, and UNICEF that
aims to phase out employment of children in garment factories, place them in schools, and create a monitoring and verification
program to ensure success.
The project has two programs--one focusing on prevention and monitoring and the other on social protection. The prevention
and monitoring program aims to help manufacturers and assemblers identify and remove children under 14 years of age from soccer
ball stitching centers by formally registering all stitchers, stitching centers, and stitching contractors.33 It also aims to shift production
from homes to stitching centers, where child labor violations can be monitored more systematically and effectively. Under the
Agreement, manufacturers create their own internal registration and monitoring system that is supplemented by an independent
monitoring group, charged with monitoring violations of the partnership agreement.
The social protection program aims to rehabilitate child laborers, particularly those affected by the prevention and monitoring
program . by providing more relevant and hence more valuable education, as well as in-kind assistance.35 As of October 1998, about
5,400 children and their families were benefiting from the social protection program through 154 village education and action (VEA)
centers. The VEA centers are charged with providing nonformal education to children removed from work in the soccer industry.
They facilitate the enrollment of younger siblings in primary education, set up parent "action committees" to encourage parental
participation in the program, establish income generation activities and other in-kind support, conduct awareness-raising campaigns in
communities, and, whenever possible, mainstream children under 12 years old into the formal school system.36
Prior to joining the ILO/IPEC Social Protection Program, about half of the children served had been stitching soccer balls full-time.
As indicated by ILO data collected for the period from October 1997 to October 1998, an average of 50 percent of the
participating manufacturers' production capacity has been shifted to monitored stitching centers.38 In addition, 80 small village-based
stitching centers for women are now in operation.
The Sialkot project has had a positive impact across the border in India and in other industries in Pakistan. Soccer ball manufacturers
in India, under the auspices of the Indian Sportsgoods Manufacturers and Exporters Association, have developed plans for a similar
project to phase out employment of children in soccer ball stitching and ensure their attendance in school. Under the proposed plan, a
new foundation, funded by exporter contributions, would promote education and ensure that underage children who are
employed stitching balls are replaced by older siblings or parents.
On October 22, 1998, the ILO and the Pakistani Carpet Manufacturers and Exporters Association signed an agreement to phase
children under 14 out of the carpet industry, provide educational opportunities, and establish a compliance monitoring system. This
landmark agreement flows from the model of the soccer ball agreement in Sialkot.