tv Documentary RT November 28, 2013 1:29pm-2:01pm EST
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advantage of this cheap labor force. according to recent estimates there are sixty thousand kids working in the naples region today. the state what's the italian government doing about it. this is the headquarters of the labor inspection agency for companions. the director doesn't know the camera is already running he admits straight away but he's powerless. you see my figures on the control of under age workers are pathetic figure should reflect what we're doing about it but they're too weak look here in two thousand and eleven we only did controls on forty eight miners so you're going to tell us all about it now. you know i don't want to talk about it. i do want to talk about is the phenomenon of child labor in general in this city. you know about our activity in the region in general but i don't want to give statistic. why. because on
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the inspection level you don't have to explain to my minister who watched the interview why i've only done forty eight checks on miners. i mean in a city like naples forty eight checks last year that hardly any and this year to have only been nineteen you know every asking which districts there is children working you know where. basically we know them all. at the center. of the zone around the one six seven roads also p.r. nora so if you know them and it wasn't hard for me to find them what are you waiting for i have only two hundred days a year of inspection per inspector multiplied by one hundred inspectors that's only twenty thousand days of inspections per year bearing that in mind you can see i can't just focus on only one problem twenty thousand days. a year in
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a region with twelve million inhabitants in naples the labor inspection agency doesn't have the means to make the fight against child labor its priority. at the university of. the research it has been analyzing the economic policies that have been adopted since the beginning of the crisis and according to him the government has let this happen fully aware of the cause. one of the ways in which the italian economy has responded to the crisis. has been to allow illegal work in the black market to increase. and our politicians in recent years have maintained this idea that a large part of the economy of the labor market. black market. and you must understand this work is not supply. and not an extra labor force.
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absolutely necessary for the survival of small to mid-sized italian companies. child labor has therefore become indispensable for the survival of crisis stricken italy. but at the other end of europe the crisis is biting too and everyone is doing their best to fight it in their own way. great britain prime minister david cameron has a radical take on social welfare and that's the interaction of the benefits system with the choices people make about having a family i already talked about how many people have to think very carefully about whether they can afford to have children and how many they can afford to her since the crisis the british government has had one priority budgetary cuts the order of the day to end the benefits culture everyone back to work gone are the days when doing nothing was. option
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a choice under labor that someone was free to make to ponder whether to work or not to work well from now on the message is clear you must work and if you won't work with us to find that work you will lose your benefit. these british ministers seem convinced that lots of british people don't want to work and yet in the middle of the crisis there are people who don't think of anything else the trouble is sometimes their children. a middle sized town in the midlands. fifteen his mother is unemployed so for the past few months he's been doing the milk round with his grandfather to milk deliveries the tradition in england. i do is just going to. get some extra money help round the house and. my mates on
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weekends. we'll crown symbolise work opportunities for youngsters in england this job is permitted from the age of thirteen yes but with a maximum of seventeen hours a week. michael works eight hours a day three nights a week clearly over the authorised limit. is quite hard. and then my. sleep for israel. to keep up michael drinks for energy drinks a night however his salary is low qaeda. that he is. about. troll.
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good good my wife well it is. no very good morning british there's a lot better than nothing but he never goes on strike boss i wouldn't even just threat. bill doing good room good it's good experience rather than. me oh girl none of my friends what. that parents can afford to keep giving them money to go if they want to in light of what. i feel is pretty unfair on me but i have to i'm amazed at the people. side where you got to do it. michael started at nine pm he gets home just before dawn. you go to sleep or votes and no sleep in a school. because you were doing so it's
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a situation. time is five o'clock. two hours and i'll be waking up at school. doing six i was at school now quinoa again and then i will wake up and be able to get sleep. and then. hopeful to sleep at school like i did last time. michael's mother levy has had a serious car accident she's been unable to walk without crutches ever since lee never wanted to give up work but she was made redundant last january and she lives off bentley four hundred fifty yards
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a month in this small house. carol that. you say this last time. michael is in year eleven but at fifteen years of age he risks having to give up everything to take the pressure off his mom a former middle manager in a hospital lee used to make a good living now she's ashamed to send her son now to work especially since she knows it's illegal. where. seth young there is legislation around obviously are in the legislation around now and set around young people away and nice if the undersell that and would probably be in trouble and if it was found their way. and there was
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alice i'm not the absence of. if the authorities discovered that michael worked so much lea would risk having her benefits cut off and losing custody of her son. i think i've always been dismissive of people not waking in and things before the cost. i think people charlie. that perhaps now looking back. that. have been there and have to be. i think and accept him and. possibility. that.
