Contact:
Pharis Harvey
Tel: (202) 347-4100 ext. 1
Fax: (202) 347-4885
email: laborrights@igc.org

Included in a Treasury Department appropriations bill to be signed into law next week is a provision prohibiting the U.S. Customs Service from allowing the importation of any product that is made by "forced or indentured child labor." This will amend the Tariff Act of 1930, and for the first time provide a level of protection for child workers in the global economy. Global trading rules have long ensured a safe atmosphere for the expansion of capital and the protection of property. Protection of the fundamental rights of working people, however, has been left to the discredited assumption that more trade will lead to employment and prosperity for all. Conclusive evidence that the promised trickle down prosperity will not come on its own is provided by the gaunt faces of Pakistani children paid pennies to make sports balls promoted on American television by athletes paid astronomical sums, the thousands of Burmese villagers working at gunpoint to build a gas pipeline for Unocal in Burma, and by the countless political prisoners in China making Christmas toys for sale in leading U.S. department stores. Highly profitable multinational firms are benefitting from these extreme cases of exploitation and will continue to do so until some form of global regulation is in place.  

Passage of the law to ban the importation of products made by forced or indentured child labor is a significant step in the process of meaningful global regulation of fundamental worker rights. Putting an end to exploitive child labor should be the global trading system's highest priority, and is a necessary prerequisite to any credible claim that expanding trade leads to universal economic progress. According to the International Labor Organization, more than 250 million children are working in the world today. That is a cause for shame, not a positive recommendation for the present global economic system. There is much to do to break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy that dooms those children and their progeny to a life of exploitation. Through the leadership of Representative Bernie Sanders and Senator Tom Harkin, this new child labor legislation will ensure that those who practice the most exploitive forms of child labor do not have the privilege of access to the U.S. market. It also provides activists with a powerful tool in negotiating with industries that use child labor to develop programs that shift children from factories to schools.  

The next essential step is to ensure that the child workers are released and that there are education and rehabilitation programs available to give the children a future. The International Labor Rights Fund will focus on working cooperatively with other international organizations to highlight this priority and develop new programs so that children do benefit from the legislation.