[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 86 (Thursday, June 17, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7209-S7211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              ENDING ABUSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CHILD LABOR

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I will take a few minutes to speak about 
why I was necessarily absent from voting yesterday and explain how I 
would have voted had I been here.
  For the better part of a decade, I have been working to help end 
abusive and exploitative child labor around the globe and even in our 
backyard. I have come to the floor many times over the last several 
years to speak about this issue, submitting resolutions, working with 
the International Labor Organization, and others, to do what we can to 
end abusive and exploitative child labor.
  The ILO, the International Labor Organization, estimates that 250 
million children worldwide are economically active--that means they are 
working--and many work in dangerous environments which are detrimental 
to their emotional, physical, and moral well-being.
  Yesterday was a very historic day. For the first time in the 80-year 
history of the International Labor Organization, the President of the 
United States addressed that body. The President traveled to Geneva and 
asked me to accompany him because of my work on this issue.
  I cannot really find the words to describe the impact of the 
President of the United States standing in front of a couple thousand 
people, all of whom have been working for years to end child labor, 
speaking as the President of the United States--it was the first time 
in the history of the ILO that a President ever spoke to this 
organization--about one issue: child labor.
  I could not have been more proud of our Nation and of President 
Clinton for the words he spoke, for the position he took on this issue. 
He endorsed this new convention. There is a new convention that was 
just signed today, a new convention to end the most abusive and 
exploitative forms of child labor around the globe. We were there. We 
signed it at the meeting. I am hopeful the President will very soon 
transmit this new convention to the Senate for ratification.
  It was a great speech President Clinton gave to the ILO. I ask 
unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the address by the 
President of the United States to the International Labor Organization 
in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Remarks by the President to the International Labor Organization 
Conference, United Nations Building, Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 1999

       The PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Director General 
     Somavia, for your fine statement and your excellent work.
       Conference President Mumuni, Director General Petrovsky, 
     ladies and gentlemen of the ILO: It is a great honor for me 
     to be here today with, as you have noticed, quite a large 
     American delegation. I hope you will take it as a commitment 
     of the United States to our shared vision, and not simply as 
     a burning desire for us to visit this beautiful city on every 
     possible opportunity.
       I am delighted to be here with Secretary Albright and 
     Secretary of Labor Herman; with my National Economic Advisor 
     Gene Sperling, and my National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. 
     We're delighted to be joined by the President of the American 
     Federation of Labor, the AFL-CIO, John Sweeney, and several 
     other leaders of the U.S. labor movement; and with Senator 
     Tom Harkin from Iowa who is the foremost advocate in the 
     United States of the abolition of child labor. I am grateful 
     to all of them for coming with me, and to the First Lady and 
     our daughter for joining us on this trip. And I thank you for 
     your warm reception of her presence here.
       It is indeed an honor for me to be the first American 
     President to speak before the ILO in Geneva. It is long 
     overdue. There is no organization that has worked harder to 
     bring people together around fundamental human aspirations, 
     and no organization whose mission is more vital for today and 
     tomorrow.
       The ILO, as the Director General said, was created in the 
     wake of the devastation of World War I as part of a vision to 
     provide stability to a world recovering from war, a vision 
     put forward by our President, Woodrow Wilson. He said then, 
     ``While we are fighting for freedom we must see that labor is 
     free.'' At a time when dangerous doctrines of dictatorship 
     were increasingly appealing the ILO was founded on the 
     realization that injustice produces, and I quote, ``unrest so 
     great that the peace and harmony of the world are 
     imperiled.''
       Over time the organization was strengthened, and the United 
     States played its role, starting with President Franklin 
     Roosevelt and following through his successors and many 
     others in the United States Congress, down to the strong 
     supporters today, including Senator Harkin and the 
     distinguished senior Senator from New York, Patrick Moynihan.
       For half a century, the ILO has waged a struggle of rising 
     prosperity and widening freedom, from the shipyards of Poland 
     to the diamond mines of South Africa. Today, as the Director 
     General said, you remain the only organization to bring 
     together governments, labor unions and business, to try to 
     unite people in common cause--the dignity of work, the belief 
     that honest labor, fairly compensated, gives meaning and 
     structure to our lives; the ability of every family and all 
     children to rise as far as their talents will take them.
       In a world too often divided, this organization has been a 
     powerful force for unity, justice, equality and shared 
     prosperity. For all that, I thank you. Now, at the edge of a 
     new century, at the dawn of the information Age, the ILO and 
     its vision are more vital than ever--for the world is 
     becoming a much smaller and much, much more interdependent 
     place. Most nations are linked to the new dynamic, idea-
     driven, technology-powered, highly competitive international 
     economy.
       In digital revolution is a profound, powerful and 
     potentially democratizing force. It can empower people and 
     nations, enabling the wise and far-sighted to develop more 
     quickly and with less damage to the environment. It can 
     enable us to work together across the world as easily as if 
     we were working just across the hall. Competition, 
     communications and more open markets spur stunning innovation 
     and make their fruits available to business and workers 
     worldwide.
       Consider this; Every single day, half a million air 
     passengers, 1.5 billion e-mail messages and $1.5 trillion 
     cross international borders. We also have new tools to 
     eradicate diseases that have long plagued humanity, to remove 
     the threat of global warming and environmental destruction, 
     to lift billions of people into the first truly global middle 
     class.
       Yet, as the financial crisis of the last two years has 
     shown, the global economy with its churning, hyperactivity, 
     poses new risks, as well, of disruption, dislocation and 
     division. A financial crisis in one country can be felt on 
     factory floors half a world away. The world has changed, much 
     of it for the better, but too often our response to its new 
     challenges has not changed.
       Globalization is not a proposal or a policy choice, it is a 
     fact. But how we respond to it

