America's Misconception and Ignorant Proliferation of Global, Child Labor

 

"After a series of news reports surfaced in 2001 about gross violations in the cocoa industry, lawmakers in the United States put immense pressure

on the industry to change.

 

"We felt like the public ought to know about it, and we ought to take some action to try to stop it," said Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who, together with Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, spearheaded the response. "How many people in America know that all this chocolate they are eating - candies and   all of those wonderful chocolates - is being produced by terrible child labor?"

 

But after intense lobbying by the cocoa industry, lawmakers weren't able to push through a law. What they got was a voluntary protocol, signed by the heads of the chocolate industry, to stop the worst forms of child labor "as a matter of urgency." One of the key goals was to certify the cocoa trade as child-labor free."

But chocolate is only one of the industries purported to be using child labor to supply the demand of Europeans and Americans.   In India, the garment industry operates with many companies utilizing child labor.   As reported by Ecouterre;

 

"It is an appalling fact that child labor is still an issue in various countries across the world. Children as young as 10 are subjected to unacceptable work conditions to produce garments for the European and U.S. markets, according to a new report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), a nonprofit based in the Netherlands. Collaboration with the India Committee of the Netherlands, "Captured by Cotton" shines the spotlight on the exploitative Sumangali scheme, a form of bonded labor in India's garment industry, particularly in the southern state of Tamil Nadu."

 

Examples of labor-rights violations include blank or nonexistent contracts, long hours (72 hours per week is the average), forced overtime without compensation, dismal wages, restricted movement, constant monitoring, verbal abuse and precarious work conditions without protective gear.

 

Although their wages, which generally start at 60 rupees ($1.30) per day, are docked to save up for the lump sum payment, many workers never make it to the three-year mark, according to SOMO. "Many fall sick due to the unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, poor food and general lack of hygiene," states the report."

 

American consumers may not know of these atrocities so they cannot completely be blamed for propagating them.   After all, the corporate owned news stations do not report on them so how could they know.   Many, when seeing the products in a store, can only assume the labors laws in America apply everywhere so they buy the goods without thought of the travesty though which they came to the marketplace. The blame should solely be put on the corporations and the Federal Trade Commission which allow these products into our stores without sanctions or attempts to quell the problem.  

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