8/9 Child labor in the bizarro world of Bangladesh

How complex can human rights and labor issues be? Consider this…

A good argument can be made that factories who employee children are the humanitarians and the westerners who call for an end to child labor are actually harming the children.

Personally, I wouldn’t argue this. I would say that both parties are being unrealistic and stubborn. But the important thing to understand is that in Bangladesh/garment industry/the globalized world, what’s bad might be good and what’s good might be bad. Kinda. Maybe.

I’m writing a scene on the labor industry in Bangladesh today and came across this interesting article on Bangladeshrights.net that hashes over some of the complexities. Note, that Bangladeshrights.net has not been updated since February of 2006. Maybe they just threw their hands in the air and gave up.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Child workers are popular with factory owners. ‘Ten-to twelve-year-olds are the best,’ says Farooq, the manager of Sabeena’s factory. ‘They are easier to control, not interested in men or movies, and obedient.’ He forgets to mention that they are not unionised and that they agree to work for 500 taka ($12) per month when the minimum legal wage for a helper is 930 taka. Owners see Tom Harkin as a well-meaning soul with little clue about the realities of garment workers’ lives. ‘As a student, I too hailed the Bill,’ says Sohel, the production manager at Captex Garments. ‘I was happy that someone was fighting for children’s rights. But now that I work in a factory and have to turn away these children who need jobs, I see things differently. Sometimes I take risks and, if a child is really in a bad way, I let them work, but it is dangerous.’

The notion that a garment employer might be helping children by allowing them to work may seem very strange to people in the West. But in a country where the majority of people live in villages where children work in the home and the fields as part of growing up, there are no romantic notions of childhood as an age of innocence. Though children are cared for, childhood is seen as a period for learning employable skills. Children have always helped out with family duties. When this evolves into a paid job in the city neither children nor their families see it as anything unusual. In poor families it is simply understood that everyone has to work.

 
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