[[Page S7210]]

     will make all the difference. We cannot dam up the tides of 
     economic change anymore than King Knute* could still the 
     waters. Nor can we tell our people to sink or swim on their 
     own. We must find a new way--a new and democratic way--to 
     maximize market potential and social justice, competition and 
     community. We must put a human face on the global 
     economy, giving working people everywhere a stake in its 
     success, equipping them all to reap its rewards, providing 
     for their families the basic conditions of a just society. 
     All nations must embrace this vision, and all the great 
     economic institutions of the world must devote their 
     creativity and energy to this end.
       Last May I had the opportunity to come and speak to the 
     World Trade Organization and stress that as we fight for open 
     markets, it must open its doors to the concerns of working 
     people and the environment. Last November, I spoke to the 
     International Monetary Fund and World Bank and stressed that 
     we must build a new financial architecture as modern as 
     today's markets, to tame the cycles of boom and bust in the 
     global economy as we can now do in national economies; to 
     ensure the integrity of international financial transactions; 
     and to expand social safety nets for the most vulnerable.
       Today I say to you that the ILO, too, must be ready for the 
     21st century, along the lines that Director General Somavia 
     has outlined.
       Let me begin by stating my firm belief that open trade is 
     not contrary to the interest of working people. Competition 
     and integration lead to stronger growth, more and better 
     jobs, more widely shared gains. Renewed protectionism in any 
     of our nations would lead to a spiral of retaliation that 
     would diminish the standard of living for working people 
     everywhere. Moreover, a failure to expand trade further could 
     choke off innovation and diminish the very possibilities of 
     the information economy. No, we need more trade, not less.
       Unfortunately, working people the world over do not believe 
     this. Even in the United States, with the lowest unemployment 
     rate in a generation, where exports accounted for 30 percent 
     of our growth until the financial crisis hit Asia, working 
     people strongly resist new market-opening measures. There are 
     many reasons. In advanced countries the benefits of open 
     trade outweigh the burdens. But they are widely spread, while 
     the dislocations of open trade are painfully concentrated.
       In all countries, the premium the modern economy places on 
     skills leaves too many hard-working people behind. In poor 
     countries, the gains seem too often to go to the already 
     wealthy and powerful, with little or no rise in the general 
     standard of living. And the international organizations 
     charged with monitoring and providing for rules of fair 
     trade, and enforcement of them, seem to take a very long time 
     to work their way to the right decision, often too late to 
     affect the people who have been disadvantaged.
       So as we press for more open trade, we must do more to 
     ensure that all our people are lifted by the global economy. 
     As we prepare to launch a new global round of trade talks in 
     Seattle in November, it is vital that the WTO and the ILO 
     work together to advance that common goal.
       We clearly see that a thriving global economy will grow out 
     of the skills, the idea, the education of millions of 
     individuals. In each of our nations and as a community of 
     nations, we must invest in our people and lift them to their 
     full potential. If we allow the ups and downs of financial 
     crises to divert us from investing in our people, it is not 
     only those citizens or nations that will suffer--the entire 
     world will suffer from their lost potential.
       It is clear that when nations face financial crisis, they 
     need the commitment and the expertise not only of the 
     international financial institutions, they need the ILO as 
     well. The IMF, the World Bank and WTO, themselves, should 
     work more closely with the ILO, and this organization must be 
     willing and able to assume more responsibility.
       The lesson of the past two years is plain: Those nations 
     with strong social safety nets are better able to weather the 
     storms. Those strong safety nets do not just include 
     financial assistance and emergency aid for poorest people, 
     they also call for the empowerment of the poorest people.
       This weekend in Cologne, I will join my partners in the G-8 
     in calling for a new focus on stronger safety nets within 
     nations and within the international community. We will also 
     urge improved cooperation between the ILO and the 
     international financial institutions in promoting social 
     protections and core labor standards. And we should press 
     forward to lift the debt burden that is crushing many of the 
     poorest nations.
       We are working to forge a bold agreement to more than 
     triple debt relief for the world's poorest nations and to 
     target those savings to education, health care, child 
     survival and fighting poverty. I pledge to work to find the 
     resources so we can do our part and contribute our share 
     toward an expanded trust fund for debt relief.
       Yet, as important as our efforts to strengthen safety nets 
     and relieve debt burdens are, for citizens throughout the 
     world to feel that they truly have a hand in shaping their 
     future they must know the dignity and respect of basic rights 
     in the workplace.
       You have taken a vital step toward lifting the lives of 
     working people by adopting the Declaration on Fundamental 
     Principles and Rights at Work last year. The document is a 
