Sullied Clothes: Child Labour in the Garment Industry of India

I. Introduction

We as humans like to pick up the fanciest clothes while shopping, but we seldom stop and think, “who made these clothes?”. A lot of children are hired in the garment industries because they make up for cheap and unskilled labour force, which means that a lot of our wardrobe consists of clothes made from blatant exploitation of little children.

An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report quantified that in India, about 5.8 million children aged 5-17 years work under extremely poor conditions, which makes up for the highest rate of child labour in South Asia². The amount of child labourers in the garment industry of India are expanding with new upcoming brands. India is a signatory to the ILO conventions which seek to combat forced labour and child labour and also has the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act, 1986 (CLPRA). But creating jurisprudence is not the same as taking substantive steps towards implementation. A recent study of 2019 found that children are being employed at a large scale in the garment industry in all stages of the supply- from cotton fields, harvesting and spinning yarn to cutting and embroidery.³ SOMO has described India as one of the most notorious countries for exploitation of child labour.⁴

This paper is divided into three parts. In Part-I, the author attempts to gauge the situation of child labour in the garment industry of India, for which various news reports, research papers and official reports have been analysed. In light of this, the author analyses international standards as well as judicial decisions and legislative provisions in India in Part-II of the paper. This is followed by Part-III, which is a concluding section wherein the author mentions the way forward through policy changes and stringent actions.

II. Why is child labour so rampant in the garment industry?

Child labour in the Indian garment industry is like modern day slavery.⁵ In there, children below the age of 14 are employed in various stages of the supply chain such as harvesting, spinning, weaving, to make-cut-trim and embroidery work.⁶ They are employed because, firstly, they fulfill the demand for unskilled and cheap labour, due to which they are employed at very low wages.⁷ Secondly, the adults family members who work in the garment factories receive very low wages themselves, which forces children to work there too. Thirdly, the use of machinery adds a lot of cost when it comes to embroidery and detailing of clothes, especially in the informal sector, so, children prove to be beneficial because they would speedily do the work by hand due to their “small fingers” and this work would cost really less due to the negligible wages paid to them.⁸ Such finishing work is quite intricate and is mostly done by the informal garment sectors or is contracted out to individual families working from their home.⁹

Handloom Industry

The handloom industry has a close relationship with child labour. One technical reason is that the sitting arrangement in a handloom is not spacious, so a child is better fitted to accommodate as a helper to the weaver.¹⁰ In Nakashipara, West Bengal, silk sarees are woven by children who are sold over to factory owners by their parents for a sum of Rs.10,000-20,000. This money is handed over as a loan, but most of these families are so poor that they are unable to pay it back, hence their children are stuck with the loom owners for years or even a lifetime.¹¹ Reports have mentioned that two children who weave one saree get a meagre sum of Rs. 150 for it, whereas the saree itself sells for Rs. 1200. Most of these children are not able to ever go to school because their parents are not able to pay back the loan that they took in exchange for their labour.¹²

Silk Industry

Majority of the children working in the silk weaving industries of Tamilnadu and Karnataka are bonded labourers. Apart from negligible wages, this industry is very harmful for their health as well.¹³ Human Rights of a Child includes right to health and care and protection from abuse, which is not fulfilled when they work in these industries as it is very toxic for their health.¹⁴ The rooms are poorly ventilated and crowded, where digestive disorders and tuberculosis spread easily and the improper lighting causes visual damage.¹⁵ The silk threads tend to cut the finger which takes a lot of time to heal. They also have to dip their hands in boiling water which burns their skin, they breathe the smoke that fumes from the machines and handle dead worms which causes infections. These bonded children also face physical abuse at the hands of the supervisor by getting “beaten with belts” and are “tied to chains”¹⁶ They are made to work for more than 16 hours for almost all days of the week. The Human Rights Watch released a report where these bonded children labourers were addressed as “virtual slaves”.¹⁷ The report also called on the Indian Government to implement its laws and fulfill its international obligations by freeing and rehabilitating these bonded children. But, a counsel to the Human Rights Watch revealed that the government was still making false claims that there were no bonded children in India.¹⁸

