The Gap just got caught employing child labour in India. Here is a link because I won’t go into the details of the accusations. Rather I would like to make some suggestions for Marka Hansen, the President of GAP North America.
First off pay for each of these kids to go to school. Obviously the families are dirty poor otherwise they would not have sold their children into slavery. I think that at the very least you owe these children backpay for the horrible situation they find themselves in. And make it the US minimum wage.
So July(when one of the children claim he was purchased) -November is 16 weeks x 80 hours a week x $5.85 = $7,488
Since you can’t very well hand these kids $7,500 and send them on their way, you should set up a boarding school for them.
Secondly, sell the clothes produced by the children and use the money to fight this sort of corruption. Make a public campaign out of it like you did for the (RED) campaign. Stopping business with these companies isn’t going to make the situation better, they are just going to start selling the clothes to someone else.
Thirdly, stop talking about how you”… feel violated and … feel very upset”. No one beat you today with a rubber hose after making you live in squalor and sleep on the roof of the factory you sew clothes in for 16 hours a day.
I know that you are trying to meet the needs of your customers, your employees and your shareholders, but if you want me to shop there or Old Navy or Banana Republic again then you had better pull out the stops on helping these kids. Your obligations go far beyond just “not doing business with people who employ child labour”.