Bridging the GAP Between India and Child Slave Labor
by Nicole Elik
November 2008
The successful clothing company for people of all ages, GAP, has confessed the use of child slave workers in a factory located in India. The children believed they were going through a training process, in which they worked dreadful hours with no income. GAP wants the public to believe that they had no idea this was taking place at one of their industrial units. The company made it clear that they were going to dismiss the articles of clothing that had been created at this factory, but questions still arose about the use of unpaid children. Adolescent workers were recorded while they were stitching shirts in jam-packed, dark rooms. In the film, it is clearly GAP labels being stitched on to each piece of clothing. International clothing lines have been looking for cheaper ways to have their clothing made, which leads to the use of child labor in less wealthy, foreign counties.
Although GAP promised to close the sweatshop, it is still open in Shahpur Jat. The New Delhi Police Force has proceeded to raid the factory, twice. The first time the policemen entered the industrial plant, they found fourteen children in the workshop. A few days later, twenty-eight more children were added to the list of abused workers. Journalists reported shoeless boys with no shirts on their backs. The attacks on the plant occurred just hours before the newspaper, The Observer, informed the public with stores about children working in disgusting factories without pay. The media exposed that the children worked up to sixteen hours in just one day, which included being beaten and having a cloth with oil spread on it, shoved in their mouths. The discovery of the children working in filthy conditions in the Shahpur Jat area of Delhi has renewed concerns about the outsourcing by large retail chains of their garment production to India, recognized by the United Nations as the world's capital for child labor. According to one estimate, more than 20 per cent of India's economy is dependent on children, the equivalent of 55 million youngsters under 14.
The British newspaper found the young children working on large sums of shirts which had serial numbers that corresponded to GAP inventory. The company promised the upset public that they would work with the Indian suppliers to make sure none of the clothing made by child slaves would hit the shelves. The shirts created at the sweatshop were supposed to be sold at $20 each in America and Europe within a week after they were made.
Even though GAP takes part in many different charities, many have been suspicious as to why GAP has been accepting contracts with poor counties. GAP has admitted that forced labor, child slave labor, being paid under minimum wage, and physical abuse have taken place in GAP industrial plants. GAP added that they had terminated contracts with 136 suppliers as a consequence. In the past year Gap has severed contracts with a further 23 suppliers for workplace abuses. Although the GAP may view their actions as a help towards the living standards of the people there, this universal company is actually destroying the economy of India by hiring child laborers and putting them through such harsh conditions. They are actually stunting the growth of the generation of youngsters by abusing them and malnourishing them. Half the children population in India consists of those who work an average of seven times a week.
They company has actually recalled half of their orders that were located in India, just in case child slaves were the creators of the products. The Gap has pledged $200,000 to improve working conditions in India, where only some forms of child labor are outlawed, and it also promised to tighten its own standards. In total, 650 children were saved from the factories during police invasions in India, as GAP continued to declare that they were not using child labor anymore. Around 250 million children aged from five to 14 around the world work, 60 per cent of them in hazardous conditions
Although the government of India seemed enraged about the sweatshops located in the core of the country, there are other issues brought up, if the use of child slaves decreases. Big name companies look to poor countries in search of workers who are willing to earn below minimum wage – or no pay at all. If the government begins to enforce the termination of the use of child slaves, the less amount of factories will still be running in India. Basically, the fewer the factories, the fewer amount of profit goes into the pockets of the country’s people (even if the money is just a small fraction of what they should be earning). In 2008, clothing and textile production in India for foreign brands is projected to be worth between $22 billion and $25 billion. To developing areas, such as India, this is a large sum of money that will not exist when the use of children workers is to put to an end. The government will have to choose between the lives of their people or the profits earned by worldwide corporations, such as GAP.
Deny it all the want; GAP knows what the child labor is like in India. They know if they prolong labor in India, it’s likely that tortured children working without pay will create most of their clothing. Whatever protective guidelines the company creates, GAP with continue to risk that the contractors in India will ignore the rules and continue to use child slave labor. The ethical issues now rest on the cooperate executives of GAP that choose to have their clothing made cheap in developing countries, instead of inside the walls of the United States.
Even though companies like GAP get very offended when news gets to the public that they are using child slave labor in India, American shoppers are also to blame. As costumers demand for cheaper retail prices and for better quality clothes, it is no wonder as to why major companies, such as GAP, have chose to turn to cheaper means of creating clothing. Americans are just so caught up in their own lives that they are not aware of what is going on in foreign countries and what their dollars are starting to support. As globalization is beginning to turn many average middle class jobs into a thing of the past, the demand for cheaper ideas is reaching an all time high. This is the time in which we need to stop and ask ourselves if materialistic “wants” are worth jeopardizing an innocent child’s “needs.”