Paragraphe II :
Child work in the formal
sector
The formal sector gathers all the activities equipped with the
attributes of the traditional economic activity, namely the wage bond and the
legal framing. As regards child work, childish labor is then employed either in
factories, like any adult employee, or the children are reduced to the state of
slaves by managers of not very scrupulous factories, by the means of the
constraint for debts.
The constraint for debts is without any doubt one of
the shapes of exploitation of the most intolerable children. What characterizes
this form of exploitation, they are not only the deplorable working conditions,
but especially that the human person is reduced to the state of goods :
the child slave belongs to an owner. One learns how with the young victims to
accept the conditions under which they live and especially never to rebel. In
South Asia, in particular in India, this phenomenon of slavery took a known
almost traditional form under the name of work in constraint of the children.
The principle of this system is very simple, the children who have often only
eight or nine years, are given in pledge by their parents to owners of
factories in exchange of loans. The children thus work to discharge a debt or
any other obligation contracted by their family, however the constraint of a
whole life does not most of the time even manage to reduce the debt of the
parents. Indeed, the creditors, who are generally the owners, handle the
parents so that it is very difficult, to see even impossible with the family to
settle her debt ; they thus secure a practically free labor with
perpetuity. The families can thus remain in constraint during generations, the
children taking the changing of the old or crippled parents. It will be pointed
out once more that the systems of constraint are illegal in almost all the
countries and in particular in those where they are most widespread ; they
are contrary not only with the laws on the child work but also with all the
International Conventions ratified by these countries.
In India, this type of transaction is very frequent in
agriculture, like industries like the manufacture of cigarettes, the weaving of
the carpets, the production of matches, the slate quarries and the industry of
silk. In Asia, one estimates at several tens of million the number of children
employed under these conditions. Well knew, the majority of the children thus
exploited belong to the most marginalized sectors of the company. These ethnic
minorities or these underprivileged groups are often regarded as not having any
right, and themselves were often able to believe it. In connection with this
true shape of slavery of the children, one generally thinks of meeting it only
in India, in Nepal and Pakistan, but it also exists in sub-Saharan Africa, in
Brazil or in Mauritania where each year of the thousands of babies are still
born in a slavery in fact. Traditional during generations, slavery was
officially abolished in 1980, but 400.000 black Africans are always useful as
slaves, officially or not their Berber Masters15(*).
The work of these children is not always remunerated, but when
it is it, the pledges are most of the time so thin that they will never be
enough to refund the debt. Of as much, that the owners of these children, are
never with court of ideas to prolong the financial dependence : the
employer takes the price of food and of the tools, if the child makes a fault
an additional sum is taken on his pledges and if it is sick, a new debt comes
to weigh down the first to pay the care. This rate/rhythm, it is thus not
astonishing that a family is controlled on several generations and what is of
course the objectives by the creditor-owner. This form of exploitation,
qualified the intolerable one by the UNICEF, fact part of the top priority of
the International Labor Organization, but its eradication appears difficult
because of the traditional character of this system and the great poverty of
the families, which consider it often preferable to send their child to work,
under conditions which they are unaware of often, rather than to keep it in a
family which cannot nourish it for lack of means.
The wage-earning of the children in the structured economic
sector is certainly the most studied form and médiatisée of the
child work, whereas in fact it relates to only one minority of children to
work ; the International Labor Office counts indeed only 8% of the active
children in manufacturing industries and as much in the trade and hotel trade,
a little less than 4% in transport and handling, 2% in the construction
industry and hardly 1% in the mines and the careers. Michel Bonnet affirms that
work in subcontracting for the multinationals
(articles of sport,
clothing) 10% of the workers would undoubtedly not occupy16(*). It is probably the same for
industrial agriculture (large coffee plantations, bananas, canes with sugar,
tea...) where 5% of the children would be active. Nevertheless, even if these
children represent a minority of the children to work, their working conditions
deserve alone that one stops on this form of exploitation. Indeed, they work
under particularly dangerous conditions ; let us quote simply as example
the working conditions in a factory of glass in India where « the
children transport masses of glass melted at the end of iron canes, with 60
centimetres hardly of their bodies ; they withdraw molten glass of
furnaces where the temperature reaches of 1500 with 1800°C, their short
arms children touching the furnace almost ; they assemble and model the
bracelets of glass on the small flame of a stove with kerosene in a part little
or not aired, since it would be enough to a draft to extinguish the flame. All
the ground of the factory is covered with fragment of glass and the children go
and come, carrying this extreme glass, without shoes to protect their feet.
Naked electric wire during a little everywhere because the owners of the
factory did not worry to install an electrical supply network interns
insulated. »17(*) The deplorable conditions are thus seen under which
children of less than 14 years are brought to work up to 14 hours per day. The
young minors know serious respiratory problems, such as tuberculosis,
bronchitis and asthma... the children working in the exploitations also run of
great physical risks, in particular of mutilations, in the plantations of cane
with sugar, where still risks of bites of snakes or insect bites.
If the majority of these industrial activities and
agricultural are the fact of national subcontractors, a part nevertheless is
controlled by transnational companies whose products are intended for the
stores and the hearths of the Occident. Large companies having their registered
office in the rich countries delocalize their installations of assembly in the
poor countries to benefit from the lower costs of personnel and the reduced
social security benefits. These cases brought humane militants in the countries
of origin and reception to make pressure on these companies so that they
establish as well codes of conduct applicable to their own operations, as with
those their subcontractors. We will see later on, the problems which can pose
this type of action and in particular their perverse influence on the child
work.
* 15 Charles Jacobs and
Mohammed Athie, « Bought and Sold », The New York
Times, July 13, 1994
* 16 BONNET Mr. Regards on
the hard-working children. The energization of the children in the contemporary
world. Analyze and case studies, « Free books
», Editions Page Two, Lausanne, 1998.
* 17 Report/ratio UNICEF
: « The situation of the children in the world »
1997
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