Child Labour and Nikes Views on it - Report Example

Child Labour and Nike’s Views on it Introduction There are four hundred million children working throughout the world today. Efforts to reduce the incidence of child labor have not worked; the figures are rising, not diminishing. In response, countries and international bodies have become more resolute in their efforts to eradicate child labor's most intolerable forms. Various possible responses to the problem have been canvassed, including the implementation of unilateral trading measures that condition trade upon eradicating child labor, the enforcement of labor standards through international trading agreements, the increased use of corporate codes of conduct, and the adoption of new international labor standards. These options have generated much debate. They have been discussed, and will continue to be discussed, at high levels. Perhaps, however, before taking any new measures, it is worth reflecting on and reconsidering the law already in place. Such an examination may help to determine why the present international framework has not been effective. Through an examination of current law it may be possible to promote more appropriate and direct steps towards combating child labor, while avoiding potentially harmful measures. Action that is based on incorrect assumptions about the causes of child labor and how it can be solved may lead to a worsening of the situation, and not an improvement. What is Child Labor? There is no international legal instrument that defines the concept of child labor. This is surprising given that the practice is so universally condemned. In fact, it has been observed that until child labor is conclusively defined it is hard to envisage how the practice will be abolished. Furthermore, because countries independently regulate child employment there is no uniform custom to draw on in this area at all. Accordingly, the scope of what is and isn't child labor is unclear. This will become evident in the discussion below. The starting point for defining child labor is to ask who, in this context, is a child? The difficulty encountered in answering this question highlights one of the most fundamental problems of regulating child labor and goes to the heart of the dilemma of determining when it is acceptable for a child to work. Child labor is considered abhorrent because a child of a certain age does not have the maturity to make decisions or exercise her free will, and is especially physically and psychologically vulnerable (Forastieri, 2002). Defining Labor Defining "labor," in the context of child labor, is almost as difficult as defining a "child." Some practices can be easily identified as labor; mine and factory work are obvious examples. Other practices, however, are harder to define, and the process of drawing a line between work that is acceptable and work that is not is a tricky one. Whether or not a child is engaged in "labor" must depend on the type of work the child is doing, the effect it has on her, and the amount of time she is expected to spend doing the work (i.e., does it interfere with her education). Whether a child is being paid, or is working in or for the family, does not alter the fact that she may be engaged in labor. All that changes in the different scenarios are the obligations of states. Indeed, although states are only specifically required to regulate employment, they are obligated to protect children from all work that interferes with the child's education or is otherwise harmful to the child. Child labor In the past decade, the issue of child labor has attracted increasing attention. In times past, the topic has been the focus of action at both the national and international levels, but it has never been an issue of major concern. However, since the mid-1980s, the world has paid greater attention to its most voiceless inhabitants. The adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) by the General Assembly in 1989 illustrates this general trend. In addition to enumerating new rights, the Convention transformed the rights articulated in the earlier Declaration of the Rights of the Child into binding legal obligations. In addition to UN agencies, both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media have increasingly focused on the plight of child workers. In recent times, the role of large multinational corporations in the exploitation of children has been particularly scrutinized. Reports from human rights organizations have highlighted the continuing use of child labor by sporting goods companies such as Nike and Reebok. As a result, Reebok created the corporate position of human rights officer, and it now grants human rights awards in an attempt to counteract criticism of its past record. Numerous international bodies are also beginning to take action. The Universal Federation of Travel Agents' Association (UFTAA), the World Tourism Organization, and the International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) are three international organizations which have agreed to take steps to combat child labor problems that come within the ambit of their operations. To ascertain why the international community has now so comprehensively rejected child labor it is necessary to determine what is so abhorrent about it. Why do people react in horror when the topic of child labor is raised? What is so intrinsically bad about it? The appalling consequences of child labor are usually cited as providing clear and unequivocal evidence of why it is such an objectionable practice. Certainly, the list of harms is significant: children who work suffer serious detriment to their health and development; they are exposed to hazardous working conditions; and they are easy targets for abuse and exploitation. They also miss out on educational opportunities. But if these causes for concern are removed (and admittedly it is unrealistic to suppose they ever would be) one is left to wonder whether there isn't something more fundamental at stake? If all that is bad about child labor is exposure to these harms, can there be anything wrong with a child working if she is not so exposed? Indeed, hasn't a child, like the rest of us, a right to work? If a child is working reasonable hours, in good conditions, is being well paid and treated, and being provided with training and educational opportunities "on the job," is it still possible to object to the practice of child labor?