primark have been employing child labour...

[wannaBe]

without their knowledge of course

. Maybe it's just a case of when you buy any clothes you do so in the knowledge that someone will have been exploited to make them?

I suspect they far from being the only company to do so

just clothes as cheap as primark

it's so hard to believe they're made without exploitation -- i guess it shouldn't be surprising

what a suprise. agree with stuffitllama that there's a price at which you have to know deep down that soneone is getting screwed.

Tbh I think that any company who employs a manufacturer abroad does so in the knowledge that people will be exploited. They may not directly employ children, but I think that to think anyone can bring fair working conditions into countries that are known for their poor working practices is very naive.

Um, surely this is not news? They are certainly not the only ones.

Child labour in itself is not always some evil horrible thing though. If they're being treated fine and getting paid, they're not really being screwed are they?

before anyone shoots me down I'm not saying that child labour is always a good thing or naively think working conditions (regardless of age) are fine in these poorer developing countries.

but as long as we demand huge quantities of cheap clothes they are going to have to be made somewhere by people who accept being paid a pittance for their work.

ODB agree that child labour a greyer area than it looks like from our ivory tower

We know what the ideal is and what should be aspired to -- making it work without depriving whole families of income in the short term is a different thing

well yes but I'd also argue that we don't really know what the ideal is, we only have an ideal based on our notions of what is right and wrong or how life should be lived, , a western developed point of view. Not so long ago in our history people thought nothing of children working and contribuing to supporting the family.

This doesn't excuse us.. We shouldn't take part in the exploitation. But for the countries involved it's not as simple as a ban and then expecting everything to be alright.

Yes but the family adults should be employed instead of the children (obviously) it's not to be compared with children doing Saturday jobs at the age of 12 twenty years ago. They should be at school, and the family adults should be employed instead. Adults are more expensive, or possibly absent, and where one factory closes another opens, more secretly, possibly with worse conditions, and children will be exploited there.

This is children who should be at school. They are supporting adults who should be at work.

Should should should -- it's very easy to say what should be done. It's exceptionally hard to achieve.

of course it doesn't excuse us, I agree. Simply banning it won't solve the problem either.

What we need to do is stop being so materialistic and consumerist, oh I don't know actually, in an ideal world we'd all have what we want, whether it is cheap clothes or paid work to feed our families, without being exploited.

Yes but if we stopped buying they would have no income. They need us to buy.

Fairtrade on a mass scale, that's the way ahead.

TBH - I think most clothes not made in the west are potentially made by children. That probably means most high street stores.

but fair trade is a misnoma.

I read a very interesting artacle recently about fair trade, and the point made was that products that are considered to be fair trade aren't actually fair at all, because those that want to be fair trade are limited because they can only sell to those that trade fair, iyswim?

It's no different to the bigger companies having the monopolies.

thing is, though, it's those wee kids parents who have just lost their contracts at the factory... how does that really help?

it can't be expensive to offer to pay a teacher etc as part of a contract, so that the children in the area can be educated while the parents work. that would seem like progress, rather than pulling the rug out from under the feet of poor people.

I think in an ideal world we would all have what we NEED, rather than what we WANT. Earth's resources are too few to give everyone everything.

Anything that is very cheap is going to be bad in some way - exploiting someone/thing, extra-pollution etc. It is like the cheap Tesco chickens. They are cheap for a reason and none of it nice.

Message withdrawn

I personally don't shop at Primark. Its like a jumble sale to me. I'm not the least bit surprised about the child labour as I thought it was common knowledge anyway.

It's bloody infuriating that you can't walk out of your front door these days without exploiting someone or other. I mean that genuinely. How the fuck did it get like this?

I know what your saying Wannabe, but there is a danger of people just becopming cynical about everything and just saying 'fuck it' - actually that's probably how it has all got so bad; cynicism rather then positive action.

I also think it's very naive to think that children in some cultures should have lives like our kids, but that's obvioulsy isn't realistic, so the more we can reward more ethical approaches to child labour, better pay, access to education, etc, the better.

Exploitation is exploitation whereebver it's happening, long hours, starvation wages - but in 2nd or 3rd world economies where kids do need to work maybe we in the west could force a more moral compromise...I dunno

It's hardly a surprise is it! Clothes at that price are guaranteed to involve someone being screwed somewhere down the chain, and more than likely it's going to be children working in dangerous conditions.

I dollar a month by our standards doesn't sound like much, and as economies get stronger, the pay does go up, so it's a fluid situation, not a static one. Every little helps imho.

I think the earth has plenty resourses for everyone Callisto, just a lot of those resources are hoarded by the most powerful, which is unsavoury but pretty logical, when it comes to looking after your own thinking.

plenty of chains that sell clothes at much higher prices than Primark have been caught using child labour.