Textile Industry

The Maid in India report and the India Committee of Netherlands have recorded some shocking data related to child labour in the textile mills of Tamil Nadu.¹⁹ In there, children, especially young dalit girls, are recruited from extremely impoverished areas on a three to five- year contract basis on the promise of payment of decent wages and an “end-of-contract-bonus” which can be used to pay their dowry.²⁰ This is the ‘Sumangali’ scheme, which is used to attract young girls into working in factories. Even though they are promised decent wages along with an accommodation in a “protected girls’ hostel”, this is far from the truth. They are actually made to live and work in appalling conditions and are not given the freedom to talk to their family members or even leave the hostel premises. They are not given any pay slip and there is no complaint or redressal mechanism.²¹ They are also subjected to verbal, mental and physical abuse and are made to work for more than 60 hours a week along with unpaid mandatory night shifts.²²

Home Based Garment Sector

“My parents couldn’t afford fees for school, so I do this work instead”²³

The Indian garment industry employs millions of workers in an informal, home based setting. The end products made by these workers are sourced to major brands and also make up a large chunk of exports to countries such as the United States and the European Union.²⁴ Many of these companies provide decent working conditions and salaries to the workers in the first-tier factories of their suppliers in India. However, the labour of the home-based workers, which forms a part of the supply chain, becomes invisible because the work is sub-contracted to them by the main factories of India who have contracts with the major brands. Since this sub-contracting to home-based workers is rarely tracked or disclosed, it creates a “supply chain opacity” which leads to their exploitation.²⁵ This home-based work involves making intricate designs such as sequin work, zari, hand embroidery, bead work, fringing, etc. which take a lot of time to make. This work is hazardous because it is mostly performed in dark and dusty environments with minimal ventilation and the workers have to suffer from many ailments such as cuts, infections, muscular ache, loss of vision, chronic back pain, etc. In the finishing stage of apparel which involves embroidery and embellishment work, child labour is highly prevalent. By the time these children reach their mid-teens, their fingers are badly damaged and eyesight becomes very weak due to working for long hours in dark rooms, especially in the zari sector.²⁶

In 2002, a UNICEF sponsored report revealed that in Lucknow, Uttarpradesh, 21% of children from ages 5-10 and 71% of children from ages 11-14 were involved in home-based garment work. These children were neither studying in any school, nor undertook any part-time courses. As many as 18% of the children suffered from ailments which were directly attributed to the labour that they performed towards the making of these garments.²⁷ Another research conducted in 2015 in New Delhi and its neighboring areas revealed that the primary reason why children work in this industry is because they have to supplement the household income. Shockingly, it was also revealed that about 36% of these children did not get paid anything for their work.²⁸

Home based workers are the most underpaid and vulnerable individuals in the garment supply chain. They receive wages which are about 60%-80% lower than the minimum wages stipulated by the states, and they have to do this time-consuming work while also juggling household responsibilities.²⁹ The children, especially females, working in this sector are not allowed to leave their homes and attend school, which severely limits their growth opportunities. There is also absolutely no recourse to exploitative working conditions and an inability to bargain for decent working conditions and wages.³⁰

III. International conventions and indian legislative framework

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines child labour as such work which deprives the child of their childhood, dignity and potential, it is harmful for their physical and mental development and interferes with their schooling.³¹ But the ILO also mentions the types of child work which does not constitute as child labour. Accordingly, the worst forms of child labour are those which enslave or separate children from their families or where they are exposed to hazardous work conditions or made to earn for themselves in such working conditions at a very young age.³² India is a signatory of the International Conventions no. 29, which defines forced labour as involuntary and coerced, Convention no. 138 which stipulates that before the age of 18, no child must be involved in hazardous work (including developing nations) and Convention no. 182 which describes such work as child labour which is harmful for their health, morals and safety, such as trafficking, etc.