(David. 1996) Interestingly, UNICEF maintains that some work that promotes or enhances a child's development without interfering with schooling, recreation, or rest may be beneficial to a child. The organization goes on to say that "to treat all work by children as equally unacceptable is to confuse and trivialize the issue and to make it more difficult to end the abuses. This is why it is important to distinguish between beneficial and intolerable work. Overview of the International Community's Position on Child Labor It is only in the last fifteen years that the international community has become increasingly active in the area of child labor. Nevertheless, for years before that it had been a topic of concern. The ILO adopted one of the first conventions prohibiting child labor in 1919, the year of the ILO's creation, and it has adopted numerous conventions dealing with the problem since then. There is no unanimous agreement among countries on how to tackle the issue. Not surprisingly, some commentators and countries argue that developing countries need the chance to compete on the global market with lower labor costs until they are developed enough to have "outgrown" the practice of child labor. They point to the fact that many of today's industrialized countries have a history of active child labor and that their successful industrialization may arguably be attributed to the use of children in the work force. In support of this argument, some commentators assert that child labor is even a fundamental evolutionary stage in the development of a country. The Causes of Child Labor One of the reasons it is important to isolate the causes of child labor is that the causes point the way to the solution of the problem. If poverty is its root cause (as much evidence suggests) then it might be supposed that economic development would lower the rates of child labor. If culture or religious beliefs are the root causes, then the problem of child labor may be much harder to change and economic development, by itself, is unlikely to remedy the situation. Instead, it would be necessary to alter the cultural and religious beliefs and the value system of an entire portion of society. If poverty and culture are both found to be causes of child labor, then economic development and education in tandem might be required to solve the problem. Poverty Poverty is usually cited as the single most compelling reason for child labor. Thus, children in poor households, or households where income is unpredictable, are much more likely to work than those in households where the parents are employed with a steady income. The link between poverty and child labor is not disputed. There is no doubt that the vast majority of child labor occurs in the developing world. Poor economic conditions force children to supply their families with income, either directly or indirectly. They may bring money into the family through outside work, provide free labor in a family business or on a family farm, or mind the house and younger siblings to enable their parents to work. Some commentators argue that developing countries need child labor to survive in the global market and point out that many industrialized countries have used child labor in the past. Because poor countries cannot compete with rich countries in areas such as technology, it is argued that by using cheap labor--and child labor is cheap--developing countries can remain competitive. Arguably, then, developing countries need to use child labor until they can compete equally on the world market (Carolyn. 1999). Other Economic Factors While poverty, a supply factor, is most often cited as a root cause of child labor, there are demand factors at play. Children may be more attractive employees for other reasons as well. Children are usually more submissive than adults. They are more likely to take orders and less likely to be aware of their rights and cause trouble. From an employer's perspective children can be easily manipulated and controlled and thus are more attractive workers. This is true no matter how developed a country is. Finally, in some industries, children's perceived dexterity makes them attractive to employers, who claim that some jobs can only be done by children or that children can do certain work better than adults. This theory has been largely disputed, but as long as employers perceive that this is true they will keep employing children, regardless of how economically unnecessary it is. Educational Factors The ILO and UNICEF consider shortcomings of a country's educational system to be a cause of child labor, primarily because opportunities for education tend to stem the flow of labor into the work force. Even if children do have the opportunity to go to school, they may work to help pay for schooling; even "free" schooling is expensive. Thus, there is clearly a link between child labor and education, and education can be regarded as part of both the cause of and solution to the problem. Cultural Factors Whether a child works may depend on the attitude of the family or society to both education and child labor. Thus, it may be no surprise to learn that "children subjected to the most intolerable forms of labour generally come from population groups which are not only economically vulnerable, but also culturally and socially disadvantaged. Traditional ideas and entrenched