Kristof's Support of Child Labor

Today, Nicholas Kristof complains that international pressure to raise labor standards or to eliminate child labor can backfire, citing bans on the import of Bangladeshi garments manufactured by child labor and Pakistani hand-stitched soccer balls. He asserts that many of the children presently employed in sweatshops have no educational opportunities, and thus cannot attend school, and that their lot is often worsened when they are excluded from sweatshops.

He omits, though, another example of child labor affected by international pressure - the use of children to manufacture hand-knotted carpets in India, Nepal and Pakistan. Typical work weeks involved twelve to sixteen hour days, seven days per week, in "employment" that is better described as indentured servitude. Children are favored for this work because their small hands allow them to more easily tie smaller knots. Children employed in this type of setting often suffered eye injuries and hand injuries before being cast out of the factories when they had the audacity to reach adolescence. Thanks to international pressure, many of these sweatshops have closed.

Also, in relation to his soccer ball example, while Kristof mentiones that jobs were lost to India in part because of the end of child labor, he mentions that Pakistani women were also excluded from the work because "Conservative Pakistanis believe that women shouldn't work outside the home". Kristof seemingly has no problem with the loss of jobs due to the exclusion of adult women from the workforce - but laments that children can't be used in the jobs forbidden to the adult women.

Kristof closes with a classic false dichotomy - telling "university students" that they should stop avoiding products made with child labor, while making contributions that will help improve the lives of children in the nations that exploit child labor. Why, one wonders, can't a college student do both?

Comments