Minding the GAP: Child labor in India

In London’s observer:

…an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the West’s demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gap’s rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes.

Oh, that’s why the factories hated to see me coming. Now I get it. I thought that maybe I had bad breath, something in my teeth, or some other hygiene related issues. Here it turns out that journalists are bad news for factories that employ child labor.

No child should have to work and if they do you should at least pay them. And if you don’t even do that, at least don’t beat them. This is an important story: a major American retailer’s clothes are sewn by 10 year-old boys – nothing new, but important. It’s good to keep the issue out there.

BUT…

To me the issue here isn’t that the kids work, don’t get paid, and are beaten, it’s that they were sold by their parents. A ten year old child sold by their very own parent.

I was bought from my parents’ village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,’ he says. ‘The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won’t have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children.

My thinking went like this:

– dude GAP is in for it
– poor kids
– if you work them, pay them
– don’t beat them
– what kind of parent sells their kids
– what kind of conditions (political, social, economical) must a family be living in to think it a good idea to sell their 10-year-old

The story shouldn’t be just about the GAP, but it is. Long after GAP has righted the wrongs of their suppliers in India, the conditions will still remain that parents have to sell their children. We are selfish to think that by simply not buying GAP products we are doing our part to right the problem. The problem is poverty. The problem isn’t just your shirt.

When you read about parents selling their children, the issues of the GAP’s suppliers seems a small part of a much larger problem. But that larger problem isn’t nearly as sexy as a story about a major American corporation.

Indians play passenger

“Okay, this time you be the screaming kid and I’ll be the fat businessman hitting on the stewardess.”

“No, no…I want to be the jackass that slams his seat back with all of the force he can muster.”

“Ooh…ooh…I’ll be the dude in the Hawaiian shirt that stands the entire flight talking to everyone.”

A businessman in India had a strange idea: take a plane that doesn’t fly and have people pay to pretend to fly in it.

The world has completely lost it. I first heard about this story on WorldHum.

India loses jobs to Ohio

Yep, it’s a crazy world. Expedia, like so many companies today, farms out its customer service call centers to India. Tata, the Indian company who handles Expedia’s calls has opened a call center in Ohio.

To bring you up to speed on your globalization vocab, when Expedia farms out their work to an Indian company it’s known as “outsourcing” and when that Indian company opens a branch in the USA it’s know as “insourcing.” Got it?

You can read the full story here.

If this kind of globalization stuff pisses you off or amazes you, read The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. It’s full of this kind of head scratchin’ stuff.