Madison Dialogue Manufacturing Committee: Considering Child Labor In International Manufacturing
The Manufacturing Committee is developing fair trade standards for international manufacturing.
The first part of this process is the development of broad, overarching principles. From that, specific standards can be developed.
In this dialogue, minimally edited, participants discuss the issue of child labor principles based on the proposed principle document.
In this post, you can first find the participants and their respective organizations. Below that list is the actual dialogue that took place on the list serve.
Go here for the Complete Cast of Characters; Manufacturing Group Members:
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CHILD LABOR ISSUES
Noel:
I have had a look at the principles and they look sound to me. I cannot think of anything else that needs to be covered.
Just note that items 2 and 4 could contradict each other in terms of child labour in the sense that it may be the custom of some cultures for parents to train their offspring in a traditional activity. The point I am making is probably an extreme case, and I think it would be sufficient for us to acknowledge the possibility of appropriate activities carried out by children, without having to change any of the wording below.
Vivien:
Could it be down to ILO definitions and also upholding the laws of the land? (I realize that these are not upheld in many cases – for example India often in the case of sub-contracting and in China being nigh on impossible to monitor, but there are usually legal age limits for employment which specify the min age for employment country by country).
Also, whilst some informal training takes place, would it be appropriate to make clear that this should not be as a source for generating income for the workshop/manufacturer and that formal apprenticeships can only begin at the minimum employment age?
My own feeling is that I think it could be very difficult to acknowledge this without opening up a great big loop hole. Whilst it may take place as a form of learning in village situations, it is also still just as dangerous to use certain tools and equipment (some times more so where the workshop equipment is more basic) and is potentially placing a child in danger of respiratory illness/injury if this is too liberally described.
I think we would have to be extremely specific about which activities and how these care to be carried out- perhaps this goes into ILO & UN convention territory which we could tap into?
Noel:
Possible wording in clause 2 could be added to include “In the case of children serving an apprenticeship that is an integral part of the historical culture of a group of people, the work of a child would be accepted, with the proviso that the health and safety of the child is not compromised, and that the child receives fair compensation for the work done”.
But like you say, there are potentially huge grey areas on this topic.We also do not want to prevent a child from exercising his/her own will in choosing an alternative occupation or education.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Clause 2: I have put Noel’s suggestion in italics:
Human and Workers’ Rights
Employers will respect basic human rights and labour standards, including but not limited to: freedom to organize, no forced labour, no child labour and no discrimination, in adherence with in the eight core ILO Principles. Operators will also respect the rights of women and disadvantaged groups.
In the case of children serving an apprenticeship that is an integral part of the historical culture of a group of people, the work of a child would be accepted, with the proviso that the health and safety of the child is not compromised, and that the child receives fair compensation for the work done.
Marc:
I agree this is a critical issue that I too have thought about. In many cases a jewelry tradition is passed down though the generations by having children apprentice. This is true all over the world– from Bali to the Native American people here in the Southwest where I live. Yet at the same time there are situations where kids are basically treated like indentured servants in small shops in developing countries.
I believe that we have look at issues contextually and be transparent about it in our evaluation. Certainly we do not want child labor in large scale production factories. But we don’t want to arrogantly rule it out in a home village situation. There is a lot of gray area in that context and I don’t believe it will always be easy to sort out on the ground.
I think that something about this issue needs to be included. Would you like to write some kind of wording to adjust the text?
Demos:
Thank you for the guidelines/principles….looking good. We will have a local Fair Trade meeting & discuss points, before reverting to you with any comments or suggestions.
Vivien:
I would have concerns that this would still open up a loophole, without us being extremely specific. Furthermore, in my opinion it should not compromise the opportunity of education of the child, which I feel strongly should be given priority over labour activities.
As you point out Noel, there should be options open to the child which does not limit it to the apprentice activities (in some cases jewellery manufacture may not provide a long term sustainable future for the next generation in some regions. It may be beneficial to have diverse skills, education and means to add value to economy through other activities).
It could be difficult to define what is culturally acceptable as tradition and what constitutes exploitation in the international domain of in the developed world.
May I ask for a description then of the ‘developing world’ and ask that we define the countries specifically as a next stage so that we can assess if this is relevant to these countries?
Perhaps for our initial case studies we could include both a large scale factory unit as well as a village small scale production workshop ‘cottage industry’?
We could perhaps take one country which has both large scale and small scale manufacture (for example India) and begin our scope of work there to get into the specifics of this, with guidance from ILO. (I refer to point 3 & 4 in the Proposed Initial Steps)
Martin:
I don’t know if southwest Mexico is “the developing world”, i would say we are on the frontier of the globalist system and the organic economics that derives from the original communalism of the descendents of the Toltecas and the feudal hacienda systems of the Spanish occupiers.