social patterns have, outside of poverty, perhaps the most significant role to play in the incidence of child labor (Cunningham, & Viazzo, 1996). In some countries work is thought to be an effective and purposeful way for children to learn about life and the workings of the world. Children are expected to follow family tradition and be trained in the family trade, this being a valuable asset that will serve them well in their adult life. The fact that children from the poorer, disadvantaged, and minority groups work and do not go to school may also be thought to be a natural and necessary part of the existing social order, and not a cause for great concern (Andrews, 2004). Nike and Child Labour The Multibillion-Dollar sportswear company Nike admitted that it "blew it" by employing children in Third World countries but added that ending the practice might be difficult. Nike attempted to present itself to its shareholders in its first "corporate responsibility report" as a touchy-feely entity established by "skinny runners" and employing young executives who worried about the environment and the level of wages it paid. The mere fact that Nike has produced such a report was welcomed in some quarters, but its main detractors, including labour groups such as Oxfam's NikeWatch and the Clean Clothes Campaign, said they were not convinced (Boggan, 2001). Philip Knight, the company chairman, clearly stung by reports of children as young as 10 making shoes, clothing and footballs in Pakistan and Cambodia, attempted to convince Nike's critics that it had only ever employed children accidentally. "Of all the issues facing Nike in workplace standards, child labour is the most vexing," he said in the report. "Our age standards are the highest in the world: 18 for footwear manufacturing, 16 for apparel and equipment, or local standards whenever they are higher. But in some countries (Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example) those standards are next to impossible to verify, when records of birth do not exist or can be easily forged (Boggan, 2001). "Even when records’ keeping is more advanced, and hiring is carefully done, one mistake can brand a company like Nike as a purveyor of child labour." The report said Nike imposed strict conditions on the age of employees taken on by contract factories abroad, but admitted there had been instances when those conditions were ignored or bypassed. "By far our worst experience and biggest mistake was in Pakistan, where we blew it," the report said. In 1995 Nike said it thought it had tied up with responsible factories in Sialkot, in Pakistan, that would manufacture well-made footballs and provide good conditions for workers. Instead, the work was sub-contracted round local villages, and children were drawn into the production process. Now, it insisted, any factory found to be employing a child must take that worker out of the factory, pay him or her wage, provide education and re-hire them only when they were old enough. Mistakes, however, continue to happen. In recent years, Nike has been criticized for its employment of child labour in Cambodia, but the company defended itself by saying fake evidence of age could be bought in Cambodia for as little as $5. When it was exposed by the BBC as having employed children there, the company claimed it then re-examined the records of all 3,800 employees (Boggan, 2001). The company's critics remain concerned at the level of wages it pays. Nike claims it pays decent wages, but its detractors claim that only a tiny fraction of the pounds 70 cost of a pair of its shoes goes to the workers who make them. They want to see wages increased - which they say would have only a negligible effect on retail prices. Tim Connor of NikeWatch said: "On finishing work in a Nike contract factory, the great majority of Nike workers will go back to rural areas marked by extreme poverty. Their future economic security is very much tied up with what they earn now, in that if they are able to save enough they will be able to start small informal businesses back home (Boggan, 2001). "If they are unable to save, the work in the Nike factory will make no long-term contribution to their economic well being, and they will simply return to rural poverty.”If Nike wants to be taken seriously as a company interested in corporate responsibility then it needs to engage honestly with its critics in the human rights community. Unfortunately the company's new corporate responsibility report fails to do this." (Boggan, 2001) Nike Sweat Shops There has been much dispute and argument recently regarding Nike's Asian labour practices. This is a very multifaceted concern and one that is a long way from being resolved. It is very hard to conclude which side of this disagreement to defend, as both sides admit the facts, yet put a totally different spin on them. Nike does not possess any of the factories that manufacture its products in Asia, and consequently they do not openly employ the workers or management. They outsource work to factories that produce all of the products and run all of the factories. They do, nevertheless, have a huge amount of influence when dealing with these factories due to the huge contracts they provide (Lavalette, 2000). To guarantee good labour practices, Nike has a policy of behavior that every service provider must concur to stand by in order to get a contract. The Conduct Code in theory censures and forbids child labour, necessitates that workers be salaried fair wage, imposes caps on the days and hours a worker can be forced to work, forbids maltreatment or discrimination of workers in any form, necessitates factories to implement programs that profit worker's health and safety, and distinguishes and respects the workers right to freedom of association. There are 1000 Nike employees’ global monitoring operations at the subcontractors and purposely the Code of Conduct