Child labor in Gap sweatshops
This is outrageous:
Child workers [in India], some as young as 10, have been found working in a textile factory in conditions close to slavery to produce clothes that appear destined for Gap Kids, one of the most successful arms of the high street giant.
[...]
The Observer discovered the children in a filthy sweatshop working on piles of beaded children's blouses marked with serial numbers that Gap admitted corresponded with its own inventory.
This isn't the first time Gap has been caught using child labor:
In 2004, when it launched its social audit, it admitted that forced labour, child labour, wages below the minimum wage, physical punishment and coercion were among abuses it had found at some factories producing garments for it. It added that it had terminated contracts with 136 suppliers as a consequence.
In the past year Gap has severed contracts with a further 23 suppliers for workplace abuses.
The globalized labor market has become an unfettered, Wild West free-for-all, without accountability or significant hope of reform. Companies like Gap are quick to terminate these contracts, but only after they've been caught by outsiders. Absent the likelihood of public scorn, they will continue to abuse economically vulnerable populations around the world.
This is the sadly predictable outcome of globalization, the malignant love-child of GATT and corporate greed. This is the face of "free" trade:
The key thing India has to offer the global economy is some of the world's cheapest labour, and this is the saddest thing of all the horrors that arise from Delhi's 15,000 inadequately regulated garment factories, some of which are among the worst sweatshops ever to taint the human conscience.