RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: The idea of child labour being wrong is relatively recent in the West  Fri Sep 28, 2012 1:04 am | |
| It's hard to contemplate how miserable a life must be for a child or young woman hand-stitching footballs for a few cents an hour to support her family. It's harder to contemplate what her alternative might be when that avenue is closed – what the next occupation down poverty's pecking order is if football stitching was preferable.
The law of unintended consequences is alive and stalking the victims of the stitching scandal that was reported by Ben Doherty on Saturday. Australian brands understandably have no desire to be associated with child labour, so Sherrin says it has pulled the plug on the subcontractor employing the girls.
Non-government organisations have pointed out the immediate, disastrous impact of Sherrin simply cutting the children loose, but they miss the bigger challenge: India's real problem is that there's simply not enough cheap, exploitive work to go round.
The economics of development are messy, complex and sometimes cruel. They are rarely helped by the knee-jerk reaction of well-meaning people when some of the realities of dire poverty are exposed, when a vast oversupply of unskilled labour is subject to inefficient, corrupt, protectionist government, all made worse by the caste system. India's biggest problem is that it doesn't seem to have the wherewithal to undertake a genuine industrial revolution to create real work for its masses.
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The successful climb out of poverty, whether in Dickensian England or Deng Xiaoping's China, starts with steps that are ugly to the sensitive eyes of the privileged and cosseted. Cheap and plentiful labour is indeed exploited, working in often-miserable conditions for long hours and little money. What's hard to grasp is that successful exploitation tends to result in more work being offered to the exploiters until the excess labour is absorbed and it's no longer cheap.
That's what happened in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan last century and is still happening in China. The factory fodder working for cents an hour in China's dark satanic mills yesterday are enjoying wage inflation of 20 per cent on the east coast today. China now outsources work to countries that are behind it on the development curve.
The hundreds of millions of people lifted out of extreme poverty by Deng's reforms didn't achieve it on the back of well-meaning NGOs and football brands running scared from a public relations embarrassment.
Oh, nice people and commendable campaigns have helped a little along the way – the attention focussed on Nike's suppliers comes to mind – but it wasn't the main game. Nike and Sherrin can clean up their acts and ensure their sandshoes/footballs are whacked together on a living wage by people aged over 14, but vast markets for No Name goods function within the host nation's mainstream without impact. In the wide world of balls meeting feet, Sherrin is but a minnow's hatchling.
And the pressure that can be brought to bear by noble campaigns in the West grows weaker as trade patterns change. For example, fully half of China's exports now go to developing nations. The boys of Africa and South America aren't much concerned with the plight of Sunali and Rupa in Jalandhar when they're still aspiring to possess any sort of soccer ball.
Even pockets of quality employment amid poverty creates problems, or opportunities, depending on which side of the fence you're standing. A job itself becomes a commodity to be purchased – the equivalent of the HR department can be a most lucrative position in the developing world.
A piecemeal approach to battling injustice can make us feel good about ourselves, but that's about it. Like the federal government's knee-jerk reaction to cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs, we can feel happier thinking that no Australian steer would be brutally slaughtered, but I suspect the cattle that continue to see the knife coming for their throats are unaware of their nationality.
It is a wonderful thing for us to have the price of our wealth brought home, as it has been by Ben Doherty. There's no excuse for an Australian brand to knowingly profit from the law being broken in India by child labour. But there's also no excuse for being willingly blind to the reality of poverty.
The idea of child labour being wrong is relatively recent in the West, like the concept of childhood itself in some societies. For a society to progress, though, it's the protection and promotion of education that has to be safeguarded as a priority. With nearly a quarter of India illiterate, the big picture remains more difficult than the plight of a few underage workers.
There are other issues that grow more troubling with contemplation. What of the age limit, anyway? Is the plight of Sunali and Rupa intrinsically worse than that of a 15-year-old sister? We can wash our hands of children stitching footballs in their homes, but we may well be buying goods made from plastic recycled by children picking over putrid rubbish dumps for discarded bags. India can't employ 1.2 billion people now – and it will add another half a billion before 2050.
Eventually, it is the big picture that has to be faced. Stuff that is inexpensive can be inexpensive for the obvious reason that it was inexpensive to make, either because the process could be mechanised on a large scale or because the labour was cheap. For the privileged few, there can be a choice to be made about the source of goods and the price. For most of the world's people, stuff isn't inexpensive anyway, even promotional footballs stitched for 12¢ an hour by children.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/stitching-footballs-can-be-a-step-on-the-path-to-progress-20120927-26o15.html#ixzz27jntYFpP |
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