advocate. The steadiest disparagement of Nike is that the workers in the factories contracted by them are not conscious of the Code of Conduct that was decided upon, and/or it is not compulsory by the factory officials. Critics compete that the factories shell out less than minimum wage at times, force lots of overtime hours, and fall short to make the workplace as clean and as secure as standards state. Numerous of the factories that are contracted have workers along with management from different countries, causing some troubles in communication. This is one reason presented by Nike in justification of the factories disappointment to abide by the Code of Conduct. To look into this matter, earlier this year Nike contract workers time and again earn wages at or above government commanded minimum wage levels. For workers living in extensive family households, Nike contract factory worker wages are in general used to raise or augment total household income to raise on the whole household living standards. Even though these conclusions support Nike's persistence that they do not forgo their workers well being for their own monetary gain, critics bring to light a convincing point when they dispute that it is not possible to paint a precise picture of the pay scale in 3 weeks time by interviewing just about 1% of the workers, at times in front of management, which doesn't permit the worker total freedom of speech. Brand protectionism Despite Nike's efforts, by any means necessary, to counter the damage caused by expose after expose, the swoosh is now indelibly associated with the image of children slaving around the clock for a pittance to produce shoes that can retail for $150. Because of its history and corporate strategies, Nike has been a textbook illustration of the logic of the multinational free trade corporation-from its origins as a distributor of Japanese knock-offs of Adidas running shoes, to its career as a contractor in Korea and Taiwan-and then, when wages in these countries rose, its enthusiastic participation in the 'race to the bottom' in countries under authoritarian rule like Indonesia, Vietnam and China, where half a million of the company's workers earn a famously sub minimum wage. Ever since the late 1980s, the company has been saddled with the taint of sweatshops and has spent large amounts of money in lavish PR moves to cleanse its brand1. Nonetheless, the bad publicity is likely to have played some role in the flagging sales (down 11 per cent) of the mid-1990s, and provided some part of the impetus to penetrate the football market. But any illusions that the move to this new sport would give the company a clean slate were quickly dispelled. Concern about the sweatshops behind 'the beautiful game' had ignited earlier in the decade when the first exposes of child labour in Pakistan's football-export industry came to light. At that time, Adidas monopolized the trade. In the US, the issue exploded in 1996 when Nike, the first major American contractor, was caught red-handed by prizewinning journalist Sydney Schanberg, who posed as an exporter to write about the brutal conditions under which children labored to stitch 35 million footballs a year in the production centre of Sialkot. In a widely-cited Life magazine article, he described the arduous working day of Tariq, a 12-year-old 'who earns 60 cents a ball, and it takes most of a day to make one'. A village factory foreman offered Schanberg 100 stitchers for the price of the debt incurred by their masters, who had bought many of them as children from their parents (Andrews, 2004). With advance knowledge that its labour practices would be highlighted in Schanberg's Life article, Nike launched the first of a long series of counter-strikes by announcing a plan with a subcontractor to centralize the stitching process and eliminate child labour from its village operations. The International Labour Organization (ILO) soon entered into an agreement with the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the United Nations Children's Funds (UNICEF) to regulate the industry, with the goal of ending the use of village children. Along with Reebok, Adidas, Mitre, Wilson, Puma and other leading brands, Nike signed on, consenting to disclose its stitching locations and submit them to routine inspections by a group of ILO-recruited monitors. FIFA gave the agreement its seal of approval, and formulated its own good code of conduct, based on the core conventions of the ILO (freedom of association and collective bargaining, no forced labour, no child labour, no discrimination in employment, no excessive hours, the right to one day off per week, and a wage sufficient to cover basic needs). To date, FIFA is the only major sports federation to address the issue of sweatshop labour in the sporting goods industry. Monitoring of production facilities is notoriously difficult, however, and in June of 2002, another flare-up forced FIFA to issue a denial that World Cup balls were being produced in south Asian sweatshops. Taking a leaf from Nike's book of non-accountability, Keith Cooper, FIFA's Communications Director, told a news conference: 'We are responsible for organizing the World Cup, we are not responsible for the labour conditions in factories.' The football stars who command huge salaries and handsome sponsorship fees are also 'not responsible'. Like Nike's stable of US icons-Michael Jordan, Bo Jackson, John McEnroe, Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi, Allen Iversen, Monica Seles, the Williams sisters-their deafening silence on the topic is the glue that keeps the entire celebrity/branding/sweatshop system of the sports goods industry from unraveling. In the run-up to the World Cup, exposés of labour violations behind the leading soccer brands continued to surface, most notably in China's Guangdong Province, far from the monitor's eye, where