Addressing A Health Care ‘Outrage’
Lawmaker, unions band together to protest medical instruments produced by children.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Imagine the scalpel from a U.S. operating room being produced by a Pakistani worker in squalid conditions, without any safety gear to protect eyes or lungs from metal shavings.
Now imagine the forceps used in a U.S. delivery room being crafted by that same worker — who happened to be an 8-year-old child.
Those are the harsh realities behind an international campaign spearheaded by the international labor movement — with AFSCME on the front lines — to stop the import of these instruments by U.S. companies.
AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee, along with AFL-CIO Pres. John Sweeney, Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, and Ann Twomey, vice presidentof the American Federation of Teachers, appeared at a press conference Sept. 15 to denounce the use of child labor in producing these instruments.
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who has championed the end of abusive child labor internationally, used the conference to slam “companies who continue to put profits before principle.”
The Pakistani government estimates that more than 7,000 children — some as young as 8 years old — are employed by sweatshops in the Punjab Province to file, grind and/or polish the bulk of the surgical instruments produced in the country. The United States is the major importer of the finished pieces.
CATALOGING THE HORRORS. Public Services International, made up of more than 500 public-sector unions around the world (AFSCME Sec.-Treas. William Lucy is PSI president), is spearheading the campaign to boycott the instruments internationally.
PSI has cataloged the horrific conditions for the young workers, who suffer frequent injuries from machinery, burns from hot metal, and respiratory problems from inhaling poisonous metal dust.
Many avoid school because they are the sole breadwinners for their families, and their lack of education traps the family unit in a cycle of poverty, the labor leaders noted. Workers receive an average of $6-$8 per month to produce the instruments.
Representatives for PSI have contacted nine U.S. companies to enlist their support for a campaign against the use of child labor in the surgical instruments industry. A few, most notably Johnson & Johnson and Pilling Weck Surgical, responded that their Pakistani vendors had assured them that the instruments were properly produced.
Hans Engelberts, PSI’s general secretary, is calling for independent, external monitoring to verify the vendors’ claims.
AFSCME OUTRAGE. President McEntee noted that AFSCME represented more than 325,000 health care workers who “would be outraged” to know that the tools of their trade were produced by children under conditions that would be intolerable to union workers.
AFSCME is working through its health care affiliates — including the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, United Nurses of America, the Federation of Physicians and Dentists, and the Union of American Physicians and Dentists — to include language in contracts prohibiting the use of child-made surgical instruments in the hospitals and clinics covered by their contracts.
“We will take our outrage to the bargaining table,” McEntee promised.
By Chris Dodd
At press time, the dust had barely settled from the World Trade Organization talks that made headlines in Seattle. AFSCME was out in force there. A report will appear in the next issue of Public Employee.
