Children Again Sewing Clothing for Wal-Mart, Hanes and Other U.S. Companies

US Newswire

An estimated 200 children, some 11 years old or even younger, are sewing clothing for Hanes, Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney and Puma at the Harvest Rich factory in Bangladesh.

The children report being routinely slapped and beaten, sometimes falling down from exhaustion, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, even some all-night, 19- to 20-hour shifts, often seven days a week, for wages as low as 6 and a half cents an hour. The wages are so wretchedly low that many of the child workers get up at 5 a.m. each morning to brush their teeth using just their finger and ashes from the fire, since they cannot afford a toothbrush or toothpaste.

The workers say that if they could earn just 36 cents an hour, they could climb out of misery and into poverty, where they could live with a modicum of decency.

Corporate monitoring has again proved a miserable failure, as Harvard Rich was certified by the U.S. apparel industry's Worldwide Responsibly Apparel Production (WRAP) monitoring group. Not only did the U.S. companies fail to notice the child workers, the beatings, the excessive mandatory overtime, but also that not one single worker in Harvest Rich was paid the correct overtime pay legally due them. Any worker daring to ask for their proper wages, or that their most basic legal rights be respected, would immediately be attacked, beaten and fired.

MORE INFO at: The National Labor Commitee

Well there you have Capitalism is it's Purest Form;

How to create even more Profit by Exploiting People of this World?

So the West keeps exploiting the East in order to make more Money.

And the US Companies do not seem to have a problem with 11-year old children working for them, 14 hours a day for 36 cents an hour.

Truly a sickening and frightening piece of Information.

Just as sickening is the Government of Bangladesh lets Children work and Work under these conditions.

Well if i ever see the tag "Made in Bangladesh" i certainly wont buy the product.

Originally posted by NumberCruncher
Truly a sickening and frightening piece of Information.

Just as sickening is the Government of Bangladesh lets Children work and Work under these conditions.

Well if i ever see the tag "Made in Bangladesh" i certainly wont buy the product.

I agree - it takes TWO to tango;

Sadly I think that jobs like this are something you just can not "refuse" if you are a poor one living in Bangladesh. Actually, the poor ones do not really have alot of choices what to do in their life; they just have to work to survive.

But yes - I also blame both goverments and both countries, and above all the Corporations, which know how to exploit the weakness and holes in the laws.

Hey souljah it is a two way street the very same thing happens in Communist countries only worse. Check the wages and kindly note Castro made them Slaves:shk:



There there you have it Communism in it's Purest Form;

I certainly do not condone it either, just wanted to point the fact out this practice is not isolated.

Now let me ask you this. Why don't those countries do something about the horrid practice?



[edit on 10/30/2006 by shots]

Careful when buying Made in the USA though, it could come from the Northern Mariana Islands which are technically considered the USA, but doesn't follow the same child labor laws. So essentially, something can be stamped "made in USA" and still be made in a sweatshop.

The truth is that if we want to keep products cheap, we will need to exploit someone somewhere. I hate it, and would prefer to pay extra to be secure in my knowledge that children weren't exploited in the manufacturing, but it's more likely that greedy corperations will advertize as sweatshop safe, hike up the price, and take all of the profits from not making items sweatshop safe.

So shots I lost you there.

Does your post mean that is ok to by Wal-Mart goods made in sweat shops in China and other brand names sold in the US made by slave children, because other countries are doing it too?

Or you just been sarcastic.

I wonder.

So we condemn slavery in our own nation but we welcome the labor of children slaves as long as is cheap and save us money.

What a hypocrecy.

I guess we are better than any third world country after all.

As long as they world for us.

And here we work like dogs on our feet all day for a mere average of $9 to $11 an hour and we are on our own! This is supposed to pay for everything- no handouts.

The whole world is exploited in one way or another.

Other countries get everything from the government, little as it may be.

exploit, exploit, exploit.

Weiigh it all out. And i'm talking about the "middle" class not your average rich ones.

An 11 year old in Bangladesh is equivalent to a 25 year old here in responsibility and mind.

What a world.

Hasn't anyone saw the documentry called "The corperation"? Amazing film. It was a three part(I think) documentry on the institution of the corperation. It looks at it from a perspective that; If a corperation has all the legal rights of a person, what type of person is it?

It also deals with why in America you guys still of BGH in your milk supplies, where by here in Canada and Britan it was declared not safe for humans.


The Corporation website

I notice they also have it in parts on youtube as well.

The latest trick to get around this is to have the shirt or whatever made in a third world country but bring it to the US an have print or stitching done here and then put a made in USA on it. I baffels me that people are so shocked about this because the same thing is going on in this country to some degree. If you look at the wages that Ilegle workers are paid it is no diffrent it is cheaper to have them live 20 to a house than it would be to have them as slaves and have to follow housing and human rights rules.

Originally posted by marg6043


Does your post mean that is ok to by Wal-Mart goods made in sweat shops in China and other brand names sold in the US made by slave children, because other countries are doing it too?

No not at all.

Is it that hard for you too understand the words? I Do Not Condone it

I find the practice appalling no matter who does it, however I thought it prudent to point out it is not only Americans doing it, that is why I posted the example of Castro.

Shots,

Castro, what amounts to a third world, and communist to boot, is not a very good example.
There's a vast difference between here and there. Agree?

