As if Don Fisher doesn't have enough on his hands, now this: in addition to environmental carelessness and No-on-A-isms, the Gap founder can now add human right violations and child labor abuse to Gap Inc.'s growing list of fires to put out.
San Francisco-based Gap Inc. has been caught in a child labor scandal after Dan McDougall's report in The Observer informed the world that kids in India are used to make Gap Inc.'s kids line at one of the factories that they use. On top of the kids having to sleep on the roof of said factory, as well as having oily cloths shoved into their mouths, McDougall offers up such insight as:
Jivaj, who is from West Bengal and looks around 12, told The Observer that some of the boys in the sweatshop had been badly beaten. 'Our hours are hard and violence is used against us if we don't work hard enough. This is a big order for abroad, they keep telling us that.'Last week, we spent four days working from dawn until about one o'clock in the morning the following day. I was so tired I felt sick,' he whispers, tears streaming down his face. 'If any of us cried we were hit with a rubber pipe. Some of the boys had oily cloths stuffed in our mouths as punishment.'