[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1247-E1248]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           STATEMENT BY MARYANN SCHRUPP REGARDING CHILD LABOR

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 18, 1997

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of my collegues I would 
like to have printed in the Record this statement by a high school 
student from Vermont, who was speaking at my recent town meeting on 
issues facing young people.

       Ms. Schrupp. It is estimated that between 100 million and 
     200 million children of the world under the age of 15 work. 
     The concern is for children exposed to hazardous working 
     conditions, for those who are exploited and endangered 
     mentally and physically. These children make barely or under 
     subsistence level wages and work without any proper benefits 
     or hope of receiving an education. This education can lift 
     them out of their present state of living and this is the 
     education that is not available to them.
       This is not a new phenomena, one that has recently become a 
     priority for global consideration and global course of 
     action. Unicef's 1997 report on the state of the world's 
     children has focused specifically on the problem of hazardous 
     child labor. Western media has started informing Americans of 
     the conditions of soccer ball workers, soccer ball assemblers 
     in Asia, rug makers in Pakistan, glass makers in India and 
     textile workers in Asia and Central America. These workers 
     are children hired for their low cost and expendable nature, 
     their small fingers, and their inability to organize or 
     question.
       The fact that some of these children are working for 
     American-based transnational companies has put the pressure 
     on these companies to discontinue condoning the practice of 
     child labor. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's 
     report on the apparel industry and codes of conduct, 
     corporate codes of conduct under business guidelines 
     prohibiting the use of child labor are becoming more common 
     as consumers as well as religious, labor and human rights 
     groups are increasingly calling upon companies to take 
     responsibility for the conditions under which the goods they 
     sell are being manufactured.
       Codes of conduct for American industries such as sports 
     equipment and textile manufacturers are essential to stopping 
     the importation of goods made by child labor either correctly 
     or indirectly. Huge and popular names like Disney, Gap, Nike, 
     Getz, Arizona, Eddie Bauer, and Gitano have been directly 
     linked to overseas and in some cases national sweatshops 
     where they can take advantage of the cheap and hard working 
     supplies of local labor.
       The most obvious examples of overseas sweatshops owned by 
     American-based companies are the Maquiladoras of Central 
     America where textiles are manufactured. 15-year-old girls 
     who work in the Maquilas of Honduras tell how they're forced 
     to take birth control bills on a daily basis and are required 
     to pay for an expensive abortion injection if they do become 
     pregnant. These girls are not allowed to leave each day until 
     they fill a production quota. If a rush order for clothes 
     came in, observers would note these girls entering the 
     Maquilas at 7:00 a.m. and not returning until sometimes as 
     many as 23 hours later. That's a 23-hour workday.
       In China, Indonesia, and Pakistan, sporting equipment used 
     in the United States is manufactured by child laborers. 
     Jonathan Silvers wrote the following report in the Atlantic 
     Monthly on soccer ball factories in Pakistan. No amount of 
     preparation could have lessened the shock and revulsion I 
     felt on entering the sporting goods factory in the town of 
     Sialkot where scores of children, most of them aged five to 
     ten, produce soccer balls by hand for about a dollar and 20 
     cents a day. The children work 80 hours a week in near total 
     darkness and total silence. A partial list of infractions for 
     which they may be punished is tacked to a wall near the 
     entrance. It's a document of dubious utility. The children 
     are illiterate. Punishments are doled out in a storage closet 
     at the rear of the factory. There children are hung upside 
     down by their knees, starved, caned or lashed. The punishment 
     room is a standard feature of a Pakistani factory, as common 
     as a lunchroom at a Detroit assembly plant.
       Eighty percent of the soccer balls sold in the United 
     States are imported from Pakistan. These are the same soccer 
     balls that were used in the 1996 summer Olympic games and all 
     professional sporting events. The Fowl Ball Campaign, a 
     campaign launched by a coalition of non-governmental 
     organizations, cannot prove that any soccer balls 
     manufactured in Pakistan are not made by children.
       Still, these reports show only a fraction of the picture. 
     Most cases of child labor do not involve western companies 
     but occur in domestic households unseen and unregulated. The 
     more sinister forms of child labor such as child prostitution 
     and the virtual slavery of bonded labor are often far removed 
     from western markets and influence. They remain a national 
     issue for these developing companies, many of which protest 
     sovereign rights to run their nation's factories as they see 
     fit. Most of the time, however, the children are employed at 
     ages ruled illegal even by their country's governments.
       For this reason, the United States needs to take 
     responsibility for more than direct involvement with child 
     labor. Countries, companies, and non-governmental 
     organizations around the world are working together to not 
     only eliminate child labor but to create conditions in 
     developing countries which will prevent the exploitation of 
     children.
       The Convention on the Rights of a Child was signed into 
     international law by the United Nations in 1990. It is the 
     most widely ratified treaty in history signed by all but

