GAP: a biggest trending outfitter company or a biggest supporter of child labor?
By Samit Datta
March 14, 2018
It’s 6:30 PM and you just came back from picking up your kids from school. You turn on the TV and see a GAP commercial for kids. You see a dress for your kid that will make your sister jealous after her daughter’s rose gold outfit was the talk of night at last week’s party. It was a one day sale, so you decide to take your kids and rush to GAP to purchase it. It took you a hour to decide and buy it, while it takes kids who makes the product a few days to make. That’s right, you didn’t read it wrong. GAP has indeed been using underage workers to make their products.
Child labor appear in the United States around the late 1700s to early 1800s, and wasn’t abolished until 1938 where the US government decides to regulate child labor with “minimum ages of 16 for work during school hours, 14 for certain jobs after school, and 18 for dangerous work” (Scholastic News, Child Labor). While the US is doing a great job regulating child labor, we have other countries where regulations are so bad, big company tends to build factory on those countries. According to UN, there is about 218 million children in the child labor process. Being part of the child labor process can be very dangerous. As stated in “Child labour and health: evidence and research issues” by O. O’Donnell and two others, surveys “found 60% of all economically active children to be exposed to hazardous working conditions: 19% being exposed to biological hazards, 26% to chemical and 51% to environmental (NSOP, 1998). Of all child workers, 24% were found to suffer work related illness and/or injury, a prevalence rate much higher than that for adult workers”.The top four countries that has an tremendous amount of child laborers are The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India and Liberia.
Speaking of India, there was a popular incident in India in 2007 where cops raided a building to find out that there were many young kids working, as Telegraph stated “The boys, some as young as eight, looked utterly terrified as a police inspector explained that they were working illegally and would shortly be returned to their families (Foster, ‘Gap sweatshop children’ saved in India raid) What is more shocking is that the building was subcontracted to GAP, one of the most popular clothing company in the world. In GAP’s Child Labor and Younger Worker page in their sustainability website, they said they would
remove young worker from facility and provide education for the illegal workers. From the looks of it, it doesn’t seem like GAP is doing a good job doing it. Most of GAP suppliers are in India and Bangladesh. Child labor was abolished in India in 1986 and in Bangladesh in November 1996, but there is still about 5 million children workers today, “The majority of child labour is involved in
dangerous or hazardous occupations such as
agriculture, manufacture, construction, retail and
marginal activities” (Yadav, Health Problems of Child Labour). The reason for such high amount of child workers are due to poverty according to UN, but it is not a excuse for GAP to be hiring children to work.
The issue with GAP being caught red-handed with child labor practices, as a fan of Gap myself, is that it can destroy its reputation. Let’s take Toy R US as a example. As they were caught with “employment of children of 14-15 years – their shares fell 6%, but no effect was seen on their work. They have been caught several times for exploitation of child labor.” (Wisestep, Companies that use child labor). Losing 6% of the stocks means they lost about 2.1 million worth of dollars. If would to happen to GAP inc, not only will they be losing money, they will lose the customers too.
Meet Kaluram, a child laborer that has been interview by India Unheard. IndiaUnheard is a community news service launched by Video Volunteer. The goal of their service is spread the awareness of what going on in the communities of India and tell the untold story through internet, mainly in Youtube. In the video, when Kaluram was asked for the reason he is working right now, he replied that his father died three years ago and he had to quit school to take over the role of being the sole breadwinner of the family. Making about 2000 Rs ($28.65 USD) a month, Kaluram barely makes just enough for the family expense. Shambhulal Khatik, the man who interview Kaluram and talks about the child labor issue in India, ask a important question that til this day hasn’t been answered yet. “Children are considered be the future of the country, than why are the children misled?”
Before you burn all your GAP items and start a protest against GAP, I propose a idea that help benefit both the customers and the company and ease the issue. .
How about we negotiated a way to get kids to be in a safer and healthier work environment? It is similar to United State’s regulation on child labor, allowing certain age group to do certain work. You might think its a crazy idea but Apple has done something similar before.
In 2017, cobalt mines in Democratic Republic of Congo were reported using child laborers. Some of these mines are suppliers to Apple and Apple responds to the shocking news was that “We are working with our cobalt suppliers and stakeholders on a programme that will verify individual artisanal mines, according to our standards, and these mines will be allowed into our supply chain when we are confident the appropriate protections are in place. We have also partnered with numerous NGOs to drive change, including Pact, who are working to provide essential health and safety training to artisanal mining communities, and build programmes to help children stay at school‘“(Edwards, Apple is trying to fix the mining business). In shorter words, Apple are working on ending child labor and even partnered with organization to help provide health and safety training for the mining community. Samsung, another phone company that also uses the cobalt mines in Democratic Republic of Congo, hasn’t respond to it yet. Something similar to should be done with Gap .
Gap’s rivalries Urban Outfitter, AEO, The Children’s Place and J Crew are all part of the child labor scandal also, which can make it a game changer for Gap Inc. If Gap can make their child labor policy stricter and regulate all of it’s factories, it can improve their reputation and beat the competition no doubt. It can also prevent more opportunity of child labor.
If you like to be part of the child labor movements, I recommend visiting the Global March against Child Labor website.
Global March against Child Labor was founded in 1998 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Kailash Satyarthi. It’s a worldwide network of civil organizations, teachers, public unions that all come together to develop goals to prevent and eliminate child labors, slavery, and trafficking. For more information on being part of the March, visit https://globalmarch.org/get-involved.
Work Cited:
Image 1 (picture edited together) –
Image 2 –
Delhi, Peter Foster in New. “’Gap Sweatshop Children’ Saved in India Raid.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 29 Oct. 2007, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1567849/Gap-sweatshop-children-saved-in-India-raid.html.
Image 3 –
VideoVolunteers. An Interview With A Child Labourer, YouTube, 1 Oct. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcAvxXZz9cA.
“Child Labor.” Scholastic News In-Depth: Child Labor, teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/child_labor/for_teachers/index.asp?CR=Grolier&article=knowledge. Accessed 12 March 2019.
Yadav, Surendra Kumar, and Gowri Sengupta. Environmental and Occupational Health Problems of Child Labour: Some Issues and Challenges for Future. pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8ee7/b2df0b9d46d3118c3e3189a819b6029f5ced.pdf. Acessed 9 March 2019.
O’Donnell, O. and van Doorslaer, Eddy and Rosati, Furio C., Child Labour and Health: Evidence and Research Issues (January 2002). Understanding Children’s Work Programme Working Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1780320 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1780320 Accessed 12 March 2019.
“Top 28 Companies That Use Child Labor Still !” WiseStep, 5 Apr. 2018, content.wisestep.com/companies-use-child-labor/.
Edwards, Jim. “This Child Being Abused in a Cobalt Mine Is Why Apple Is Trying to Fix the Mining Business.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 14 May 2017, www.businessinsider.com/apple-cobalt-mine-child-labor-2017-5.
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