Report Exposes Child Labor in US

   
Developing nation have responded with indignation to the recent Human Rights Watch report, "Fingers to the Bone: United States Failure to Protect Child Farm Workers." The report exposes commercial agriculture's exploitation of hundreds of thousands of children who labor under oppressive conditions in fields, orchards and packing sheds across the United States.

"While eager to point out abusive child labor practices in Guatemala, Brazil, Pakistan, and other developing countries, the United States is myopic when it comes to domestic abuses," the report charges. Its findings illustrate a range of child labor abuses in US agriculture that violate specific provisions of a UN child labor convention set to go into effect in December, including "work with dangerous machinery, equipment, and tools; work in an unhealthy environment, including exposure to hazardous substances, notably pesticides; and work for long hours, during the night, or without the possibility of returning home each day."

Among the conditions detailed in the report were the following:

� Each year some 100,000 children working in U.S. agriculture suffer job-related injuries from knives, heavy equipment and other hazards.
� Since agricultural employers can work children for unlimited hours, 12-hour days (and nights) are routine, as are six- and seven-day work weeks.
� Legally, growers and farm labor contractors can hire children at an age younger than in nonagricultural employment. Children as young as 10 or 11 hold jobs classified as agricultural.

Developing nations have been quick to pounce on this issue. In Brazil, the conservative daily O Estado de S�o Paulo ran a scathing editorial saying:

"The diligence with which the United States unions link access to their markets in the First World to the social conditions where the goods are produced in underdeveloped countries always was defended on the convictions of the humanitarian concerns of the most prosperous working class on our planet. But, this merely masked a particular interest: protect their jobs against competition of foreign products offered at more conducive prices, thanks to comparative labor costs lowered in these points of origin, in part due to poorly paid child labor. Now there can't be any doubt about the ulterior motives and the hidden protectionism of the US pressures to introduce social clauses in the bilateral and multilateral commercial agreements."

This was followed on July 18 by an op-ed piece by Professor Jos� Pastore of the University of S�o Paulo. Pastore took the criticism one step further: "It's not that the foreigners are uncomfortable [with child labor]. They want the little girls to stop sewing buttons in the garment factories, but little do they care if they go to school or into prostitution," he claimed. "The proof of this is in the repeated arrests of foreigners - even diplomats! - who openly support the sex commerce of little girls in Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Bangkok or other cities."

These comments highlight the many challenges that US and European human and labor rights activists must resolve if they are to maintain credibility in developing nations.

For the full text of the Human Rights Watch report, see: http://www.hrw.org/press/2000/06/farmwrk0619.htm