Children labor force Exploitation (In Mr. Moon's class)

     About a couple of years ago, my classmates and I were talking about the multinational corporations in social study class. There were many problems related to the topic. Among many issues, exploitation of children labor force became the hottest issue in that class. After the discussion, our teacher introduced a book named “Made in Vietnam” to us. It was story of ‘Lan’ who had to start to work in early age because of the poor economic conditions of her family. She was only 14, but had to work without holiday, in dark and musty factory. Lan’s tough life is not an imaginary story. We can find many other similar cases in the real world.

     Lives of children who live in poor countries, so called ‘the Third World,’ are actually as hard as the life of Lan. Children’s workplace is dangerous and dirty. In worst case, their workplaces are full of harmful gases from chemicals. And the owners of such factories are mostly multinational corporations. To be brief, those companies are abusing children’s labor force to maximize their profits. Some people may say that “Why don’t they escape from such poor and harmful workplaces and find a new job? They can refuse to work, can’t they?” Those who say like this are the ones who didn’t understand the situation of those children completely. They didn’t have choice but to work in such environment to survive. An immediate need of living expenses took priority over their health.

     Fortunately, many people realized the seriousness of this problem and are making effort to help little children. For example, when Nike’s illegal exploitation of children labor force became big news, people, who were outraged with the company’s brutality, boycotted. Eventually, Nike surrendered to consumers and hiring rate of children evidently decreased. In some cases, a country rejects to import goods which are made at the hands of little boys and girls. Actually, US government rejected to import clothes of a certain company which exploited children labor force. As we can see in these cases, people restrict multinational corporations from abusing poor children. However, I wonder whether the restriction is appropriate or not.

     People are not only restricting MNCs from exploiting children, but also restricting those children from the only way to survive. We should not forget the fact that there was no way for those little kids and their family to earn money in immediate need, except working at such poor condition to get unreasonable pay. The best way is to provide those children environment in which they can study at school and don’t have to work. However, I think that way is somewhat unrealistic. Then, we have to choose the second best way. Since those children have no other ways but to work, I think we should not prevent them from working, rather we should try to provide them with better working environment. MNCs could exploit little children in unhealthy environment because the host government assumed the attitude of an onlooker. If the government takes a firm attitude toward foreign companies, children of the host countries will be able to work in better environment. Moreover, we can help those children by teaching developed technologies. Children who learned new technologies will be able to get more professional jobs in the future.

     I don’t deny the fact that people already made a lot of effort to help little children in the Third World to rescue them from the exploitation by multinational corporations. However, before we help them, I think we have to fully understand their situation first and have to find the most appropriate solutions.