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?

Message withdrawn

Even the more expensive brands are made in Indian factories who pay their employees a pittance compared to our wages. But they are employing adults. I agree that it is fluid and that eventually wages will get higher for these people. It may cost us more for our clothes but in this age of throw away fashion this isn't a bad thing.

There will be sweatshops full of kids in the UK soon - mark my words!

I was reading about children in India ruining their eyesight sewing tiny crystals onto clothing. It's hard to buy those goods after hearing about that...

their wages may seem like a pittance compared to our wages, but the cost of living is lower and plenty of people are exploited here in the UK too working long hours for a minimum wage. But work is still better than no work, and children working to earn a living, even if it's only just enough to feed themselves, is better than them having to beg or root through rubbish rubbish dumps for their food.

My opinion of fairtrade is the same as that of organic stuff, you have to pay to get a fairtrade or organic certification, and in the case of fairtrade they also demand a percentage of your profits for the privalage of having their logo on your products, so it excludes a lot of smaller businesses which to me seems a flawed system.

I agree that the work is needed in these countries. But the wages are just enough to keep them in food and nothing else. Other products are not much lower in cost than here and beyond the reach of ordinary people.

It not just the case it being better than them begging. As in the case about 10 years ago when everyone starting boycotting marks and spensers for using child labour, they stopped and the amount of children in the sex trade increased in that country as well as children doing alot more dangerous 'underground jobs'. Yes child labour is wrong and very sad but the poverty in some places is so bad if children dont work as well as thier parents they strave, they are so desperate they will do any work. I dont think any of us can imagine being that desperate

I should have said fair trade then, not Fairtrade.

This is a very measured response and very interesting. Am glad wannabe posted this.

MT - I would have thought it fairly obvious to all by now that the Earth can't support it's 6 billion and rising population. It doesn't take much for there to be not enough food to go round for example. We all need to face up to the fact that there are too many people on this sorry planet of ours and act accordingly. Less people = more resources for all.

There are two sides to every story (ie, I've heard that the Nescafe promtion of formula in Africa can prevent transmission of AIDS.) NOT SAYING THIS IS TRUE, but I'm a little wary hearing that Fairtrade is bad, or that all clothing companies use child labour, so what can you do? (Or that if there isn't child labout they'll end up in the sex trade, etc.) I still think child labour is a bad thing, and I think lots of people who know more about the situation than me think so too.

The only thing that clothing companies will listen to is if their sales are affected. Whether or not we can afford not to shop at Primark I think we should be aware of it's practices.

its practices

To be honest I was more shocked by the TV prog that took students to India to see how high street clothes were made. Yes it was adults working in the factories, but they were still working for a tiny amount a day and living in little more than a slum. These weren't the really cheap clothes either, 'respectable' brands like M&S & even Calvin Klein were mentioned.
I think a company can afford to sell T shirts for a couple of quid - you just have to ask yourself how it can be made so cheaply?
But IMO it's more shocking to see more expensive items with flash labels on being sold for high amounts of cash whilst those that make them are still paid a pittance & live in poverty.

It?s all very well though saying that these companies should pay their manufacturing staff more, but it really isn?t that simple.

If a company like m&s goes into India and starts increasing the wages of the staff in their factories, the knock-on effect is that other companies are then under pressure to do the same. That?s all very well for the foreign companies who can essentially afford to increase the wages, but what happens to the local companies who cannot? You then end up in a situation where foreign companies are essentially going into a poor country and driving the local companies out of business because they cannot pay their staff in line with the foreign companies.

Or alternatively if the foreign companies put up their wages they might as well move the work closer to home to save on the import costs, and as a result thousands of people who have no other income are left with nothing.

oh I agree.

But when the likes of primark take the holier-than-thou stance that there is no exploitation in their manufacturing, they are just setting themselves up to be exposed.

Maybe these companies should just all be upfront about the fact that they don't actually know who is manufacturing the goods they are selling. Then people could make their decisions based on the quality/price of the goods, rather than the type of spin the company puts out.

We sent kids up chimneys 100 years ago and we put a stop to that.

I do not think that we need such cheap items as throwaway fashion. Something can be done to gradually improve conditions for the adults working in the garment industry then perhaps not as many children will be put into labour.

i'm with cod: like this is news to anyone???

how do you think that clothes like this are so cheap???

I buy in hennes, I hope that as a swedish company they have strict welfare rules about the factories they employ, but even then I'm under no illusions that the cheap-ness of the product to me comes at a cost to those that make it.

and i have bought the occasional item in primark (flipflops last year and this year) but always with a very guilty conscience.

good posts kerrymum

I agree with MT and with KerryMum.

It's only in the past two generations or so that children haven't been expected to work even in the West.

My own father worked from the time he was 7 years old. Everyone in his family had to work as they could around school times and hand over their wages so the family could eat and pay bills.

Ditto my FIL.

We're all finding out now that the luxuries of the latter half of the 20th century aren't sustainable, even for us n the West.

Like KerryMum, we buy clothes in Primark because it's affordable.

We are in SERIOUS threat of not being able to afford to heat our home adequately this winter. And we're anything but alone.

i hand down clothes from Primark. they wear well and i've NEVER seen clothes as something to throw away. maybe it's because my grandmother was a spinner and a weaver and so i saw what went into cloth products.

i find the clothes wear well and i am very careful about laundry, so get use for both girls out of them.

after we're finished with them, we either give them away if they're in good enough shape to be worn again or send them to textile recylcing.

Not disputing that you don't treat them as throwaway clothes at all, expat. But as someone who takes old clothes to charity shops I find that they are now incredibly fussy about what they want, and I think that is a knock-on effect of clothes being much cheaper now than they were.