Bloomberg Markets went to Burkina Faso, where Victoria's Secret usually buys up the entire fair trade and organic-certified cotton crop to make the lingerie it sells in the West. There, the magazine found children of 12 and 13, laboring in the fields on pain of being whipped with switches by their bosses the cotton farmers. Burkina Faso-grown cotton is shipped to India and Sri Lanka, where it is milled into cloth, cut, sewn and finished (Sri Lanka and India, it is worth pointing out, also have their issues with child labor in the garment industry). From there, finished underwear is shipped to the U.S., where it used to be sold by Victoria's Secret with hang-tags that read, "Pesticide-free, 100% rain-fed cotton. Good for women. Good for the children that depend on them." (The company has since dropped the "good for children" part.)
Bloomberg, which spent six weeks in the country, reports:
In Burkina Faso, where child labor is endemic to the production of its chief crop export, paying lucrative premiums for organic and fair-trade cotton has perversely created fresh incentives for exploitation. The program has attracted subsistence farmers who say they don't have the resources to grow fair-trade cotton without violating a central principle of the movement: forcing other people's children into their fields.
Victoria's Secret's partners in cotton-sourcing, including the Swiss organization responsible for certifying the cotton and auditing producers, say they have raised concerns about child labor since 2008. Victoria's Secret says it never saw the relevant report. Cotton is produced thanks to forced and child labor in more countries than any commodity except for gold; the fair trade program is supposed to ensure fair labor standards are met. One of the children Bloomberg interviewed, a 13-year-old girl named Clarissa, took a reporter into the field where she works and demonstrated how she turns the soil with a hoe:
Bending at the waist, Clarisse buries the edge of the blade and starts scraping a deep row into the earth, taking small steps backward with each cut. "It's very, very hard," she says, "and he forces me to do it." Before long, her arms and hips ache. "It's painful," she says. When she strikes rocks beneath the soil, it sends the blade cutting into her bare toes. If she slows down from exhaustion, "he comes to beat me," she says. He whips her across the back with the tree branch and shouts at her. "I cry," she says, looking down as she speaks and rubbing the calluses on her hands.
As always, those $8.50 panties carry a high price.
Source
Original report. Long, but seriously worth a read.
However, I think this article also shows that 'fair trade' can often be a con. Making clothing, growing the materials and sewing it all together costs money. And in our current climate, the higher the labour standards and wages, the costlier the clothes.
They pay the price for our demand for cheap clothing. And it isn't only in the developing world that this happens. Plenty of sweatshops have and are operating in the US, Britain, etc. Usually the workers are poor and/or undocumented immigrants, which is a plus for the owners, as they won't complain about abuse or shitty wages for fear of deportation.
Thanks, VS. I like your panties, so damn comfortable, and now they are made by children? FUCK YOU.
Seriously, is there ANY company that isn't dependent on child labor/denying employees' rights/etc?? Fuck, I don't wanna be a human being anymore.
Which is why we need to change the system, and not just put plasters on the holes within it.
It is now 2011.
Thinking of some comments up-thread, I wonder how much more expensive my clothes would be if they weren't being made so cheaply? I mean, since I'm plus size I already pay upwards of $40 for every-day shirts, pants, and dresses (so not even anything fancy, just something to wear normally) and I complain that it's expensive. :|
Specifically, West Africa's Burkina Faso lost 1 percent of its GDP, and export earnings declined 12 percent due to competition from subsidized U.S. cotton. In Burkina Faso, 85 percent of the population (more than two million people) depends on cotton production and over half the population lives in poverty. The cost to produce a pound of cotton is one-third the cost in the United States, but farmers there cannot compete in world markets against American cotton.
I don't shop at VS 'cause they're expensive and i don't have a need for fancy bras or undies. I would love to buy products made by adult, American workers - but that's close to impossible. It's so *frustrating*.
I highly doubt it. Welcome to capitalism :/ Profit above all else.
How do we improve conditions for these workers? That's the ideal situation, to improve conditions by 100%, but you can't. There's seriously no accountability. It's disgusting.
Though...what angers me most about this story is the way the workers were treated, not their age. No worker should ever be forced into labor, or beaten for being too slow or some shit. That's unacceptable.
I'm less sure about condemning them for having such young workers. It's a first world luxury to be able to extend childhood well through your teens. What exactly are teenagers in Burkino Faso supposed to do, sit on their thumbs while their family starves? It'd be nice if they had real education and career opportunities there, but clearly they do not. I think the idea that they have to be a burden to their families for an extra decade because teens in richer countries would be getting an education around that time is absurd.
I know I've got piles of first world privilege, but I know when I was twelve, having been evicted from my home the year before, and doing the Grand Couch Tour with my mom, what I really wanted was to work. School felt useless and pointless. I wanted to help my family. It was around that time that I started having real problems with school, leading to me dropping out at thirteen. I heard it was legal for 12/13-year-olds to do farm work, and I dearly wanted it, but apparently it has to be on a family farm or something, and I wasn't related to anyone. I got my working papers when I was fourteen, the earliest legal age in NY, but no one would hire me because of the prohibitive labor restrictions on 14/15-year-olds. I became discouraged and depressed. I felt useless. I couldn't help anyone, and I couldn't carry my own weight.
I honestly think that this first world idea that teenagers are children is infantilizing young adults. They don't need to be protected from paying jobs. What they do need to be protected from is exploitation and slave labor. They need to have decent working conditions, receive a fair wage, and be able to quit if they choose to for whatever reason.
And seriously, get those kids some boots and gloves. Christ.
It'd be nice if they had real education and career opportunities there, but clearly they do not. I think the idea that they have to be a burden to their families for an extra decade because teens in richer countries would be getting an education around that time is absurd.
Or, we could do something about the lack of education? I /come/ from India, and it's a /bad thing/ that teenagers are forced to work /instead/ of go to school. Adolescents have the right, I think, to go to school and not be forced to work.