[[Page E1248]]

     six members of the United Nations General Assembly. The 
     Convention expresses the conviction that children have 
     rights, the same full spectrum of rights as adults, civil and 
     political, social, cultural and economic. The United States 
     is one of the six countries that has not yet signed this 
     Convention.
       American taxpayers' dollars are used to fund free trade 
     zones which contribute to an environment of poverty for the 
     people of developing countries. It is this kind of 
     environment that supports the exploitation of children by 
     national, international companies. Often a free trade zone 
     means no corporate taxes, no income taxes, no regulations and 
     no unions. GAT and the World Trade Organization are 
     influenced heavily by the U.S. and it is here that the United 
     States must take some responsibility for the fact that they 
     support organizations which do not recognize child labor as a 
     relevant issue.
       Other organizations which receive support from the United 
     States are the World Bank and the International Monetary 
     Fund. These organizations are responsible for massive 
     government adjustment into developing countries. The 
     structural adjustment programs primarily consist of spending 
     cuts that hurt social and educational programs. These cuts 
     hurt the lower classes of the country and make the cycle of 
     child labor all the more difficult to break. It is a cycle, 
     one perpetuated by poverty and employees willing to exploit 
     the poor and the helpless.
       The greatest setback for these children is their lack of 
     education. Everyone agrees that the key to ending child labor 
     is in mandatory education legislation. This is important 
     because while many people express the need for economic 
     sanctions and boycotts, large-scale sanctions cannot be 
     imposed on developing countries until safe and productive 
     alternatives are developed for the children who would lose 
     their jobs.
       What then is the solution to this problem? What can we do 
     to ensure that children are not exploited throughout the 
     world? There are many factors of influential power in the 
     United States. The most important one is the power of the 
     individual. The incredible accomplishments of NGOs, that's 
     non-governmental organizations, across the world were all put 
     into action by individuals who wanted to make a difference. 
     The death of child activist Icbow McSee sparked the birth of 
     Free the Children, an organization dedicated to children's 
     rights.
       Free the Children is run by students ages 8 through 18. The 
     group of school children in Quincy, Massachusetts who raised 
     $144,000 to build schools and educational programs in 
     Pakistan in order to help fulfill Icbow McSee's uncompleted 
     dream is another example of this incredible power.
       Even in the simple choices of the consumer, the individual 
     can make a statement about what methods of production they 
     will and will not support. Educating others about the 
     situation is also an individual source of power. The media is 
     a valuable tool in expressing individual opinion. Disney and 
     Gap in particular received enough negative publicity to 
     publicly embarrass the companies into amending their 
     production methods.
       Bob Herbert wrote recently in the New York Times that Nike 
     is important because it epitomizes the triumph of monetary 
     values over all others and the corresponding devaluation into 
     peculiar interests and values we once thought of as human. 
     Corporations do not like to create this kind of name for 
     themselves.
       Secondly, the pound of influence of the private sector 
     should not be underestimated. Transnational companies like 
     Rebok and Levi Strauss have been positive forces in using 
     safe and non-exploitive methods of production. All 
     corporations should adopt such codes of conduct as an 
     essential step towards eliminating child labor.
       The government of the United States has the potential to be 
     a powerful force in the fight against child labor yet 
     presently the government does not seem to be taking the 
     appropriate actions necessary. If corporations can be called 
     on to adopt codes of conduct, the more (unclear) the 
     government of our country. The United States must sign a 
     convention on the rights of a child. The government must work 
     to regulate our nation's companies to ensure that child abuse 
     is not a human resource in our nation as well. The government 
     must include the basic rights of children as part of their 
     agenda when forming free trade zones and when interacting 
     with organizations such as the World Bank.
       I call on the U.S. Government to take a stance, to show us 
     that hazardous child labor cannot be acceptable in any form 
     for any reason. The exploitation of the world's children is 
     an international crisis for democracy and justice and we need 
     to do our part.
       Companies will go to the third-world countries where they 
     can hire and they want to hire children because they can work 
     faster and their hand-eye coordination is actually better 
     when they're, you know, aged between 12 and 15 and they don't 
     have to pay them anything. These people are being paid piece 
     wages about 12 cents a garment. If it's a choice between 
     paying someone 12 cents to make a garment in a place where 
     there are no environmental conditions, no social regulations, 
     nothing like that outside of the United States regular like 
     restrictions on companies, they don't need to follow any of 
     these rules.
       Bonded laborers--Icbow McSee is actually an example of one 
     of these. Most of them are in Asia and China, Indonesia and 
     Pakistan. If a parent needs to pay off debts, what they'll 
     often do is they will sell their children to manufacturers 
     who will collect these children around the ages of sometimes 
     as young as four or five where they can never make any wages 
     because they spend their entire lives paying off the debt of 
     their parents, and often these children are made, forced to 
     stay in their factories by being chained to looms, especially 
     in the oriental rug market.

     

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