PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE / Child labor beneath our feet

PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE / Child labor beneath our feet: "PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE
Child labor beneath our feet
Louis Freedberg

Monday, March 13, 2006

IT' WAS AN UNEXPECTED, even odd, question for a rug designer to pose.

"Would you want an 8-year-old painting your house?" asked Alice Keshishian, owner of Carpets of Imagination in Petaluma.

Probably not, even if I could get the job done at a deeply discounted price.

Yet most of us probably wouldn't give a second thought to buying a rug made with the delicate, and overworked, hands of children as young as 6. Until recently, it would have been easy to claim ignorance about the pervasive and mostly hidden use of abusive child labor in the handmade carpet business.

No longer. A growing number of designers, importers and retail outlets in the Bay Area, including Keshishian, have linked up with Rugmark, a nonprofit organization that for a decade has been working to get children out of the rug trade. A Rugmark label on a rug certifies that no tiny hands were involved in making it. (For the full list of Bay Area Rugmark outlets, go to www.rugmark.org.)

If you think you got a good deal on a rug, there's a good chance it was produced with the help of poorly paid children, if they were paid at all. Some children work as virtual slaves called "apprentices" in return for one meal a day and a place to sleep. Sometimes, parents accept a fee to "loan" their child to a loom owner.

Today, an estimated 300,000 children are toiling in the rug trade in Pakistan, India and Nepal alone. Those three countries account for half of the $1.2 billion in sales of handmade rugs in the United States.

I can hear the groans now. Free-trade coffee. Dolphin-safe tuna. Now I have to feel guilty about enjoying the rug in my living room?

Well, probably.

Until now, it would have been possible to plead ignorance. But now all we have to do is look for the Rugmark label, which certifies that a rug has not been tainted with child labor. Rugmark inspectors follow up, making unannounced visits to make sure no children have been lured back to the looms. If necessary, they are "rescued" from servitude and placed in a network of schools, rehabilitation centers and child-care centers Rugmark has set up.

The goal is "not just getting kids off the looms, but turning their lives around as well," explained Avner Lapovsky of Sloan Miyasato at the San Francisco Design Center, which carries rugs with the Rugmark label.

Some of Rugmark's income comes from a small fee paid by exporters and importers totaling 1/2 percent of the retail value of the carpet. That adds negligibly to the cost. "On a $2,000 rug, the cost of making sure kids aren't exploited is about $10," says Nina Smith, executive director of Rugmark USA. Other support comes from foundations such as the Skoll Foundation in Palo Alto, established by Jeffrey Skoll, the founding president of eBay. Last year, Rugmark received one of the foundation's "social entrepreneurship" awards, along with a three-year grant to support its work.

The number of kids in the rug trade has dropped by 70 percent over the past decade. But there's still a long way to go. Last year, rugs with the Rugmark label had a retail value of about $30 million. But that represents only 1 1/2 percent of the handmade-rug market in the United States.

In January, Rugmark launched a national campaign, initially focusing on New York and San Francisco. The goal: to increase rugs with the Rugmark label to 7 percent of the U.S. market over the next three years, and to 15 percent over the next decade. Smith believes that once 15 percent of the rug industry is liberated from child labor that will have a cascading effect on the entire industry. "If we're successful, we'll be able to say that we have literally wiped out child servitude from the rug industry," she said.

Ultimately, it will be up to consumers, such as you and me, to pitch in. The greatest impact, says Stephen Miller, the owner of Stephen Miller Galleries in Menlo Park, "will come from the customer asking for rugs made without child labor."

Louis Freedberg is a Chronicle editorial writer. E-mail him at lfreedberg@sfchronicle.com"