Child Labour and Childish Arguments

WE all know that a very pet policy prescription of the developed countries and their spokes-institutions, World Bank and IMF, continues to be global free trade. From the arguments placed, it seems that nothing is more valuable than fidelity to free trade. (The world is dead but long live free trade!) It is, as if, an "economic tablet" that cures all kinds of diseases and applies to all kinds of people, irrespective of their age, sex, culture and other variables. It is, perhaps, needless to mention that the WTO is the end product of that "vision" of a globalised village where the "lions" and the "ants" are supposed to fight for a pie through engaging themselves in trade. And where efficiency and competition would rule the world, prayer for some degree of protection for the "ants" was never accepted and went, so to say, mostly unheard and unnoticed.

But once the game in the field of trade started with free trade as the motto, lion-like developed countries started to envy the ant-like developing countries, notwithstanding the fact that developing countries were forced to swallow the pill called free trade they invented only to be robbed of their entitlements, on different pretexts, through different trade embargoes. An arsenal of complaints are on board against them but the issue of the use of child labour moved to the centre stage. It is being alleged that developing countries reap cost advantage over developed countries by using child labour in their production processes. Cheaper goods from cheap child labour tend to knock out dearer goods from expensive labour of developed countries. Therefore, it is another kind of dumping called "social dumping" which needs to be countervailed or faced with other means. The other "non-economic" argument against the use of child labour generally placed is "humanitarian": Why should the "future" citizens of developing countries be used for their "present" production? After all, humanity is the hallmark of developed countries and that needs to be guarded against all possible odds and attacks. The proposed "green bill" in the US Congress stood for duties on products originating from cheaply child labour. However, while developing countries including Bangladesh, carried out massive trade reforms and dismantled trade barriers showing deep respects to the WTO rules, on the other side of the fence, developed countries, allegedly, resorted to various types of newer protectionist devices e. g. Voluntary Export Restraints (VER), Antidumping, etc. Such practices are opposed to the WTO rules. Furthermore, the US withdrew from its long-standing stances of opposition to regionalism and went to embrace preferential trading arrangement with Mexico, Canada and Israel.

Jagdish Bhagwati - Arther Lehman Professor of Economics, Columbia University and a distinguished trade economist - attempts to contest the premises upon which the child labour arguments put a foot. He pinpoints the vacuousness enshrined thereupon and seemingly, lashed out at the lame excuses thrown over, time to time, in order to place conditionalities of trade upon developing countries (see, The Global Trading System and Developing Asia, ADB): "... Central to United States thinking on the question of the Social Clause is the notion that competitive advantage can be morally "illegitimate". In particular, it is argued that if labour standards elsewhere are different and unacceptable morally, then the resulting competition is morally illegitimate and "unfair". One may therefore, reject such trade, even though it is beneficial to one's nation; or one may alternatively veto it because it is unfair to have one's industry or its labour force be subjected to competition that is "unfair"."

In the light of the arguments as mentioned above, one needs to reckon that the whole issue of child labour boils down to attaching "values" related to the suspension of other country's trading rights. Value judgements are always varied excepting, perhaps, concerning that of the slavery which is condemned by every one, every where and every time. But child labour is not slavery (admittedly, slavery is rare nowadays). Of course, "ILO has many conventions that many nations signed. But many have signed simply because, in effect, they are not binding. Equally the United States has signed no more than a tiny fraction of these. The question whether a substantive consensus on anything except well-meaning and broad principles without consequences for trade access in case of non compliance can be obtained, is therefore dubious".

According to Bhagwati, there is pervasive presence of diversity of labour practices and standards which tend to reflect "not necessarily venality and wickedness, but rather diversity of cultural values, economic conditions and analytical beliefs and theories concerning the economic (and therefore moral) consequences of specific labour standards...". Further he goes on to challenge the "moral leadership" that US seems to uphold on the question vis a vis developing countries: "... it is hard to sustain when its own violations would surely qualify for trade sanctions in an impartial tribunal. Thus for instance, worker participation in decision making on the plant, a measure of true economic democracy, much more pertinent than the unionisation of labour, is far more widespread in Europe than in North America. Would we then condemn North America to denial of trading rights by the Europeans? Migrant labour is ill-treated to the level of brutality and slavery in US agriculture due to grossly inadequate and corrupt enforcement, if investigative television shows on US televisions are a guide; does this mean that other nations should prohibit the import of US agricultural products?... Indeed in August 1995, the discovery of a garment factory in California run with about 70 illegal female migrants who were virtually imprisoned and worked as slaves... leading to official admission of widespread abuse of minimum-wages, overtime, health and safety regulations throughout the garment industry..."

The issue of child labour should be seen in the backdrop of some other events. Arguably, few of the children, even in the US, grow up without working as babysitters or delivering news papers; many are even paid by parents for housework. The pertinent social question, familiar to anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with Chadwick, Engles and Dickens, and the apalling conditions afflicting children at work in England's factories in the early Industrial Revolution, is rather whether children at work are protected from hazardous and oppressive working conditions".

Whether or not child labour should be altogether banned would hinge mostly upon the available alternatives of the households supplying child labour. The alternative that they tend to face in Bangladesh or elsewhere is starvation and extinction. Both starvation and extinction are greater calamity than that of the use of child labour. And "that eliminating child labour would then be like voting to eliminate abortion without worrying about the needs of the children that are born".

Now let us take the fundamental fear that cramps on the developed countries. It is that the low-cost commodities (from low-priced child labour) exported by the developing countries appear to compete with unskilled labour of the importing countries. As a result, there grows unemployment and deprivation. The argument is not tenable due to three reasons. First, over the years, technological developments in developed economies, especially in the US, seem to have replaced labour to an extent and second, the prices of those products have not fallen, in fact have risen. Whereas, according to the famous Stolper-Samuelson postulate, the prices of the products that cheap labour produces in developing countries should go down in developed countries. And, third, statistics on real wages of America display no sign of a decline and thus does not conform to the hypothesis. Of a fall in employment level and therefore of real wages.

Instead of raising hue and cry over the child labour issue and forcing the developing countries to leave the trading field on different pretexts, the positive attitude would call for (a) a regular monitoring of the security standards of those labour in plants; and (b) working out a formula to set a common standard of child labour throughout the world. After all, the standard that US wants to maintain in respect of child labour could be different from that in Bangladesh.

In the name of labour standards or other reasons, a move towards protectionism would only kill the globalisation baby of which the developed countries claim the fatherhood. It is an irony that the fearful lion stopped roaring and begs Special Social Clause from world trade bodies. Let not healer be the killer.