The Moral Legitimacy of Child Labour

Introduction

In 2013 the Rana Plaza, a building housing with several clothing factories making clothes to export to Europe and America, collapsed (Manik & Yardley, 2017). About 134 people died and more than 1,000 of the 2,500 workers were injured. This happened only five months after a terrible fire at a similar factory, which led multinational brands to promise to improve safety in the country’s garment industry. The article confirms that an investigation found building codes that were violated as well as a structural fault in the building.

Nowadays most people know about the bad working conditions in, for example Bangladesh, but consumers still purchase clothes made by child labour and workers barely earning a penny. There are labour activists in Bangladesh but the government takes these people into custody as soon as they start talking (Abrams & Sattar, 2017). The labour rights groups state in the article that they believe the government is making sure workers don’t talk by detaining harmless people. After the incident of the Rana Plaza, business owners formed two alliances who are devoted to make sure workers get better working conditions which are: the accord, guided by H&M, and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, including Gap and Walmart (Abrams & Sattar, 2017).

This can also be related to the prison labour that is happening. Here inmates are paid less than a dollar an hour to produce any sort of product from mattresses to road signs (The Economist, 2017). The program pays more than the average kitchen work in prisons so the waiting list is long. Critics have pointed out the moral hazard that is generated when profit comes from punishment, but what most people don’t know is that prison labour has been going on since 1979 (The Economist, 2017).

These are problems that are only growing and need addressing. The average person doesn’t care who made their sweater, but in the meantime these people continue their work in bad conditions with the risk of an incident like the Rana Plaza repeating itself. The question to what extent the use of child labour in Bangladesh could be morally legitimate arises. In this paper a literature review will be conducted, researching if these markets are morally legitimate. The literature used in this paper consisted of academic sources on factors influencing working conditions and morally responsible behaviour.

The next section of the paper will be the descriptive and analytic part, discussing the factors that have an influence on working conditions and why customers are comfortable with the fact that products are made under poor conditions. Following, what morally responsible behaviour entails and how we agree on what morally acceptable behaviour is. After that, in the opinion section, first the connection between poverty and the likelihood that a child will work will be discussed. Then, arguments for and against the use of child labour in for profit organizations will be made as well as a recommendation to whether or not this kind of employment should be allowed. Lastly, in the research section, a hypothesis will be stated for possible further research. Next, in the conclusion the main points of this paper will be repeated and an answer will be given to the central question.

Descriptive/analytic

First it is important to discuss the factors that have an influence on peoples working conditions. The general belief is that multinational companies themselves are accountable for the working circumstances in their supply chains, even concerning the suppliers that are lawfully independent (Dänzer, 2011). There is very few international law that controls the actions of global firms in developing nations, and when laws are present they are not binding. Dänzer explores whether multinational enterprises are morally responsible for the working conditions in their supply chains. She describes that there are two main concepts of responsibility which are outcome responsibility, meaning the responsibility that companies carry for the outcomes of their former actions, and remedial responsibility, which is the responsibility of companies to put certain bad situations right.

Outcome responsibility is present under the first condition that the company has in some way contributed to the outcome. This is the case because through the multinational enterprises purchasing policy the company gives strong incentives for either wanting good or bad working conditions in their factories (Dänzer, 2011). For example, when the purchasing policy is to produce as cost saving as possible, that won’t encourage high salaries for workers or good working conditions. Other conditions are that the company has power over its actions, there is a connection between the cause and the effect, and that there were alternative actions for the firm to take (Dänzer, 2011). According to Dänzer, all of these requirements are fulfilled, meaning that there is indeed outcome responsibility. Dänzer states that remedial responsibility is relevant when there is a situation that is in need of remedy, in this case the bad conditions in the supply chains. To conclude, outcome and remedial responsibility are present which means that companies are morally responsible for the working conditions in their supply chains. This makes them the factor that has an influence on these working conditions and the factor that should work to improve them.