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lee and michael live in yorkshire but the heart of traditional england the coal mines then the big chemicals industry used to guarantee the prosperity of local people today one third of the region's taxpayers penniless. bilton its people apparently wealthy. it's expensive houses and for sale signs in this upmarket district on the outskirts of don't coast or there's evidence of the crisis every twenty metres. this house isn't for sale but it is mortgaged and the shooter family are fighting not to be evicted. this is joel father nigel and his partner kelly. a two hundred metre dwelling a big garden which a remnant of the past once upon
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a time nigel was a successful man. in twenty years he went from nothing to directing a flourishing small company. to crisis cancelled out an entire lifetime's work when the banking crisis hit in two thousand and eight because of my experience at my age. twenty four months keep head down you know. they'll all be over twenty four months you know twenty. no change so you think i'll do another year no change twenty twelve now nearly over no change so christmas he's comin you know in that you just the next year and it's just the daily grind which is. so you know if you're looking at five or ten years in austerity i don't mind working out of woods out all my life we're doing fry and me and i will get hope every day and would go. when i don't
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even get a day or a weekend you know. it was recently revealed that jamie diamond rented out blocking him palace in order to entertain his close friend tony blair the dinner took place only days before jamie diamond had agreed to give the us department of justice a very small cut mortgage fraud and oh how the painting peasants outside buckingham palace gates rejoiced at the impossibly large number of thirteen billion dollars jamie. all of whom jamie done. if you're thinking about an alcoholic drink associated with russia it's probably
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not going to be one that springs into your head but they've been making it here on the black sea coast for more than two thousand kids and there's an industry which really can compete with the best the rest of the world has to offer i've come to meet some of the people growing the greats and to see if i can find out the secret to the perfect. right on the scene. first for you and i think that your. reporters twitter. and instagram.
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to be in the. movie and nigel's small dog in the sense everyone pitches in. even his son joel. know it's been think that way and. not so well five years ago. when the recession album but i was company when both the name it will with work and fall in. the fall at that to pay for everything. nigel has led three employees go and joel has been working thirty hours a week ever since on top of school. about.
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seven pm after closing up the garden center the family is still busy the shooters regularly organize options extra work in order to help make ends meet. but jol is hesitating at fifteen should he carry on working full study full time it's not an easy choice especially when the decision could make things even tougher for his family i wanted to go to six people. obviously if i went to six going to make it. in the heart of a kelly because obviously i'll be that five days a week and i don't think it's normal that people my age. the responsibility of things like this. which for my for my view it's quite a benefit for me because obviously being able to stop a young age it gets me gets me. when i'm older and i'm doing it all myself.