Not to be contrary or anything but Cuba is not a very good example.

Originally posted by dgtempe
Shots,

Castro, what amounts to a third world, and communist to boot, is not a very good example.
There's a vast difference between here and there. Agree?

I agree with you, and that's what I thought, plus we do not buy goods from Cuba.

Funny how some type of slave labor is supported for profits in our nation coming from oppressing governments but others we tag them enemies.

Double standards?

Originally posted by shots
Hey souljah it is a two way street the very same thing happens in Communist countries only worse. Check the wages and kindly note Castro made them Slaves

Care to compare the Profits that Castro's Slave Sweatshops make compared to US and other Western clothing Corporations?

Second thing: So why do American Corporations use Slaves, usually children (I didn't notice that Children also work in Castro's Sweatshops, neither did I saw that they beat them) from Third World Countries, where the life-standard is very, Very poor?

And why don't the Communist countries do the same - actually they have, as you have pointed out, sweatshops, but in their home country, not in some other Third World country.

Now let me ask you this. Why don't those countries do something about the horrid practice?

Which countries? The poor ones, which have actually no economic or political power? The ones, that the American Corporations BUY, in order to force them to make clothing for cheaper prices possible? Yeah, why don't they do something about it, and say NO to American Corporations, who actually WANT to have sweatshops there.

So, why don't American Corporations make Sweatshops in America, and force American children to work 14 hours a day and then beat them up if something is not going as planned?

And please answer to me, why are there Asian Workers Trafficked to Baghdad in order to build the Largest Embassy in the World?

Its pretty much similar to what Nike had to deal with in the 1990s. Nike, I remember joined the corporate responsibility after NGOs and the media reported how bad conditions were for the labor workers overseas as well as children being used for sewing Nike products. Image is important, no doubt corporations that have problems like these must deal with it.

Originally posted by Waiting2awake
Hasn't anyone saw the documentry called "The corperation"? Amazing film. It was a three part(I think) documentry on the institution of the corperation. It looks at it from a perspective that; If a corperation has all the legal rights of a person, what type of person is it?

Most Excellent Documentary!

Scary actually, but very informative and eye opening.

And to answer your question - what type of person a Corporation is;

A PSYCHOPATH!

Originally posted by dgtempe


Not to be contrary or anything but Cuba is not a very good example.

What pray tell is the difference between a slave in Curacao that was shipped there by Castro or a slave/child labor anyplace else.? A Slave is a Slave are they not? I would also venture to guess that a lot of this goes on behind the scenes without Walmarts or any other companies knowledge. Now who do you blame then? It sure cannot be the corporations if they had no knowledge, that leaves the governments of those countries for allowing it to happen.


And I disagree when you say they are a bad example because my intent was to show it goes on in other countries/cultures also, although the OP only tries to make it look as if it only happens when the US is involved and we all know that as fact.

Originally posted by shots
And I disagree when you say they are a bad example because my intent was to show it goes on in other countries/cultures also, although the OP only tries to make it look as if it only happens when the US is involved and we all know that as fact.

If we compare the extent of sweatshops, which were started by Western corporations to any other, we can see that there is a big difference in numbers, dontchathink?

The difference is, that these Corporations, like Nike, Puma etc, are world famous, very well known, very well sold and very well marketed, since you see Nike, Adidas or Puma on almost all sport-stars, which are role-models for many, Many people around this world. But when they wear a Nike sign, they are actually supporting exploatation of Third World Countries and their people;

Spotlight on Indonesian 'sweat shops'



Oxfam's Tim Connor, who carried out the latest investigation, said the key issues to emerge this time were wages; union rights; and working conditions.

"Poverty and fear is still dominating the lives of Adidas and Nike workers in Indonesia," he said.

He said full-time wages as low as $2 a day do not give families enough to live on. He alleges active trade unionists fear losing their jobs or even being attacked.

Nike has contracts with about 700 factories worldwide

So does Casto have 700 factories of Slaves around the world?

Does Castro have a commercial on each and every sports event?

I think not...

Originally posted by deltaboy
Its pretty much similar to what Nike had to deal with in the 1990s.

Good that you bring that, I also remeber when Kathy lee got in a big media mess when her name was tagged to a sweat shop also.

Occurs it was not her fault it was her name that was been used to sponsor the clothing line.

Strange....My Hanes label states;

RN # 15763 CA 21356
R.F.C.: SLK9712166P3
58 04F 611835


100%ALGODON
HECHO EN MEXICO
MEDIANIA
100%COTTON
FRBRIQUE' AU MEXIQUE
MOYENNE


100%COTTON
MADE IN MEXICO
MEDIUM
______________

8806 ATC

UPC: 635424055734

i suppose that last year "Hanes" had Western Hemisphere made goods
as these "Hanes" were made in Mexico! not anywhere in Asia!

....? but maybe the batch of clothes i purchased was meant to be sent
over to Europe or Asia, but was mis-routed to SC in the USA instead ??

~in any case....every low wage labor market will all get their turn at being
a 'supplier' at one-time-or-another !

Originally posted by Souljah

If we compare the extent of sweatshops, which were started by Western corporations to any other, we can see that there is a big difference in numbers, dontchathink?

Very lame attempt on your part souljah. :shk: Child labor was used in other countries long before American corporations even started outsourcings or importing clothes from foreign markets.