Despite the fact that global companies themselves may be responsible for the bad working conditions that their products are made in, the consumers are the reason that the companies exists, meaning that they still buy the products. Therefore, why are customers comfortable with the fact that the products they buy are made under poor conditions? In 2001, Carrigan and Attalla did research on this matter. They expressed that what seems to be happening is that although consumers express preparedness to make ethical decisions, in reality, communal responsibility is not the most powerful criteria in their decision making. Carrigan and Attalla asked their respondents to name factors that influenced their purchasing decisions, the result was that price, value, brand image and fashion trends are the deciding factors.

The respondents in their research repeatedly admitted to knowing companies were not acting ethically but felt they couldn’t do anything about it or were only willing to change their purchasing decision when this wouldn’t cause them any trouble. Carrigan and Attalla found the opinion to be that a business like Nike, which has a bad ethical background, is not viewed as unethical because they deliver jobs and profits which are good for the economy. It became evident that respondents only cared about particular social issues. For example, animal suffering mattered much more to them than the rainforest or working conditions (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001). What the respondents were keen to point out is that if they had more money, they would boycott unethical companies, change their purchasing decisions and be willing to pay more for an ethically produced product (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001).

It can be concluded that consumers try to ignore the ethical problem when they can, but besides consumers, other stakeholders that can be influenced are shareholders, governments, employees and the wider community, which are more actively concerned with ethical behaviour (Carrigan & Attalla, 2001). However, what entails morally responsible behaviour? In the article of Ardichvili, Mitchell, and Jondle (2009) an experiment is conducted to find features of ethical organizational cultures that entail what the majority of people see as ethical behaviour. These characteristics are: Mission- and values- driven, which entails the transparency of mission and values, shown in ethical principles and conduct; stakeholders balance, which entails the equality of all stakeholders in the decision-making; leadership effectiveness, meaning that the ethical culture starts at the top and is carried on by example; process integrity, which is the commitment to quality and fairness in the firms’ people, processes, and products; and lastly, long-term perspective, means that the mission should be put before profit and long-term goals before short-term goals (Ardichvili, Mitchell, & Jondle, 2009). These characteristics suggest that people do actually care about ethical guidelines, fairness, and more.

However, the fact that people care about being ethical does not mean that everyone has the same opinion about ethical behaviour and how it should be implemented. Here, the issue arises to how we agree on what is morally acceptable. To solve this problem there are laws and regulations made. Although not everyone agrees on the same in regard to what is morally acceptable, some ground rules are stated with which the majority agrees. For the matter of what is morally acceptable, the majority speaks. Often it is said that whether or not people behave ethical is dependent on how their supervisors or ‘bosses’ behave.

In 2013, Resick, Hargis, Shao, en Dust examined whether or not ethical leadership is related to negative moral equity judgments of workplace misbehaviour and related to positive moral equity judgments about organizational citizenship behaviour. From their experiment they find that employees working for leaders who are more ethical in their leadership are more negative towards deviance in the workplace and more positive towards organizational citizenship and find this more morally suitable. Concluding, this means that when wanting to influence ethical behaviour, one should do this starting at the leaders of a company. The leaders will then positively influence the behaviour of their employees and as a result people can start to develop a more united opinion on what ethical behaviour entails.

Opinion

In order to make a decision on whether or not child labour should be allowed, you have to think about the causes of the child labour. If it would be prohibited, what would the consequences be for the families that have working children. Amin, Quayes, and Rives (2004) did research on poverty, years of education, household size and more as determinants of child labour in Bangladesh. First, they found a cultural factor for child labour which is that the parents dread their children will become idle when not working. What they found was that with an increase in the household size, the chance of the children working increases, but having a male head of the house decreases the probability of a child working. Higher educated parents are less likely to send their children to work, this confirms that poorer families cannot afford not to send their children to work. What this means is that when child labour is prohibited, poverty will increase, mainly because if the children aren’t allowed to work this will result in an even lower household income.