In Taxco Guerrero Mexico, an important center of silver jewelry manufacture the child labor question is not an issue. There is a tradition of young apprentice helpers – certainly they are quite useful in labor-intensive jewelry operations, as well as going to buy materials, etc.
But nobody around here is worrying about child labor, people here are a lot more worried about whether they’re going to have something to eat tomorrow and how to pay the family expenses. Besides, the kids today would NOT necessarily studying, they’d likely be playing video games.
Honestly I have little idea what conditions apply to other production plants in other places; nor do I know or wonder if young people should be working or not – here the situation for the artisan is very difficult especially since the downturn, and skyrocketing of the price of silver.
I don’t know if southwest Mexico is “the developing world”, i would say we are on the frontier of the globalist system and the organic economics that derives from the original communalism of the descendents of the Toltecas and the feudal hacienda systems of the Spanish occupiers.
In Taxco Guerrero Mexico, an important center of silver jewelry manufacture the child labor question is not an issue. There is a tradition of young apprentice helpers – certainly they are quite useful in labor-intensive jewelry operations, as well as going to buy materials, etc.
But nobody around here is worrying about child labor, people here are a lot more worried about whether they’re going to have something to eat tomorrow and how to pay the family expenses. Besides, the kids today would NOT necessarily studying, they’d likely be playing video games.
Honestly I have little idea what conditions apply to other production plants in other places; nor do I know or wonder if young people should be working or not – here the situation for the artisan is very difficult especially since the downturn, and skyrocketing of the price of silver.
Vivien:
Again, Martin is spot on- countries which are suffering economically are not the same as developing countries where forced child labour prevails. I personally would not have thought of Mexico in the latter category by any means, but that’s only my perception. I also think the term ‘young person’ is a good one to describe the apprenticeships whereas by ‘child’ I refer to under 14’s (for example, 6 yr olds being kept as forced labour in China or India). What are others views on this please?
Marc:
I have always felt that we need to distinguish in our final frame work small scale and large scale factory situations. Perhaps this should be mentioned in our principal document as well? Clearly the issues and challenges are really different for a large scale factory and a small producer making a few things in their homes. We could do case studies on this in India and also in Bali.
I hope we can hear from some of our members of our group who have some extensive experience working in the “developing world.”
Eric:
I share the concern that we are opening a loophole that will be hard to define clearly. At the very least, I would imagine requiring full disclosure in cases of sourcing using child apprenticeship. If these situations are more open to scrutiny, there may be less opportunity for gaming the standard.
Marc:
Your point leads to what may be an acceptable approach.
Without getting into what is large and what is small scale in terms of production– that’s another conversation I think we are going to have to grapple with at some point– I think we could all agree that we do not want child labor in large scale factory settings.
Could we have some kind of language for small scale manufacturing which acknowledges that vitality and necessity apprenticeships, for example, of children under the age of 18?
In that case, the report would document the exact conditions as to how these younger people are being employed.
Vivien:
Could we consider a min age of 14- 15 for this?
Noel:
For what it is worth this is what the Basic Conditions of Employment Act in South Africa has to say about child labour:-
Child Labour:
• Children below the age of 15 years may not be required or permitted to work.
• Children between the ages of 15 and 18 may not perform work that places their well-being, education, or physical and mental health at risk.
The Department of Labour and state prosecutor will be primarily responsible for enforcing the rules about child labour. To employ children is a criminal offence.
Patrick:
I just wanted to add a comment on the child labor and on the contamination:
1) CHILD LABOR:
Child Labor is a fact even in Northern countries. In France, one can go for apprentice starting 14 years old and in England, if I am not wrong, starting 12 a child can deliver newspapers and/or milk. Main point here is that the work done by a young person does not prevent him to attend his school and education.
In the case of Apprentice, I think we should require a contract to be signed stating clearly the work the young person do in the year, the salary he gets for that and his working rights. Of course this should comply with ILO and national rules. Maybe we can propose the idea that if the young person (<16years) is working then the employer MUST propose him a educational program and PAY for it if this youngster does not have a minimum educational level.
Martin:
Guerrero is statistically one of Mexico’s poorest states (although Taxco is not in the poorest part of Guerrero) with (according to official numbers) more than 25 percent of the population in the United States for the most part as right-less and benefitless workers whose only long-term prospect is a boot in the butt.