     blueprint for the global economy that honors our values--the 
     dignity of work, an end to discrimination, an end to forced 
     labor, freedom of association, the right of people to 
     organize and bargain in a civil and peaceful way. These are 
     not just labor rights, they're human rights. They are a 
     charter for a truly modern economy. We must make them an 
     everyday reality all across the world.
       We advance these rights first by standing up to those who 
     abuse them. Today, one member nation, Burma, stands in 
     defiance of the ILOs most fundamental values and most serious 
     findings. The Director General has just reported to us that 
     the flagrant violation of human rights persists, and I urge 
     the ILO governing body to take definite steps. For Burma is 
     out of step with the standards of the world community and 
     the aspirations of its people. Until people have the right 
     to shape their destiny we must stand by them and keep up 
     the pressure for change.
       We also advance core labor rights by standing with those 
     who seek to make them a reality in the workplace. Many 
     countries need extra assistance to meet these standards. 
     Whether it's rewriting inadequate labor laws, or helping 
     fight discrimination against women and minorities in the 
     workplace, the ILO must be able to help.
       That is why in the balanced budget I submitted to our 
     Congress this year I've asked for $25 million to help create 
     a new arm of the ILO, to work with developing countries to 
     put in place basic labor standards--protections, safe work 
     places, the right to organize. I ask other governments to 
     join us. I've also asked for $10 million from our Congress to 
     strengthen U.S. bilateral support for governments seeking to 
     raise such core labor standards.
       We have asked for millions of dollars also to build on our 
     voluntary anti-sweat shop initiative to encourage the many 
     innovative programs that are being developed to eliminate 
     sweat shops and raise consumer awareness of the conditions in 
     which the clothes they wear and the toys they buy for their 
     children are made.
       But we must go further, to give life to our dream of an 
     economy that lifts all our people. To do that, we must wipe 
     from the Earth the most vicious forms of abusive child labor. 
     Every single day tens of millions of children work in 
     conditions that shock the conscience. There are children 
     chained to often risky machines; children handling dangerous 
     chemicals; children forced to work when they should be in 
     school, preparing themselves and their countries for a better 
     tomorrow. Each of our nations must take responsibility.
       Last week, at the inspiration of Senator Tom Harkin, who is 
     here with me today, I directed all agencies of the United 
     States government to make absolutely sure they are not buying 
     any products made with abusive child labor.
       But we must also act together. Today, the time has come to 
     build on the growing world consensus to ban the most abusive 
     forms of child labor--to join together and to say there are 
     some things we cannot and will not tolerate.
       We will not tolerate children being used in pornography and 
     prostitution. We will not tolerate children in slavery or 
     bondage. We will not tolerate children being forcibly 
     recruited to serve in armed conflicts. We will not tolerate 
     young children risking their health and breaking their bodies 
     in hazardous and dangerous working conditions for hours 
     unconscionably long--regardless of country, regardless of 
     circumstance. These are not some archaic practices out of a 
     Charles Dickens novel. These are things that happen in too 
     many places today.
       I am proud of what is being done at your meeting. In 
     January, I said to our Congress and the American people in 
     the State of the Union address, that we would work with the 
     ILO on a new initiative to raise labor standards and to 
     conclude a treaty to ban abusive child labor everywhere in 
     the world. I am proud to say that the United States will 
     support your convention. After I return home I will send it 
     to the U.S. Senate for ratification, and I ask all other 
     countries to ratify it, as well. (Applause.)
       We thank you for achieving a true breakthrough for the 
     children of the world. We thank the nations here represented 
     who have made genuine progress in dealing with this issue in 
     their own nations. You have written an important new chapter 
     in our effort to honor our values and protect our children.
       Passing this convention alone, however, will not solve the 
     problem. We must also work aggressively to enforce it. And we 
     must address root causes, the tangled pathology of poverty 
     and hopelessness that leads to abusive child labor. Where 
     that still exists it is simply not enough to close the 
     factories where the worst child labor practices occur. We 
     must also ensure that children then have access to schools 
     and their parents have jobs. Otherwise, we may find children 
     in even more abusive circumstances.
       That is why the work of the International Program for the 
     Elimination of Child Labor is so important. With the support 
     of the United States, it is working in places around the 
     world to get children out of the business of making 
     fireworks, to help children move from their jobs as domestic 
     servants, to take children from factories to schools.
       Let me cite just one example of the success being achieved, 
     the work being done to eliminate child labor from the soccer 
     ball industry in Pakistan. Two years ago, thousands of 
     children under the age of 14 worked for 50 companies 
     stitching soccer balls full-time. The industry, the ILOS and 
     UNICEF