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once again joel's putting his back into it it's midnight and he's still loading things into the car boot. thank you very much. not. to morrow morning joe's dance lessons at a state for. twenty five days. since twelve year old kids used to work you know hundred years ago but not anymore but again. they used to do it is a goal to support the families and now we're back almost a full circle game but it's a way. we wanted to talk to the mayor of dunk a story about there's a situation. here
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that. they're the first to refuse to answer our questions next to local m.p. and finally the minister for work and duncan smith a fool turned down our request for an interview. only one british academic will publicly criticize politicians and a certain sector of british society for looking away from the problem. people don't talk about the because it's very embarrassing. at the extreme poverty loss of every in passing things driving the current management the cuts is the feeling amongst government that they need to look tough so that people who have money to move around a g.o.p. revival well will keep leaving their money and with no investing money in britain because they in the british government is tough. it isn't just great britain in
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fact new european country is taking action against child labor so who in europe has the wherewithal to fight against this phenomenon. we went to us the european council a political organization with the mission of assuring human rights and democracy within the european union. we show extracts from our filming to the human rights commission an. interesting way he now seems to discover the severity of the problem i think it's far more widespread than we realise and done some good work. many people think human rights violations are something that happened elsewhere and not in their own country and that they're not they're not ready to look at who are the most vulnerable and most at risk groups within their own societies we like to think that we we are very developed we have the european social model we have welfare systems we have functioning states and by global standards we are not that
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. europe thought it was immune to child labor because its conception is that a solid body of legislation to protect children's rights and. the ways that you can use the european legislation to force countries to. where n.g.o.s bar associations. individual activists have realized this will take a long time to go through all of the domestic remedies and then to the european court of human rights but once there is a judgment. that will be very hard for the saudis to ignore completely when there is a violation of european directives you can also file a country for let's all yes you can send a commission the european commission is not very active in taking its member states before the european court of justice because european court of justice imposes very
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large fines on companies and member states and so on trust legislation so on but it has not really done this on many human rights issues. the message is clear politically speaking europe doesn't have the will or desire to make sure member states respect a fundamental right the right to a childhood. when autumn arrives in the fall garion village of original get to know and our parents are back at work on the last stage after the harvest packing the dried tobacco. if you are you happy. has she been working hard. not really. they're only interested in money these kids and who have visited the tobacco for you this year put it. into what else in the world yes i'm satisfied they do work hard they listen to me they do what
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they're told and they also study. just like the gustav's the whole village is getting ready for the big tobacco sale. so when do the buyers arrive we have to bring our tobacco to a designated area. then it's they are the ones who decide they organize the sale. they fix the price oh yes in half an hour and isn't it possible to negotiate no. i don't think the price for tobacco is fair but it depends on the buyer. anyhow the prices in bulgaria are always low because there aren't any subsidies anymore. a few kilometers from the sale has already begun. one of the main buyers here is.
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a tobacco multinational. each producer brings his harvest and awaits the verdict how much per kilo. can you tell me what the lowest and highest price would be. so how much i can say. it's all relative. if this worker has refused to answer it's because the prices are very low from two fifty to four euros per kilo gary and tobacco is the cheapest in the european union do you work together as a family with the children yes the whole family my wife and children it's our only source of income how many children do you have so i have two children in my village all the children in the fields but nevertheless a so-called job employee says the opposite. it's. look it's written here guaranteed not to have used child labor that's. i mean large
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child labor is forbidden in our company in summer our inspectors survey the fields and they make sure there are no children in the fields. it's forbidden to send children to work it's a company priority it's inadmissible. should therefore have inspectors on the lookout throughout the area. but. warn parents to stop sending the children into the fields. do they sometimes go back. sometimes they don't go back. because our producers the ones we work with they don't use children. we never came across one inspector finally people change their story big bird if you have a four hector field you need a lot of people so obviously that's going to include children otherwise the yield would be smaller. yes yes they do help those kids but the
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important point is that they're not treated badly. just that it's not forced labor . end up admitting the children are working in the fields so who is going to buy tobacco. what types of cigarettes do you produce tobacco for people much variance. if we mainly produce for philip morris. he's the principal buyer. so the tobacco produced by children ends up in cigarettes which belong to philip morris in packets of chesterfield merit among other brands which is sold on the global market. on his website however philip morris claims we do not tolerate the illegal employment of children and we do not tolerate forced labor so
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we called philip morris to. find out if he was aware of these abuses i'd like to ask you two questions the first one is are you aware of what's happening in bulgaria with so good that using tight labor and if you are. the second one is if you're not aware what are you going to do about it. my and. what this communications representative tries to tell us is that philip morris is financing a foundation against child labor the e.c.l. t. yet the e.c.l. t. is completely financed by tobacco industrialists. and while the e.c.l. t. foundation runs its costly programs targeting child labor some of its members
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continue to have children work in their fields. in the end philip morris got back to us by email. they read directed us to their website and their statements of good intentions. garia england italy but also spain portugal greece and europe there are no longer any countries shielded from child labor just how low are we prepared to sink in order to dig out of the crisis. giovanni dreams of his father will work as a pizza maker again. is carrying on working in the bakery. michael would like to join the british police force. joel has just decided to go to technical college to train as an electrician. get dana can see
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everything they respect and so that you gave them all up and decided to go your way but what for. it was a latent form he tried to restrain himself but look it will burst out anyway. if it really puts me off that i have such a father. it was one small but very great secret that i have to live with for. we can't without. some of. the consents
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