The young men here take risks crossing the Arizona desert where hundreds of Mexican migrant deaths are recorded every year, and pay the high prices charged by the coyotes ($1600 per person in cash – typically paid by family members in the USA).
The mothers, wives, children, and girlfriends suffer terribly from the enstrangement and long damaging separations. Since jewelry-making is an established tradition and economic activity in Taxco (a city of some 100,000 population as well as in the 27 villages in the municipality, the women who have remained, many of them effectively abandoned, constitute the core production force increasingly over the past 10-15 years.
The extraordinary concentration of qualified hand labor that is this part of Mexico is the result of the fact that so many people learned how to do this when they were kids in the home workshops of their home before the father and older brothers all left to be gardeners and slaughterhouse hands and restaurant workers or construction laborers, etc. in the neighboring land.
Thousands of people when they were kids learned to cut out designs in sheet metal with a jeweler’s arc saw, to solder in production, to alloy silver, to sand, to polish etc. Child labor has never to my knowledge been regarded as an issue or any problem here.
People probably wish their children were working at jewelry, instead of frequenting the video-game arcades, which frequently will exchange game tokens for scraps of silver filtered out of the home workshop. But the day is long gone when anyone could say to their children “I am an artisan You will be an artisan one day too. I have a small shop, but you will have a small factory”
It has been a while since here has said anything like that! Since the Mexican artisans were wiped out by the cheap oriental products in the 1990s no parent would dare to say something might set their child off laughing disdainfully. So, maybe, it is actually the opposite case that applies here.
I had never thought of this child-labor issue before. In the context of the situation the cottage industry silversmiths and craftspeople have been living it would be a good thing if the children were involved in jewelry production at least so the considerable body of knowledge implicit in jewelry-making were not lost.
Vivien:
Thanks Martin, I appreciate your explanation of the situation there. My own manufacturing experience is in Asia (exactly the cheap labour issues you mention which you correctly mentioned have forced so many companies out of business) so this gives a totally different perspective to the issue of traditional artisanal skills being passed on.
However, I maintain that child labour which occurs in many factories and gem cutting facilities in India and China pose a significant risk to the health & welfare of the children and far from being taught skills at the knees of their parents, they are being used as free or bonded labour forces en masse in sweatshops.
The result is these factories keep labour costs unfeasibly low and thus make it impossible for competition. But, it is important we define each point carefully as they must be universally applicable for whatever guidelines we draft up.
Also, to comment on Patrick’s points – yes indeed children can work as young as 12 in the UK, outside of school hours and for an extremely small number of hours per week. Many places have stopped ‘paper delivery’ services though due to the complex employment laws and the checks involved.
It also used to be the case that children in rural areas were taken out of school to assist with seasonal farm work (in Scotland up until about 15 years ago) but I understand this practice has also now phased out.
Martin:
I never leave here, and so I readily admit I do not know what situations or conditions pertain to jewelry manufacturing in other parts of the globe. Therefore, due to my real ignorance as such, my comments were not directed at the development of a consensus of universal principles or standards applicable to jewelry-making in general, which is evidently the purpose of this forum thread.
I am used to thinking of the welfare of the child as being threatened by the absence of the fathers and brothers in the united states and the enormous economic pressures piled up on their mothers defending their families by using their traditional skill and traditions and perseverance and faith in front of the carborundum wheel, the sand wheel, and the polishing wheel, etcetera.
In no way, shape or form should my comments be taken as a negation or a rejection or an objection or even a reservation to the kind of manifesto or working-principles or standards intended to be set in this discussion thread.
For myself I would say that I respect any and all who are actually involved with production, the transformation of raw materials into aesthetical finished objects.
Vivien:
I feel that the wording should be ‘young people serving an apprenticeship’ not ‘children’. I also would like an inclusion that this is not at the expense of available education. I think use of the word child opens too many avenues for our preventing child labour occurring.
Marc:
Good points about child verses young people. I’m not sure about adding the bit about education since a trade education can be the best education possible and more important than classroom education and the young person may have to make a choice between the two avenues.
It might be too specific given all the many cultural contexts that we may encounter. I personally would rather leave it vague at least in the principle document.
What do you think?
Vivien:
Ok, good point. Agreed that trade might be the best opportunity. I do maintain we should define apprentices as ‘young people’ to avoid contradictions or vagueness on this particular topic.
Ben:
I 100% agree with the terminology ‘young people serving an apprenticeship’ the words “child labour” have too many emotional connotations which will prevent a fair and reasonable debate on the issue.
Coming from an area where I see the huge advantage of young people learning skills from elder family members, in order to set them up with skills which can later provide for them and their families in turn. I feel the principle here needs to govern what work forms are acceptable for young people to engage in and the environment they work in, to ensure the impetus is on skill transition and not employer exploitation.