A common argument against child labour would be that there is the assumption that child labour may cause severe illness. Alam, Amin, and Rives (2012) used survey data to examine whether or not illness or injuries associated to occupational hazard are determined by whether or not a child works in the export industry in Bangladesh. They find that only 5% of more than 200 million working children worldwide, up until the age of 14, work in export industries. And as for that five percent, they find that working in the export sector does not make a child more likely to become ill or injured. Alam, Amin, and Rives (2012) state that as opposed to prohibiting child labour, the countries that import these goods should support these developing nations and ensure that there is workplace safety in child labour industries.

But what would happen when you ask the employees of factories with bad working conditions, also called sweatshops, what they want in regard to workplace safety. In a recent article from Powell and Zwolinski (2012) it is expressed that when employees were asked if they would give some of their wage up to improve working conditions, they said they were not willing to do this. This shows that the wages in these factories are so low that even the employees themselves don’t want to complain about the conditions. There is not yet a system founded that makes it possible to get higher wages and better working conditions without hurting the workers (Powell & Zwolinski, 2012).

An argument for the use of child labour would be that prohibiting it would not improve the economic situation in the countries and families will become poorer meaning that these children have less chance to a good future. It would probably not even change the behaviour of consumers. In an article exploring whether the ethical concern of consumers influences the code of conduct of a company to meet this matter, namely Gap, they find that even though consumers recognize the problem of ethical matters, they care more about factors like price and quality (Iwanow, McEachern, & Jeffrey, 2005). This means that companies won’t change where they manufacture when the consumers will buy their products either way. As a result, companies will produce with the lowest production costs possible, which is off course in development countries and sometimes with child labour. Concluding, if we can’t change consumers purchase decision, there is no use in banning child labour.

It is also not just the responsibility of import companies to stop child labour. The developing countries themselves need to take action, which is not happening enough. In 2014, Bolivia approved a law that allowed children from the age of ten to undertake independent work – excluding wage (Dillon, 2015). Dillon states that the world trade organization is the step towards trading in the global economy. For a country to gain entry, they must prove they are committed to gain free trade. There are barely any efforts that make sure a country has to deal with human rights issues, such as child labour, before they can enter in the world trade organization (Dillon, 2015). If these rules were present, this could mean the start of a decrease in child labour.

One argument against child labour that does still remain a problem is workplace safety. There should be more regulations on building structures and checkups on the safety of workers. A recommendation on allowing child labour would be that nothing much can be done until the countries and enterprises start to take action. The children won’t be any better off without the work and as stated earlier, there was no prove found that working in the export sector causes illness or injury. It is possible that the children would be better off without the child labour but then there would have to be some kind of development aid to help the economy of these countries.

Research

A provisional answer to the extent to which the use of child labour in Bangladesh could be morally legitimate would be that, as long as there is no danger involved, no consequences for the lives of the children that could be prevented were they not working, or any enforcement for children to work, it would be morally legitimate. Also, when there are still many consumers that buy the products made by child labour, there cannot be said that it is not morally legitimate, because everyone is involved. Limitations of this research would be external, this paper is mainly about Bangladesh but this is not the only place in the world where child labour occurs. Also more information on the long term consequences on the lives of these children would be useful for further research. An interesting hypothesis would be; the future of working children would have more potential when prohibiting child labour within export and import countries combined with development aid. This hypothesis would examine whether it can be justified that children work at a young age instead of being in school. Expected is that when these children are able to be at their full potential they would be better off without child labour, but before that happens the economy needs to get a chance to develop more.

Conclusion

The goal of the research was to examine to what extent the use of child labour in Bangladesh could be morally legitimate. The problems that were addressed were about ethical behaviour in general and in connection with child labour and consumer behaviour in relation to the ethical or unethical behaviour of global companies. The result of this research is mainly that consumers are indifferent about whether companies behave ethical or not, but ethical leadership is, however, mimicked by employees. It is unlikely that global companies will undertake action when they are still profiting from their production with child labour. Also there is no relation found between severe illness or injury and children working in the export industry. To answer the central question on the moral legitimacy of child labour in Bangladesh, it cannot be seen as overall morally legitimate, but despite that it is generally accepted since no major action has been undertaken.