By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Oct 13 1998 (IPS)

A textile factory in Turkey subcontracted by Benetton, Italy’s top chain of clothing stores, was accused of employing children as young as nine years old in sweatshop conditions.

In the wake of Monday’s denunciation by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Benetton – a company reknowned worldwide for its striking and controversial ads in defence of humanitarian causes – decided to immediately suspend relations with the Turkish corporation, Bermuda, until the situation was cleared up.

The Bermuda factory, located on the outskirts of Istanbul, exploits children from ages nine to 13, who put in long workdays sewing pants and shirts for 80 dollars a month, according to the newspaper.

“Grave violations of precise guidelines on respect for labour norms were committed,” declared Benetton, a firm based in the northern Italian region of Veneto, with subsidiaries throughout the world.

The investigation carried out by Corriere della Sera was based on reports by the Turkish textile union, photographic evidence and testimony collected inside the Bermuda factory. The newspaper published photos showing children working, one of whom identified himself as 11-year-old Mehmet Kocak.

The textile workers associations of Italy’s three union confederations asked for an interview with the president of the Italian company, Luciano Benetton, and also plan to meet with Turkish trade unionists.

The intention is not to close down the company because it employs minors, but to keep it from breaking the law, and to prevent it from hiring children, thus leaving the jobs open to adults, said Italian unionists.

The secretary of the Italian Workers Union Confederation, Sergio D’Antoni, said the organisations were ready to hold public demonstrations to protest companies that employ children in exploitative conditions.

Labour Minister Tiziano Treu said he hoped the allegations were false, but that if correct they would signify violations of International Labour Organisation (ILO) norms as well as national laws accepted by Italian industry.

The non-governmental New Model of Development Centre, meanwhile, announced a boycott of Benetton products.

But photographer Oliviero Toscani, whose publicity campaigns have caused a sensation all over the world, said that “I have been working in Benetton for 15 years, because I have never found a corporation that offers better working conditions, greater transparency and search for quality.”

Toscani said he was shaken by the report, but added that he believed in Benetton’s good faith and said it was impossible to control the entire production chain in poor countries, “where survival itself is a problem.”

“If this accusation is true, me and my team would have to resign. We are the last people who could accept a situation of this kind,” he said. The photographer pointed out that one of his publicity campaigns was aimed precisely at raising awareness worldwide on the question of exploitative child labour.

More than 1.8 million boys and girls from ages six to 14 work in Turkey, according to the Italian press. That figure, however, does not include minors who work in agriculture, domestic work or on the streets.

Diego Rossetti, the owner of one of Italy’s leading shoemaking companies, said such problems were very difficult to resolve, due to the complexity of the phenomenon of child labour. “I am sure Benetton did not know that children were used in its production. Any person who has travelled to a country like Turkey knows that minors are not put to work in factories, but segregated in basements or in their own homes.”

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