2008 Woodie Awards
GAP Ends Child Labor in New Delhi, India
Deena Zaru
Issue date: 11/16/07 Section: World
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Sun Thyda works seven days a week at a GAP factory in Cambodia. She works at least ten hours each day. She is physically and verbally abused by her employers. She earns $40 dollars a week. She has no money left after food and rent. She has not seen her family in months. She eats and sleeps in a small room, along with 10 other workers. Sun Thyda is only 12.
Twenty-eight children working under similar conditions as Thyda's were rescued from a GAP factory in New Delhi, India, on Oct. 30.
GAP operates over 12,000 factories in 42 countries, in search of cheaper labor and raw materials. According to the UK's Socialist Worker newspaper, GAP's Russian factory workers, many of whom are Chinese immigrants, are paid $0.11 an hour.
"Companies like GAP need to go to developing countries because that's where they have a cost advantage and a competitive advantage," said Deena Burris, assistant professor of business management, who teaches international business and money and capital markets. "They use a market where they can get cheaper labor and raw materials, because if they manufacture in the U.S. then they would go out of business, since their products would be much more expensive."
Burris said that since companies like GAP use contract labor, they do not actually own the manufacturing factories that are making their goods, which allows many contractors, like the supplier in New Delhi, great control over who gets hired, how much they are paid, and how adequate the working conditions are.
After the British Sunday Observer published a report on the use of child labor at the factory by the Indian supplier, Indian police, labor officials and NGO Prayas raided the factory.
According to the Socialist Worker, similar journalistic interventions and personal activism led these allegations against GAP's child labor policies to be examined in mainstream media.
"Because the mainstream media is paying attention to the issue, Americans are becoming more informed about the problem" said sophomore Laura Herman, an international relations and Spanish double major. "There is a big disconnect between the consumer and the corporation, but now since people are becoming more informed, then they might demand that GAP change and monitor their labor practices."
Twenty-eight children working under similar conditions as Thyda's were rescued from a GAP factory in New Delhi, India, on Oct. 30.
GAP operates over 12,000 factories in 42 countries, in search of cheaper labor and raw materials. According to the UK's Socialist Worker newspaper, GAP's Russian factory workers, many of whom are Chinese immigrants, are paid $0.11 an hour.
"Companies like GAP need to go to developing countries because that's where they have a cost advantage and a competitive advantage," said Deena Burris, assistant professor of business management, who teaches international business and money and capital markets. "They use a market where they can get cheaper labor and raw materials, because if they manufacture in the U.S. then they would go out of business, since their products would be much more expensive."
Burris said that since companies like GAP use contract labor, they do not actually own the manufacturing factories that are making their goods, which allows many contractors, like the supplier in New Delhi, great control over who gets hired, how much they are paid, and how adequate the working conditions are.
After the British Sunday Observer published a report on the use of child labor at the factory by the Indian supplier, Indian police, labor officials and NGO Prayas raided the factory.
According to the Socialist Worker, similar journalistic interventions and personal activism led these allegations against GAP's child labor policies to be examined in mainstream media.
"Because the mainstream media is paying attention to the issue, Americans are becoming more informed about the problem" said sophomore Laura Herman, an international relations and Spanish double major. "There is a big disconnect between the consumer and the corporation, but now since people are becoming more informed, then they might demand that GAP change and monitor their labor practices."
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