the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee found egregious conditions in factories producing for Adidas, Puma, Wilson, Umbro and Diadora. While quality control for hand-sewn balls was very strict, passing through 10 inspections before finishing, the corresponding regulation of conditions in the workplaces barely existed. Manufacturing processes unique to soccer-ball production exposed workers to industrial and health hazards-heat poisoning and burning, chemical contamination-in addition to the usual sweatshop diet of underpayment, exhaustion from long hours and restrictions on personal freedom (2). In the wake of these and other reports, pressure on FIFA came through the Clean Clothes Campaign and the Global March Against Child Labour, which ran a highly visible campaign to remind the world football authority of its commitment to Fair Trade monitoring and regulation. Over time, the ILO/FIFA monitoring system has offered companies a blessing unforeseen in the original agreement. They can act to protect their brand property by notifying the ILO monitors about counterfeit balls if they do so in the name of combating child labour. Football clubs have followed this example by alerting government watchdogs about sales of counterfeit replica kits. In the UK, the Office for Fair Trading and the Ministry for Consumer Affairs work in conjunction with the World Trade Organization and Interpol to hunt down the pirate producers, and rely on tips from the merchandising directors of football clubs to carry out their work. These agencies act in the name of three principles: • To stem the loss of tax revenue to the black market • To combat the sweatshop labour exploited by counterfeiters • To protect the intellectual property rights of companies and clubs. Since counterfeit items are invariably produced in an additional run at the factory that makes the official goods, the principle of protecting labour is a dubious one. By contrast, the cause of protecting the brand is a huge boon to producers and marketers of the replica kits that carry a retail mark-up comparable to that of a Nike sneaker. Several years ago, Doug Hall, the loose-lipped vice chair of Newcastle United Football Club, got himself into hot water by boasting to a tabloid reporter: 'We sell 600,000 shirts a year. Every shirt costs £50, but the shirts cost only £5 to make in Asia.' (News of the World, 1998). His comment was condemned for its casual assumption that fans are easily bilked, not because it exposed the club's reliance on substandard Asian jobs for a large part of its income. In this respect, Manchester United is, once again, in a league of its own. Now that the team officially has a brand mark instead of a club crest, 'Manchester United' is trademarked, and can be legally protected against all efforts to use the name on non-official goods. The result is often a vicious circle. For example, the club's aggressive moves to build its brand in the Asian market have compromised its own extensive garment operations in the region. Increased demand for kits inevitably encouraged local pirates who are often the same contractors used by the club. United set up its own counterfeit detection unit, and its investigators cooperated with Thai police in hundreds of raids on Bangkok sweatshops, confiscating millions of dollars of goods. Again, the club's directors can seize the high ground by claiming that their war on counterfeiters is also a crusade against labour exploitation. In truth, the primary reason for the flourishing of black market production is that a considerable profit can still be made even after undercutting the jumbo mark-up that the plc imposes on the official replica kits (Andrews, 2004). Conclusion The above analysis indicates that there are multiple reasons for the existence of child labor. If all these causes are adequately acknowledged they can all be acted upon? It is time (as the ILO and UNICEF promote) to implement more stringent international law dealing with child labor. Not only should this law comprehensively and immediately ban all intolerable forms of child labor, it should also recognize that economic development is not the only cause of child labor and does not provide the only path towards its eradication. There are many aspects of the child labor problem that can and should be targeted without regard to economic considerations. While poverty reduction is a purposeful and worthwhile goal and has a role to play in the eradication of child labor, parts, if not all of the child labor problem should be tackled separately from the more general issue of economic development. The complexity of the causal elements of child labor justifies such an approach. Reference: Boggan, Steve, 2001. Nike admits to mistakes over child labour. (Foreign News) News of the World, 15 March 1998. Cunningham, Hugh, and Pier Paulo Viazzo, eds. 1996. Child Labour in Historical Perspective 1800–1985. Florence: UNICEF Cunningham, Hugh, "The Decline of Child Labour: Labour Markets and Family Economies in Europe and North America since 1830." Economic History Review, LIII, 3: 409–428 Gatley, David. 1996. Child Workers in Victorian Warrington: The Report of the Children’s Commission into Child Labour. Stafford: Staffordshire University Press David L. Andrews, 2004. Manchester United: A Thematic Study. Routledge. Lavalette, M. 2000. A Thing of the Past? Child Labour in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press Tuttle, Carolyn. 1999. Hard at Work in Factories and Mines. The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press Vincent, David. 1981. Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: a Study of Nineteenth Century Working Class Autobiography. London: Methuen Forastieri, Valentina. 2002. Children at work: health and safety risks, Second edition, ILO child labour collection, Geneva, ILO. Hilowitz, Janet. 2004. Child labour: a textbook for university students, Geneva, ILO Read More