Child slaves in India working for Gap

[trancepriest]

The Observer spoke to children as young as 10 who said they were working 16 hours a day for no pay. The paper described the workplace as a "derelict industrial unit" where the hallways were flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.

One 10-year-old boy told the paper he was sold to the company by his parents.

"'I was bought from my parents' village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train," The Observer quoted the boy as saying. "The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won't have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me, and I was brought down with 40 other children."

Another boy, 12, said he worked from dawn until 1 a.m. and was so tired he felt sick, according to the paper. But if any of the children cried, he told The Observer, they would be hit with a rubber pipe or punished with an oily cloth stuffed in their mouths.

Read the article:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapc...bor/index.html

[JMT]

Just cinch it.

[Bling]

[cire]

You have to have small hands making the clothes to get all the intricate details right.

This is horrible, but it's places like India and China where we get all our goods. There are no regulations over there and this is the biproduct, a country with a billion-plus, abusing children to make goods for the western world. Horribly wrong.

[slamminshaun]

Ok, I must admit...the headline of this thread grabbed my attention, but its VERY misleading. Those kids did NOT work for Gap. Gap did NOT cut them a paycheck. They work for an Indian company that supplied Gap one time only. Upon notification, Gap fired the company....end of story.

Why is the attention on Gap and not the camel jockeys that did this?

[web_norah]

Originally Posted by slamminshaun

Ok, I must admit...the headline of this thread grabbed my attention, but its VERY misleading. Those kids did NOT work for Gap. Gap did NOT cut them a paycheck. They work for an Indian company that supplied Gap one time only. Upon notification, Gap fired the company....end of story.

Why is the attention on Gap and not the camel jockeys that did this?

#


ahem..........
GAP always priding itself on NOT EMPLOYING or USING child working factories for their clothes...and allegations of them 'knowing' about this factory warranted all the bad press and attention they received ..

end of story.

[trancepriest]

Originally Posted by web_norah

#


ahem..........
GAP always priding itself on NOT EMPLOYING or USING child working factories for their clothes...and allegations of them 'knowing' about this factory warranted all the bad press and attention they received ..

end of story.

Plus GAP having a long history of having child laborers. It was only in 2004 that they started to do something about it... obviously not enough. The child slaves were making clothing for GAP kids.

In 2003 The Gap, along with 21 other companies, was involved in a class action lawsuit filed by sweatshop workers in Saipan. The allegations included "off the clock" hours, where workers were not paid for working overtime, unsafe working conditions, and forced abortion policies.[6] A settlement of 20 million dollars was reached whereby The Gap did not admit liability. [7]

In May 2006, adult and child employees of Western, a supplier in Jordan, were found to have worked up to 109 hours per week and to have gone six months without being paid. Some employees claimed they had been raped by managers.[10]

On October 28, 2007, BBC footage allegedly showed child labour being used in Indian GAP factories[11]. GAP has denied that it was aware of such happenings and that it is against its policy to use child labour. The one piece of clothing in question - a smock blouse - was removed from a British store and will be destroyed. GAP also promised to investigate breaches in its ethical policy.