[[Page S7211]]

     joined together to remove children from the production of 
     soccer balls and give them a chance to go to school, and to 
     monitor the results.
       Today, the work has been taken up by women in 80 poor 
     villages in Pakistan, giving them new employment and their 
     families new stabilities. Meanwhile, the children have 
     started to go to school, so that when they come of age, they 
     will be able to do better jobs raising the standard of living 
     of their families, their villages and their nation. I thank 
     all who were involved in this endeavor and ask others to 
     follow their lead.
       I am pleased that our administration has increased our 
     support for IPEC by tenfold. I ask you to think what could be 
     achieved by a full and focused international effort to 
     eliminate the worst forms of child labor. Think of the 
     children who would go to school, whose lives would open up, 
     whose very health would flower, freed of the crushing burden 
     of dangerous and demeaning work, given back those 
     irreplaceable hours of childhood for learning and playing and 
     living.
       By giving life to core labor standards, by acting 
     effectively to lift the burden of debt, by putting a more 
     human face on the world trading system and the global 
     economy, by ending the worst forms of child labor, we will be 
     giving our children the 21st century they deserve.
       These are hopeful times. Previous generations sought to 
     redeem the rights of labor in a time of world war and 
     organized tyranny. We have a chance to build a world more 
     prosperous, more united, more humane than ever before. In so 
     doing, we can fulfill the dreams of the ILO's founders, and 
     redeem the struggles of those who fought and organized, who 
     sacrificed and, yes, died--for freedom, equality, and justice 
     in the workplace.
       It is our great good fortune that in our time we have been 
     given the golden opportunity to make the 21st century a 
     period of abundance and achievement for all. Because we can 
     do that, we must. It is a gift to our children worthy of the 
     millennium.
       Thank you very much. (Applause.)

