Would you buy cheap, child-sweatshop-made clothes?

pennypinchUK

In reality, it's been shown that although many reputable UK retailers typically use quality manufacturers, those manufacturers often sub-contract work out to companies with lower health & safety standards, which includes child-labour. So we don't really know what working standards our clothes are manufactured in. Certainly, there are plenty of examples of so-called "high-end luxury items", with high end prices, being made by child labour. So as consumers we can't go on price alone.

petermasih

I've lived in Pakistan. I've chatted to some of the children who did work for me, eg the lad who fixed my punctures and one who did a welding repair. They were often the main bread-winner in a family with a widowed Mum and four younger siblings. If some do-gooder stopped them working, their family could starve! There's no way they could get to school, because even in free schools you have to pay for uniform, text- and exercise-books. We need to encourage much wider social change.

pennypinchUK

In Pakistan, until quite recently in some areas, children were employed in the sweatshops and adults were employed in the brick works (a hard labour, highly dangerous, long hour, hot and hazardous working environment). Then, UK pressure groups started complaining about child labour making the clothes that were in UK shops. So manufacturers were forced to stop employing children in clothes manufacturing. Adults were brought in, often from the brickworks, to make our clothes (at similar rates to the children were getting, i.e., very low) and the only employment children could find was in the brick works (which the brick works owners didn't mind, because they lowered the pay rates as they were employing children).

So, the unintended consequence of the otherwise noble stance of UK consumers and fair trade minded retailers was to lower the pay rates in both the clothes manufacturing sweatshops and the brickworks. And now, children are employed in the far more hazardous brickworks environment.

Whether we like it or not, in many families in the developing world, children are a used as a source of income by their own family, often to be able to scrape a bare living.

Sometimes, we need to be careful of what we wish for, and how we go about achieving it.

mammasan25

Oh come on!! How many told porkies here? It's all very well saying you wouldn't buy, but there are actually poor people in this country too who don't have a choice but to buy the cheapest goods, whether they were made by child labour or not. I work with some of the poorest members of society and if I asked them to source clothes from a reputable company they would laugh in my face! And rightly so. They don't have the choice of shopping at high class stores, but try to budget their meagre income by buying cheap goods to make ends meet and to feed and clothe their children. I think there is an element of snobbery here - yes, maybe you WOULD never buy from disreputable sources but methinks the reality is different!

gemmaj

Who do we KNOW doesn't use child labour? (honest question!)

The only companies who I am fairly certain don't are eg green baby or people tree. Have you seen their prices? As someone with young kids I couldn't afford to buy a whole new 'wardrobe' every 3 months / 6 months / 1 year (depending on age of baby/child). From what I have seen on the news, paying extra to shop at places like Gap is no guarantee of improvement in fair trade over Primark etc.

I settle for buying a lot second hand, although I can never get everything I need.

rinabean

I try to buy British-made, western european-made or second-hand. I try and buy organic or pesticide-free fabrics. It's tough and, not being rich, I don't have a lot of new clothes! It would be tougher still if I had growing kids to clothe. That's just for normal and fashion clothes though - if I need something quickly for practical reasons I'm going to buy based only on cost and quality.

I think encouraging people to buy the best quality clothes they can afford will be more fruitful than encouraging boycotts - most people simply don't stick to their boycotts, the companies know this, but if people are buying for quality they can buy a lot fewer clothes over the years for just a little more, and it keeps money from supporting these unethical practices. Besides, it's proper, old-fashioned thrift

Don't pretend you buy things made with child labour because you care about the children and their family income!! Pull the other one. Where does that end? Child soldiers? Child prostitutes? It's fine, they wouldn't have been at school anyway, it's different in their country, hm? If you simply don't care that's one thing, but trying to justify it is disgusting.

Smedders11

Sweatshops are, without a doubt, terrible, squalid and soul-crushing places to work. However, they aren't forced to work there. This begs the question: why do they work there?

The reason is that the alternatives are so much worse it's unfathomable. I'm sure that if you were given the choice, you'd rather work in a factory at minimum wage as opposed to scavenging in rubbish dumps or working in even worse unregulated conditions and pay for other people organisations.

Also, by switching your commerce to something you see more ethical (supporting British or Western manufacturers) then all you're doing is hurting their lifestyle and bringing down their conditions even more. It's a terrible fact of life, by economic prosperity comes from social hardship. All industrialised countries have undergone it, and that is why our lives are so much better than theirs.

lazer

After the end of the cottage industries came the industrial revolution in the UK and Ireland (1800's I think)

Children were employed in coal mines, in textile factories (as they were small enough to be able to crawl under the machinery to collect scraps material etc.

Child labour is not unique to the developing countries, the developed countries all (or at least the majority) used it during their development.

Why do we feel the need to interfere in other countries development?

Once development continues in these countries, child labour will slowly fade out, jsut like it has here.

Edwardia

I think it's pretty difficult to really know how clothes are made because this happens abroad.

I'm still losing weight so at the moment I'm buying secondhand stuff from Oxfam and cheap tshirts from Sainsbury's, ASDA and Tesco, some of which are certified organic FairTrade.

I wouldn't knowingly buy clothes made by kids in sweatshops. The argument that people have to buy them because they can't afford anything but the cheapest clothes doesn't wash. Tshirts in charity shops can be 2.99 and some can be brand new.

Anthorn

I'll be brutally honest here: I would be concerned about the cheap child labour and look for alternatives but it wouldn't actually stop me from buying the product. I can't afford to be picky!

In reality, the choice for the child labourers and their families is little income or no income and little income is preferable: A bowl of rice is better than starving to death!