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| Harkin
bill and child workers in Bangladesh garments |
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| By:
Shahidul Alam |
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 No
photographs. Saleha is scared. Many a
time she has hidden under tables, been
locked up in the toilet or been sent to
the roof in the scorching sun for two
or three hours. It happens whenever foreign
buyers enter the factory. She knows she
is under-age, and doesn't want photographers
messing things up - she needs the job.
The whole industry has suddenly become
sensitive. Owners want their factories
open. The workers want their jobs. The
special schools for former child labourers
want aid money.
No photographs. Neither
Saleha nor any of the other child workers
I have interviewed have ever heard of
Senator Tom Harkin. All they know is that
pressure from the US, which buys most
of Bangladesh's garments, has resulted
in thousands of them losing their jobs
at a stroke.
According to a press release by the garment
employers in October 1994: '50,000 children
lost their jobs because of the Harkin
Bill'. A UNICEF worker confirms 'the jobs
went overnight'.00
The
controversial bill, the 'Child Labour
Deterrence Act', had first been introduced
in 1992. A senior International Labour
Organisation (ILO) official has no doubt
that the original bill was put forward
'primarily to protect US trade interests'
- Tom Harkin is sponsored by a key US
trade union, and cheap imports from the
Third World were seen as undercutting
American workers' jobs. 'When we all objected
to this aspect of the Bill,' says the
ILO official, 'which included a lot of
resistance in the US, the Bill was amended,
the trading aspect was toned down, and
it was given a humanitarian look.' It
was when it was reintroduced after these
amendments in 1993 that the Bill had its
devastating impact in Bangladesh. |
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| The
child workers themselves find it particularly
hard to interpret the US approach as one
of 'humanitarian concern'. When asked
why the buyers have been exerting such
pressure against child labour, Moyna,
a ten-year-old orphan who has just lost
her job, comments: 'They loathe us, don't
they? We are poor and not well educated,
so they simply despise us. That is why
they shut the factories down.' |
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| Moyna's
job had supported her and her grandmother
but now they must both depend on relatives. |
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| Other
children have had no alternative but to
seek new kinds of work. When UNICEF and
the ILO made a series of follow-up visits
they found that the children displaced
from the garment factories were working
at stone-crushing and street hustling
- more hazardous and exploitative activities
than their factory jobs. |
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| 'It
is easier for the boys to get jobs again,'
Moyna complains, pointing to ex-garment
boys who have jobs in welding and bicycle
factories. Girls usually stay at home,
doing household work and looking after
smaller children; many end up getting
married simply to ease money problems.
In the wake of the mass expulsion of child
garment workers it was plain that something
had gone very wrong. UNICEF and the ILO
tried to pick up the pieces. After two
years of hard talking with the garment
employees they came up with a Memorandum
of Understanding. This guaranteed that
no more children under 14 would be hired,
that existing child workers would be received
into special schools set up by local voluntary
organisations and would receive a monthly
stipend to compensate them for the loss
of their wages. |
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| Some
garment owners feel that, instead of doing
a deal, they should have called the US
bluff and containued employing young children.
'We export 150 million shirts a year to
the US,' says one. 'The K-mart $12 shirt
would have cost $24. Bill Clinton would
have lost his job.' |
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| Saleha
is tall for her age. Though in her factory
there are quite a few under-age children,
in most factories children that look small
are no longer taken. This is what Moyna
and Ekram and the other children repeatedly
say: 'We didn't make the size.' In a country
where births are not registered there
is no way of accurately determining a
person's age. Children with good growth
keep their jobs. Children, who look smaller,
perhaps because they are malnourished,
do not. |
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| The
reliance on size rather than age means
that many children are still at work in
the factories - and many have no inclination
to take up a place in one of the special
schools. Take Sabeena. Her factory is
colourful with tinsel when I visit and
many of the girls have glitter on their
faces. It is the Bangla New Year and Eid
all in one and they are celebrating. Sabeena
proudly shows me the machine she works
on. She is almost 14 and, likes Saleha,
big for her age. She has been working
at a garment factory ever since she finished
Grade Five, about 18 months ago. Until
then, schooling was, free. There was no
way her parents could pay for her to go
to school and, with her father being poorly,
Sabeena needed to work to keep the family
going. |
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| Taking
home 2200 taka ($52) a month (with overtime)
Sabeena, at 13, is now the main breadwinner
in the family. She is lucky to have work
though she would rather study. She laughs
when I talk of her going to school. She
has mouths to feed, and to give up her
job for a 300-taka-per-month stipend for
going to school simply wouldn't make sense.