Martin:
Unlike for-profit factories, manufacturing and assembly shops family workshops are not based on marginal profit economics;again, if one takes handcraft production out of the context of monetary economics, the standard definitions do not apply.
Child labor has to do with marginal profit economics whereas family workshops are motivated by original organic incentives. children working in the home production shop seems like a desirable figure; after all, what are the children of artisans expected to be when they grow up?
Ben:
Another thought for discussion re terminology. The word apprenticeship can have different connotations in different cultures, and I have seen many “apprentices’ working in very exploitive situations under the legal guise of apprenticeships. It can often tend to favor larger organizations at the expense of smaller and home workshops.
I prefer the term ‘skill transfer’ which would be broad enough to also include a younger person to help out his parents as he/she learns their trade skills in a family workshop and yet at the same time work for larger organizations with genuine training programs.
Vivien:
I would be happy to accept ‘skill transfer’ or ‘skill transfer programme’ in light of Ben’s comments; or I would be happy that we defined the terms of apprenticeships with Ben’s input here when come to developing standards.
Marc:
Dear Group,
Considering the views from Ben, Vivian, and Martin, and the also my concern of factory verses small scale, I have revised the text.
Here’s the first part:
Employers will respect basic human rights and labour standards including but not limited to: freedom to organize, no forced labour, no child labour and no discrimination, in adherence with in the eight core ILO Principles. Operators will also respect the rights of women and disadvantaged groups.
Here, I edited Noel’s revision, taking into accounts suggestions that have been made as best as I can:
In the case of young people serving in a skill transfer programme, whether conducted by a factory or as part of the cultural heritage of a family or community, the work of a young person would be accepted, with the proviso that the health and is not compromised, and that labor is fairly compensated. How does this read to all of you?
Vivien:
Just a small edit required, see italics- think you need to delete to make it read correctly. But otherwise, yes from me.
Madison Dialogue Manufacturing Principles
1. Consultation
Companies and manufacturing operators will obtain free, prior, participatory and informed consent of affected communities and civil society before starting operations. Existing operations will also engage affected communities.
2. Human and Workers Rights
Employers will respect basic human rights and labour standards, including but not limited to: freedom to organize, no forced labour, no child labour and no discrimination, in adherence with in the eight core ILO Principles. Operators will also respect the rights of women and disadvantaged groups.
In the case of young people serving in a skill transfer programme, whether conducted in a factory or as part of the cultural heritage of a family or community, the work of a young person would be accepted, with the proviso that the health and is not compromised, and that labor is fairly compensated.
3. Safety
Employers will provide safe working conditions, ensuring training and monitoring are ongoing to uphold continual improvement in this regard.
4. Indigenous People
Employers will respect and work to preserve the culture and heritage of local communities, including indigenous peoples.
5. Sustainable Development
Manufacturing activities will contribute to the sustainable human development of the communities in which they take place, improving the quality of men and women workers and their families,
6. Environment
a) Manufacturing will operate with a commitment to ecological sustainability, minimize waste, seek continuous improvement in their environmental performance.
b) In addition to operating within full compliance with national environmental regulatory requirements, manufacturing will strive to adhere to international best practices in their sector in running a facility no matter where it may be in the world.
c) No materials shall be used in producing jewellery from endangered species.
d) Manufacturers will minimize waste production, seek ways to recycle and identify, manage, and mitigate the negative impacts of dumping wastes.
e) Water and energy will be managed responsibly and efficiently. There will be responsible use, re-use, and recycling and disposal of substances and materials at all stages of operation.
f) Manufacturing will operate in full compliance with national environmental regulatory requirements. Any contaminants will be dealt with immediately and responsibly with the goal of minimizing impact to the environment.
g) Manufacturing will seek opportunities to continuously improve in their environmental performance.
h) Manufacturers will document their environmental performance.
7 Legality
a) Companies and individuals will adhere to existing applicable laws and support the establishment of legal frameworks in sectors where they do not currently exist.
b) Companies and individuals will comply with international conventions and national laws with regard to anti-money laundering, bribery and corruption.
8. Transparency
High standards of financial, social, manufacturing and delivery transparency and accountability principles will be observed.
9. Closure
Companies will design and plan operations so that adequate resources are allocated to meet legal, social, ethical and environmental closure requirements. These closure requirements will then be carried out on closure of the facility.
10. Verification
Independent, third party verification will be actively and persistently sought and utilized to ensure that activities operate in accordance with stated principles and standards.
