Dear Friends,
Please find below a report from the Child Labour News Service concerning the use of child labour in the Australian garment industry, specifically on children homeworkers. For more information on this, contact Child Labour News (address listed below) or Annie Delaney at the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union in Australia (tcfvic@magna.com.au).

CHILD LABOUR NEWS SERVICE
January 1, 2000

This issue of CLNS attempts to portray the child labour situation around the world as we step into the next millennium. The following material may be reproduced without any charge.

Culture of Fear and Silence in the Rag Trade

An estimated 70,000 Australian children as young as eight have been caught up in a shift to outworking in the garment industry, the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFU) says.

They are toiling in backyard sweatshops under Third World conditions or working alongside their newly arrived migrant parents in the family home.

The union says the problem is hidden behind a wall of fear and silence caused by a combination of poor language skills, blackmail and a lack of understanding of workers' rights.

Child garment workers risk injuries and diseases ranging from skeletal malformations and asthma to byssinosis, a potentially fatal lung disease caused by breathing cotton fibres

Cases examined show a pattern of child labourers regularly working before and after school, at weekends, on public holidays and school holidays as their parents try to survive on wages as little as $2 an hour.

One Sydney child labourer who said she started work when she was seven and was using a sewing machine when she was eight described how her family sometimes worked 24 hours a day to meet rush orders.

The TCFU estimates there are 329,000 garment outworkers in Australia. The union says between a quarter and half of outworker families use children.

"The kids in the clothing industry help their parents because if they don't they can't put food on the table," the New South Wales secretary of the TCFU, Mr. Barry Tubner, said.

"For the 15 years that I have been working here there have been children working from home; the only thing that has changed is the nationality.

"Through phone-ins and other means through the years we have found that the majority of outworkers do not work alone - they have their spouse or children working with them."

The co-ordinator of the Sydney based Asian Women at Work, Ms Debbie Carstens, said that some outworkers asked their children to help so as to avoid being penalised for work that was late.

"I would assume that in an environment where it is becoming more difficult for outworkers it is quite feasible that children would be increasingly used in order to meet deadlines," she said.

"Workers' living environments, including dusty air, also endangered children's health," she said.

The TCFU outworker co-ordinator, Ms Anne Delaney, said outworker families were too frightened of the retribution of contractors to speak out publicly.

Reasonable pay rates for outwork would largely solve the sector's child labour problems by removing the need for parents to use their children, she said.

Campaigns for better conditions for outworkers have led to a voluntary home-workers' code of practice. It provides for minimum pay rates, regulates workloads and requires companies to keep a check on contractors.

For further information contact:

Upasana Choudhry
Editor, Child Labour News Service
c/o Global March Against Child Labour
L-6 Kalkaji, New Delhi 110 019
Tel : (91 11) 622 4899, 647 5481
Fax : (91 11) 623 6818
Email : childhood@globalmarch.org
yatra@del2.vsnl.net.in
Website: http://www.globalmarch.org/