Editor:

I would like to respond to Lara Gluck's letter published in the November 3, 2000 issue of TSL. While I agree that the working conditions in many developing countries are horrendous, I do not believe that boycotting companies that make profits off these terrible work conditions is the best solution.

Take the example of Bangladesh, one that Gluck cites. In an effort to curb child labour, the Harkin's Bill (1993) banned the import of products from industries using child labour. Wanting to keep their market, garment factories in Bangladesh, who until this point had employed workers as young as 14 years old, fired their child workers. These children had to find new jobs to avoid starving to death. Their parents certainly could not feed them; most of these children were either orphans or supplementing their parents' income to feed younger siblings. Since garment factory work is one of the few employment options open to girls in Bangladesh, the children affected were primarily female and were forced to go into jobs with even less freedom and security: prostitution, begging, thieving and domestic service. Just to underline the horrors of domestic service, I would like to point out that each of over 200 child prostitutes interviewed by Helen Rahman, Director of Shoishab Bangladesh, claimed that they had turned to prostitution after having worked as servants in households where they were regularly sexually and physically abused.

It is very easy for us to sit in the comfort of our dorm rooms and say that children everywhere should be in school, not working. But for those countries in which the choices are limited to poorly paying dangerous jobs and death from starvation, I truly do not think taking away employment through boycott is the best solution. Perhaps we can instead find other ways to put pressure on companies to ensure their workers' educations and better work conditions. Let us try to keep our ideals, while realizing that acting on them with the best intentions can lead to tragedy for real people in countries without the infrastructure the US can afford.

Sincerely,

Sadia Rahman '01