But it’s not because of globalization…
The issue of child labor has long been a flashpoint in the globalization debate. As repellant as the notion of child labor is, the harsh truth is that a Western company?that stops using?child labor in some Third World nations does not change the economic conditions that had?those children working in the first place. Nor does it change?the local cultural standards that accept and expect child labor. Unfortunately, in many corners of the globe, closing the factories and sweatshops to children often just seals for them a far worse fate.
In the early 1990s, for example, the U.S. Congress considered legislation that would have imposed sanctions on corporations who benefit from child labor.?The bill never got through Congress, but it did trigger enormous political pressure on such companies. One German company buckled under pressure from activists, and laid off 50,000 child garment workers in Bangladesh.?The British charity group Oxfam later conducted a study on those 50,000 workers, and found that thousands of them later turned to prostitution, crime, or starved to death.
