Image courtesy of http://www.proprofs.com/
Rosemary MacCabe’s Irish Times blog has generated a bit of excitement but I’m sure that it Rosemary wishes that commentators concentrated on the clothes and not the ethics. Extolling the virtues of Penny’s (Primark) cheap clothing is one thing but professing ignorance of their history of involvement with Asian sweat shops that use child labour is not something one would expect of a journalist employed by a reputable paper.
Rosemary is correct in saying that she’s not writing about business ethics. However, to go on and say that, “cost is not the deciding factor in whether or not a store or designer uses child labour, and that I don’t necessarily think banning child labour outright would be a positive move for anyone involved.” is ignorance in the extreme. While banning child labour is not in Primark’s best interests, to say that exploiting children is a positive because their families have no alternative is quite shocking. Children die, get injured and maimed while working 12 hour, and longer, days. They don’t get enough food, water or sleep, they are brutally beaten and suffer disability.
Maybe Rosemary would do well to do some research into the subject for her next Irish Times piece. She could do worse than look at the website of the International Labour Organization for more information. Primark has signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, under which it should, “contribute to policies and programmes which provide for the transition of any child found to be performing child labour to enable her or him to attend and remain in quality education until no longer a child.” However, there is no sign that Primark takes that responsibility seriously.
My initial “profession of ignorance” was me trying to say that I don’t know enough about international labour conditions, standards, working wages etc to get into a large scale discussion.
At no point did I say that the exploitation of children is a positive thing. I said that banning child labour may not be entirely positive. Those two sentences are different, which I think should be quite clear.
And my comment about cost was that Penneys doesn’t use child labour BECAUSE its clothes are cheap, although the former certainly facilitates the latter. Plenty of high fashion houses use child labour and exploit workers, yet charge thousands for their goods, was what I meant. I wasn’t defending or lambasting Penneys or others, merely stating facts.
Hi Rosemary,
Thanks for the reply.
I appreciate that you did not want to get into a discussion on your blog when you know so little about the area but information is easy to obtain. Equally, you are a fashion journalist for a quality newspaper and you should really make it your business to know what goes on in the fashion world. I’m sure your colleagues Fintan O’Toole, Vincent Brown and Derek Scally would be only too happy to help you.
With regard to the banning of child labour, you said that it would not be a positive move for anyone involved. That statement reads as if you include the children that are being exploited in that context. And the corollory of that statement is an endorsement of using child labour. If you did not mean that then you should have made it clear that your comments only pertained to the companies that actually expoit children and not the children themselves. However, I fully accept your assertions in your blog and on Twitter that you are not pro child labour and I apologise if my writing about this have caused you any distress.
Pennys don’t use child labour BECAUSE its clothes are cheap. No, its actually the other way around. Its clothes are cheap because it is able to access cheap labour to produce its products.