Besides, the special schools only teach
up to Grade Five. The better students,
who have studied that far, find they have
neither jobs nor seats in the school.
So Sabeena's studies begin at around 11
at night, with a paid private tutor, usually
by candlelight. At seven in the morning
she has to leave for work. Seven days
a week. |
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 Money
is a key concern even for those children
who have been received into the special
schools. At the school run by the Bangladesh
Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in
Mirpur the children gather round a worker
doing the rounds. 'When do we get paid,
sir?' they keep asking.
Despite
the promises, not a single child that
I have interviewed has received the full
pay they are owed. In some cases field
workers, eager to improve their admission
rates, have promised considerably more
than the stipulated 300 taka ($7) per
month. In others, unfounded rumours have
created expectations that the schools
cannot meet.
Shahjahan was one of the lucky ones admitted
to a BRAC school. The 300 taka per month
is a small sum for him too, but he works
in a tailoring shop from nine till 11
in the morning and again from two-thirty
in the afternoon till ten at night. He
doesn't complain. Though the scheme does
not encourage it, he feels he is getting
the best of both worlds: free schooling,
including a stipend, as well as paid work
and a potential career. |
| Did
they like working in garment factories?
The children find this a strange question.
They earned money because of it, and it
gave them a certain status that non-working
children did not have. They put up with
the long hours. The exceptions remind
me that it is children we are talking
about. 'I cried when they forced me be
do overtime on Thursday nights,' says
Moyna. 'That was when they showed Alif
Laila (Arabian Nights) on TV.' |
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| 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. |
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| 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.' |
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| 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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The
money that children earn is generally
handed over to parents, who run the household
as best as they can. Most parents want
their children to go to school. But they
also feel that schooling is a luxury they
cannot afford. The garment industry has
increased the income of working-class
families in recent years and these have
also led to a change in attitudes. Many
middle-class homes now complain that it
is difficult to get domestic 'help' as
working-class women and children choose
to work in garment factories rather than
as servants.
 The
choice- made on the grounds not just of
better economics, but of greater self-respect-
is one many children have lost because
of the Harkin Bill.
The US is wielding power without responsibility.
A nation with a history of genocide and
slavery, and the reputation for being
a bully in international politics, suddenly
proclaims itself a champion of peoples'
rights, but refuses to make concessions
over the rates it will pay. The dollar
price tags on the garments produced in
some factories suggest a vast profit being
made at the US end. The buyers claim that
what they pay for the garments is determined
by 'market forces'. The garment owners
make the same claim with regard to the
condition of employment for their workers.
Both are simply justifying their own version
of exploitation- and to adjust to be replaced
by address child labour without addressing
exploitation is to treat the symptom,
not the disease. |
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| The
garment-industry experience has lead to
an active debate amongst development workers
and child-right activists. 'What we have
done here in Bangladesh is described as
fantastic,' said a senior ILO worker.
'I wonder how fantastic it really is.
How much difference will this two or three
years in school make to these children?
In three years, the helper could have
been an operator, with better pay and
more savings. Even if the manufacturers
keep their word and give them back their
jobs at the end of their schooling, the
memorandum children will hardly be better
off, while their peers will have gotten
on with their careers. We have spent million
of dollars on eight thousand children.
The money itself could have transformed
their lives. This is an experiment by
the donors, and the Bangladeshi children
have to pay.' |
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| The
children's names have been changed to
protect them. |
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Photo
: Abir Abdullah/ Drik ( Evicted slum dweller)
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