The Constitution of India, 1950 prohibits the employment of children in factories and other hazardous settings under Article 24.³³ Article 23 also prohibits the forced labour and traffic in human beings.³⁴ The Supreme Court of India, in the case of People’s Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India and Ors. (1982)³⁵ held that forced labour is when a worker receives lesser wages than the government-stipulated minimum wage. With respect to bonded labour, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976 (BLA), describes it as a system of forced labour where the debtor accepts some money in cash or kind in exchange for the labour of one of their family members in benefit of the creditor, whether with or without wages. The Supreme Court in PUDR also held that any factor which deprives the person of an alternative and compels them to keep working in one condition is force and any labour done in furtherance of that force is forced labour. One of the main legislative frameworks which tries to tackle the problem of child labour is the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986³⁶, which defines a child as being of 14 years of age. Section 3 of this Act prohibits child labour in hazardous occupations³⁷; further, section 7 puts a cap on the number of hours a child may work in a day to 6, anything beyond is child labour.³⁸

Looking at the various sectors in the garment industry, it becomes obvious that forced child labour is rampant all over. Children here are trafficked, bonded and abused.³⁹ All this is despite the fact that India is a signatory to the ILO Conventions against child labour and forced labour and has legislative and constitutional laws against the same. The formal sector has better working conditions since the factories are in urban area and wages paid to the children are relatively higher as compared to the informal working sectors. Even though the factories in the formal sector are easy to identify and penalize through the application of laws against forced child labour, owners of the factories hide these children and falsify their records on recruits when auditors come for inspection.⁴⁰ Children who are even below the age of 14 are blatantly employed in the factories and are not provided with any protective gear or safe working environment. The CLPRA, 1986 restricts child labour in many garment manufacturing processes such as zari⁴¹ making, handloom and powerloom industry, dyeing, weaving etc., and if at all a child is working then they are not allowed to work between 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. and not more than three hours without a break.⁴² The Minimum Wage Act, 1948 is also important, since it ensures that workers are paid minimum wages and also when they work overtime, but there is also a provision which mandates the revision of wages every five years. The BLA, 1976 mentions that if a worker is working in lieu of an advance, is paid less than minimum wages prescribed by the government and loses their right to move freely, they are classified as bonded labourers. Still, schemes like the Sumangali exist and facilitate bonded labour in the garment industry. Even the Juvenile Justice Act, 2000 makes the demand for protecting the child employee from mental and physical abuse, and Section 26 of the same renders their exploitation a cognizable offense.⁴³ But, in reality, we see that exploitative child labour is being practiced openly without any fear of the legal implications it could have.

Despite all the laws, various case studies have revealed that children are employed as labourers in all of these processes and are made to work in pathetic conditions, with minimal wages. These children are beaten up, sexually and physically abused and starved.⁴⁴ The conditions of work are worse in the informal sector where children are made to work at their home. CLPRA, 1986 previously only dealt with the organised sector, which was only 10% of the entire child labour force, leaving the rest of 90% in the rural and urban unorganised sectors as well as family units, which were technically outside the purview of the Act. Now, after the 2016 amendment, a child is allowed to “help” his or her family enterprise if it does not interfere with their schooling and is non-hazardous.⁴⁵ As per Section 3(b), a family enterprise is such work which the members of family perform with the help of other people.⁴⁶ Due to the exception of a child working with their family, it becomes difficult to find out if their employers themselves are the family members. It also does not define the maximum number of hours and has been criticized and described as a law that “allows child labour”.⁴⁷ Case studies have revealed that children do not get to go to school at all, which is in violation of their fundamental right to education under Article 21, Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 and also elaborated in Bandhua Mukti Morcha (1997) ⁴⁸. In 2019, Al-Jazeera reported that after reports of pervasive child labour in South India were getting viral, garment factories there were asked to enforce new labour standards drafted by Southern India Mills Association (SIMA). These standards mainly prevent assigning teenagers for overnight shifts, limit the duration of daily shifts and make a code of conduct on how to treat child employees.⁴⁹ But, these standards were never given the force of law and remain to be voluntary and suggestive, and looking at the drastic condition of child labour in the garment industry, it is clear that neither will there be any implementation of these standards, nor will the employers be held accountable.