  Mr. HARKIN. One of the very important things he said in his speech 
was:

       You have taken a vital step by adopting this new 
     convention. We will do everything we can to join with you.
       We will not tolerate children being used in pornography and 
     prostitution.
       We will not tolerate children in slavery or bondage.
       We will not tolerate children being forcibly recruited to 
     serve in armed conflicts.
       We will not tolerate young children risking their health 
     and breaking their bodies in hazardous and dangerous working 
     conditions for hours unconscionably long--regardless of 
     country, regardless of circumstance. These are not some 
     archaic practices out of a Charles Dickens novel. These are 
     things that happen in too many places today.

  The President said:

       I am proud of what is being done at your meeting. In 
     January, I said to our Congress and the American people in 
     the State of the Union address, that we would work with the 
     ILO on a new initiative to raise labor standards and to 
     conclude a treaty to ban abusive child labor everywhere in 
     the world. I am proud to say that the United States will 
     support your convention. After I return home I will send it 
     to the U.S. Senate for ratification, and I ask all other 
     countries to ratify it, as well.

  Mr. President, today I had delivered to every office a letter, a 
cover letter, and a copy of the new convention on the worst forms of 
child labor. It has all the information in here that Senators and their 
staffs would need to understand what that new convention is.
  I did that because it is my intention to offer a sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution to the State Department authorization bill stating our 
support for this historic convention. I hope my colleagues will take 
the time to look at the material that I sent to their offices. I hope 
that we can all join together in a bipartisan effort to support this 
convention. This convention offers a brighter tomorrow for all of our 
world's children.
  Yesterday, because I was in Geneva with the President for this very 
historic gathering and for this very historic speech by the President 
of the United States, I was necessarily absence from the Senate floor.
  Had I been here, on the military construction appropriations bill, I 
would have voted yes.
  Iowa is deeply saddened that I could not be here to vote on a bill 
for which I had worked for a long time with Senator Kennedy and Senator 
Jeffords, and so many others. I am happy to see that it passed the 
Senate 99-0. Had I been here, it would have been 100-0; and that is the 
Workforce Incentives Act.
  As the chief sponsor of the Americans with Disabilities Act, this was 
sort of one of the final building blocks of ensuring that people with 
disabilities not only have the right and the civil rights to go out and 
get jobs and work, but this bill provides them with the necessary 
support in the health care that they need. Too often, people with 
disabilities go out to get a job, and under the Americans with 
Disabilities Act they can get that job, but then they lose their health 
care. Because many of these jobs are low-paying, entry-level jobs, they 
simply cannot afford to take them. So I am really proud that the 
Senate, in a strong bipartisan fashion, passed the Workforce Incentives 
Act yesterday. Had I been here I would have of course voted yes.
  On the lockbox provision that came up, again, I would have voted no 
on that because there were no amendments allowed. I feel very strongly 
that the provision, the loophole that I felt was in the bill, that said 
that this was only good until Social Security reform was passed, I do 
not believe was adequate enough. The question is, What reform are we 
talking about? I think we needed to define the reform before we voted 
for the lockbox.
  On the energy and water appropriations, I would have supported that.
  On the legislative branch appropriations, I would have voted yes on 
that had I been here.
  I wanted to state for the Record why I was necessarily absent 
yesterday, and how I would have voted had I been here.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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