Exploitation of Child Labor in Tech? I Can't Hear You Over My IPOD...

This spring I interviewed a number of "The Tech" museum award laureates who have used technology to improve the human condition (usually extremely frugally). One of the most exciting innovators is Saeed Awan, director of the Centre for the Improvement of Working Conditions & Environment based in Pakistan. They tackled the problem of child labor in the rug weaving industry. Instead of simply outlawing the practice (which would be futile because these child laborers are the major breadwinners for their poor families), they "engineered out" child labor by developing a "improved, ergonomic and, most important, adult-friendly loom". Coupled with economic practices (loom ownership allows bidding on lots by adults), this innovation moves the breadwinner status back to adults (primarily women) and moves children back to schools. A perfect use of technology and worthy of a "tech" award.

But where technology providers giveth, technology providers also taketh away...

While the beneficiaries of our industry attend Tech soirees and provide much needed attention and funding for moving children out of low-tech exploitatative industries, they simultaneously cast a blind eye to the practice of using children and young adults to assemble their own high-tech products in countries such as China. As Kathleen E. McLaughlin of the San Francisco Chronicle Foreign Service notes in her article, China's high-tech assembly sweatshops such as Foxconn "...seeks 16- to 21-year-olds to work in production for $72.50 to $80 per month, plus housing and meals, and hourly overtime. Most workers are under 25. Just a few miles away in Hong Kong, and in other richer nations, that's the target demographic for iPods and other consumer tech products with hefty price tags".

There will be protests galore, and as always happens with global outsourcing, Apple (and Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, Nokia, Sony and so on) will insist they have no influence and then later announce they have improved the working conditions of these migrants, and finally will announce they are pulling out of agreements. And the status of these young people will remain the same - stateless, powerless, and eventually burned-out and useless.

But if we used Mr. Awan's loom as an example, perhaps there is another solution. Most assuredly the reason that very young adults and children are used for this work is because they have the youth and strength to put up with deplorable working practices. If only we could find a way to "re-engineer" these practices to favor older adults, just as the new loom engineered-out child labor. Then the parents of these young people would be the ones doing the work and earning the pay to support their families. And these kids would be in school working for a better future, as our children do in our country.

It can be done. But will it be done? I'd like to imagine that our industry-wide blindness to how our products are made is merely one of ignorance and not apathy. Mr. Awan showed us the way to make things better. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from his example?