IV. Conclusion: what is the way forward?

It is clear that the concern is not of lack of laws, but proper implementation and holding the perpetrators accountable. Even though the content of the ILO has been translated and formulated into national legislation, however, the implementation is very poor.⁵⁰ The government should increase the awareness of responsibility and clearly set out expectations from business enterprises, including supply chains in the garment industry.⁵¹ It must also be ensured that all establishments, be it formal or informal, are registered, for which labour inspections must be conducted regularly.⁵² A comprehensive evaluation of child labour in the carpet industry of Pakistan post the murder of Iqbal Masih proves to be of importance here.⁵³ Similar recommendations can be adopted to curb child labour in India too. A Monitoring and Prevention Component must be established which helps to document production structure and labour market of garment industry in India. There must also be a social protection component which addresses educational and other training needs of these children and help their families economically too. This specific measure will also help families to withdraw their children from garment manufacturing and will also reduce their working hours.⁵⁴ After all these new laws are formulated, there must be a mechanism of post implementation situation analysis of child labour situation in the garment industry which should focus on rehabilitating the children working in hazardous conditions and shift them to other safe occupations⁵⁵. The central and state governments have to analyse socio-economic problems which majorly contribute to child labour such as caste and poverty, as well as keep revising the minimum-wage laws and implement it in a strict manner. There is also a dire need for contractors and sub-contractors to ensure that the work assigned by them does not involve child labour by making some form of reporting compulsory.⁵⁶ They must register all the workers, especially those working in the informal sector, who are contracted to do their work, and they must ensure that this information is provided to the main suppliers and brands. This can only be possible if these people are held to be responsible for checking who they are assigning the garment making task to, for which, legislative action through enactment of new and stricter laws need to take place.⁵⁷ All the sub-contracted workers must be provided with written contracts from the suppliers who outsource the work to them, which must ensure that the standards of minimum wages and working conditions are met. Regular visits from labour inspectors to monitor and audit the conditions of the workers in the formal as well as informal sector must be mandated to ensure that children are not made to do hazardous work and are being compulsorily sent to school. Another layer of check must be added in the form of third-party independent supply chain inspectors, who must monitor all the supply chain stages, from the start till the end.⁵⁸

Forming of trade-unions which focus on eradication of child labour in these industries must be encouraged, which will ensure that children, even if employed in the garment industry, are not made to do hazardous work. Additionally, home-based garment worker unions must be encouraged to be formed to promote an avenue where they can seek redressal and bargain for better working conditions and wages.⁵⁹ NGOs can play a vital role in curbing these issues by identifying child labour in various stages of supply and bringing it to the knowledge of the government. These organisations must also make sure that the children are being provided with proper food and medical assistance and are not being abused in any way possible.⁶⁰ In addition to all the steps, it is imperative that investigation and prosecution for those who practice exploitative child labour on them must be increased by legislating and implementing a sufficiently deterring penalty. Not only the factory owners, but also the inspectors and sub-contractors must be held accountable and punishments must ensue if they fail to comply with their duties.⁶¹

Lastly, it is very important to create awareness on the topic and to sensitise and inform the western brands and the end consumers of the exploitative conditions under which these garments are manufactured. This way, there will be a greater demand and accountability for addressing all these issues. This will also allow the consumers to make a choice to purchase clothes from brands which do not taint their goods with servile child labour exploitation.⁶²

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