BRAZIL, EU CITED FOR LABOR ABUSES

 
Once again, Brazil's child labor problems are being cited by an international source. As AmericasNet has reported in the past, this infuriates the Cardoso government, which argues that the problem is under control and improving.

The Washington office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) features a discussion of child labor in Brazil on its website (www.us.ilo.org) as part of a general study of child labor. "Although conditions have improved in the last several years, there are still more than three million children under the age of 16 working in Brazil," said a July 10 review of the report by Agence France Presse (the story also ran in the July 16 edition of the Houston Chronicle). The study showed that "there are around 25,000 five-year-olds working daily in Brazil, rummaging through trash for discarded valuables or doing other, often unpaid jobs."

Also on the ILO US website, however, is a discussion of a new report by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) assessing the application of ILO core conventions in the European Union member states. It quotes the report as saying that while freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are observed in law and practice in most of the EU, "in certain countries difficulties do remain." Three countries in particular-the United Kingdom, Belgium and Germany-are cited for placing obstacles in the way of normal union activity. In addition, the ICFTU found that the gap between law and practice remains wide throughout the EU, with women in all 16 countries receiving less pay than men for equal work. The report also discovered violations of the ILO's forced labor and child labor standards.

This report follows hard on the heels of a Human Rights Watch report depicting widespread use of child labor in the US, previously reported by AmericasNet. These types of reports are picked up by Third World countries to complain about being singled out by the Western nations. Human and labor rights activists point to the reports as examples of their even hand at demanding compliance with international standards throughout the world.