Free Trade and Child Labor

On Bush's recent journey to Latin America, he stopped in Guatemala to remark on the great benefits that 'free trade' offered saying that ‘free trade’ can spread opportunity, provide jobs, and help lift people out of poverty. The reality is that in many countries in which these agreements have been signed, the use of child labor and the lack of worker protections are the norm. These practices have actually increased in the race to become more 'competitive' and attractive to giant multinational corporations. Let's explore this issue a little further by looking at Guatemala, where child labor is common, but is certainly not the only country where it is practiced.

Guatemala, a signator of CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement), actively employs child labor in its factories. In fact, very close to where Bush made his remarks about free trade stood a food processing plant that employed children as young as 13 that worked in miserable conditions. These 'factories' have fine tuned every aspect of work and have instituted quotas that must be met. For example, in this agro-industrial factory, each head of broccoli had to be cut thirty-seven times and then broken by hand into ninety-seven pieces. These kids handle one head of broccoli every sixty-four seconds and make a cut every seven-tenths of a second. This 'job' is performed six days a week from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. Sometimes they must go to work a little earlier when their shift begins at 6:00 AM or 6:30 AM. They stand all day, feet swell, cut themselves numerous times and their wrists swell from doing the same motion over and over. If these kids tell their supervisor that they don't feel well or feel faint and ask to sit down for a moment, the response is that if they leave their place once more, they will be marked absent for the entire day. On top of this, the supervisors tell them to go faster and faster all day long. Most of them earn half of the minimum wage in Guatemala (which is only $6.95 or 52.91 quetzales per day for agricultural work and $7.12 or 54.15 quetzales for nonagricultural work), do not have any type of social security, and are not paid for any holidays.

The plant, Legumex, harvests and processes fruits and vegetables that are in turn exported to the United States. This plant exported more than four million pounds of frozen broccoli, pineapples and melons to the United States last year which was sent to a company called Superior Foods in California. Shortly after this story was first reported back in March, the National Labor Committee stated that Legumex had signed an agreement agreeing to end their child labor practices. While this could be construed as a positive step, it remains to be seen whether or not conditions will, in fact, change.

CAFTA makes no attempt to enforce the labor laws of these Central American countries and has created a race to the bottom in an attempt to be the most 'attractive' for foreign investment. It’s a tragic situation. The next time you sit down with your kids and have a nice meal with those pretty broccoli florets that you bought and the delicious melon for dessert, think about where it comes from. Imagine your kid standing there on the floor all day with bleeding hands and swollen feet packaging these items for your pleasure. Not a pretty picture but sadly it is the reality of ‘free trade’ today.