Child labor is almost invisible to most people, but child workers
are legion in the world. Sold or exchanged as cheap merchandise,
many children cannot escape bonded labor or prostitution. Others
suffer, and may only barely survive, the long hours of work, the
heavy burdens, the dangerous tools, the poisonous chemicals. The
strongest will go on, forever bearing the physical and emotional
scars of premature labor. At a time when they should be at school
and preparing for a productive adult hood, young boys and girls are
losing their childhood and, with it, the promise for a better
future.
It is true that all over the world there is increasing
awareness of this problem. Nevertheless, a wall of silence still
surrounds the worst forms of child labor; and other barriers of
ignorance and self-interest tend to perpetuate it. Only a clear
perception of the problem and the firm resolve to combat it will
finally eradicate the evil of child labor.1
A. Overview
In 1993, the United States Congress provided for the Department
of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to establish
a special unit to research the use of child labor worldwide and
publish reports on child labor issues.
This report is the third volume in ILAB's international child
labor series. 2 ILAB's two
previous reports documented the use of child labor in the production
of U.S. imports, as well as situations of forced and bonded child
labor. The present report focuses on the use of child labor in the
production of apparel for the U.S. market, and reviews the extent to
which U.S. apparel importers have established and are implementing
codes of conduct or other business guidelines prohibiting the use of
child labor in the production of the clothing they sell.
3
A development of the last few years, corporate codes of conduct
and other 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 on companies to take
responsibility for the conditions under which the goods they sell
are being manufactured. The term "code of conduct" is used
generically in this report to refer to various types of corporate
documents establishing policies and standards on child labor and
other working conditions. These instruments take different forms
codes of conduct, statements of company policy in the form of
letters to suppliers, provisions in purchase orders or letters of
credit, and/or compliance certificates.
Chapter II provides an overview of the U.S. apparel industry,
U.S. apparel imports, major U.S. retailers and manufacturers of
apparel and their codes of con duct.4
An analysis follows of how apparel companies implement the child
labor protections of their codes using transparency, monitoring, and
enforcement as benchmarks. This analysis is drawn from information
provided to ILAB by the companies themselves. Chapter III uses
information gathered by Department of Labor officials in six
countries that export garments to the U.S. market to describe how
the codes of conduct are being implemented abroad. Chapter IV
contains conclusions on codes of conduct gathered from the review of
company policies prohibiting child labor as well as the country
visits.
The remainder of this introduction will place the discussion of
codes of con duct in the broader context of child labor throughout
the world. It will give some background on existing international
child labor standards and current estimates of child workers. It
also will provide some observations on recent child labor trends in
the garment industry, and explain why codes of conduct have come to
be seen by some as a partial response to the international child
labor problem. |