NIKE AND CHILD LABOUR

NIKE AND CHILD LABOUR
By: Cameron Henry

Nike has a history of making children sew their panels onto their Nike soccer balls. This is a problem because it takes away the children's education and their childhood, and it can also be physically harmful. They often work in an unsafe environment that can sometimes take lives or may even make them very ill because the factories are usually non-sanitary. The children also make very little money - barely enough to buy a simple bag of milk. This needs to stop NOW !!!!!!! not next year or next month or next week not even tomorrow it has to stop. TODAY !!!!!
Tariq was 12 years old when he had an entire month of fame. In 1996, a Life magazine photographer found him in a Pakistani village sewing panels on Nike soccer balls for 79 cents a ball. Tariq helped push the problem of child labour into the international spotlight. As a result, Nike and other companies were forced to come up with codes of conduct that would prevent kids from making their products. Yet child labour became more common in the new global economy. "Companies bent on earning ever-higher profits demand ever-lower production costs" (Cox 1). They push producers to make more product for less money. The producers want to make money too, so they hire the cheapest employees--children. The International Labour Organization states that 180 million children aged five to seventeen are involved in the worst forms of extremely dangerous labour: work " that causes irreversible physical or psychological damage, or even threatens their lives." (Cox 1) That's one in eight children worldwide. Sixty-seven million more kids aged five to fourteen do work that interferes with their education, physical and emotional development and future jobs. When child workers are asked what they would like to be doing, they always say that they want to be at school. About 25,000 children aged ten to fourteen stitch soccer balls in India's Punjab region and in Pakistan around the colonial city of Sialkot, according to the Global March Against Child Labour. India and Pakistan both export a lot of sporting goods. Hexagonal panels are cut in factories and, to save on labour costs, "kits" of 32 panels per ball are shipped to slums and villages for kids to put together. Children are good employees because they have small fingers and do as they are told. "They are also paid considerably less than adult sewers, who themselves make a daily average of just $1.44". (Cox 1)
Nike, Adidas and other big manufacturers have promised to monitor the work and to help the child labourers get back to school but not too much is happening . "Global March says neither the companies nor the International Federation of Football (soccer) Associations have done nearly enough. They want manufacturers to agree to an open, industry-wide system that tracks how products are being made". (Cox 1)

This child labour needs to be stopped - not just Nike, all child labour needs to be stopped. Think of how great it would be for all those kids that are trapped in child labour hoping to be set free. They would have their education back, and the rest of their childhood. There would be no more fear of physical harm or their lives being threatened. Think of this if you are a mother or a father of a five year old son or daughter. You are probably sending them to school and you know they’re safe but these parents are sending their children to work all by themselves. The parents of those kids don’t even know if their children are going to come home injured or even come home at all. I’m going to try to stop Nike’s child labour by boycotting Nike by not buying any of their product and I think you should do the same to.
Bibliography

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