CAUSE CELEB

By NANCY GIBBS

A crusade in search of its 15 minutes of fame sometimes needs a celebrity sacrifice. Zoe Baird gave us immigration reform, Christopher Reeve makes it impossible to ignore spinal-cord research, Magic Johnson lent his charisma to the fight against AIDS. Now the issue of exploited child workers--an ugly story that has become routine--lands in the morning papers and on the evening news because the exploiter suddenly has a perky, famous face. When Kathie Lee Gifford tearfully confessed on her morning talk show last month that yes, her Wal-Mart outfits were made by Honduran girls paid 31[cents] an hour--but she didn't know, she didn't know--it was too good a chance for advocates and activists to miss.

"This gave us an opening to raise the issue in a way we've never had a chance to raise it before," says Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the New York City-based National Labor Committee, a tiny human-rights organization run on a Third World budget. It was Kernaghan's testimony at an April 29 congressional hearing on labor abuses that put Gifford on the griddle. "The fact that major companies are going after these celebrities to be their point persons gives us someone we can wrap our arms around." In fact, that tactic worked so well that last week the lobby Made in the U.S.A. took advantage of the N.B.A. finals to remind consumers that Michael Jordan reportedly earns $20 million a year endorsing Nike sneakers, and to claim that this is more than the total annual payroll for the thousands of Indonesians who help make them. Nike shot back that those shoes are actually made in Taiwan by workers earning an average of $800 a month each. Does Nike exploit workers? "I'm not really aware of that," Jordan told TIME. "My job with Nike is to endorse the product. Their job is to be up on that."

The flaying of celebrities like Gifford and Jordan made it easy to miss the point. For years children have been sold as slaves, blinded or maimed for crying or rebelling or trying to return home, ill-fed, bone-weary, short-lived. They file the scissor blades, mix the gunpowder for the firecrackers, knot the carpets, stitch the soccer balls with needles longer than their fingers. Human-rights groups guess there may be 200 million children around the world, from China to South America, working full time--no play, no school, no chance. All of which raises the question, once the news lands on the front page: How much are we willing to sacrifice the children of other countries to give our children what they want?

The stories were too much for a celebrity who doesn't need the money enough to justify the grief. So Gifford wrote checks and went on Larry King Live and launched a crusade. And the more she succeeds, the clearer it becomes that even the purest consumer can't avoid complicity. The trousers are from Honduras, the orange juice from Brazil, the teddy bear from Thailand. "I like a cheap shirt," admits a Labor Department administrator, "so I'm guilty too."

Americans search for bargains with enduring passion, but it is hard to find them--a handmade rug for only $700--without tiny fingerprints on them somewhere. If child-labor and safety laws were truly enforced, trade experts say, whole industries in many countries would collapse, at great cost to both developing and developed economies.

So that was one reason the agendas ran so thick and fast last week, as protectionist unions and corporate spin doctors and politicians and consumers saw 20 years' worth of exploitation boil down into one week's news. Labor Secretary Robert Reich skillfully recruited Gifford to the cause--offering absolution if she would become a watchdog. Reich argues that more than half the 22,000 U.S. garment contractors pay less than the minimum wage; working conditions are often appalling. He has about 800 inspectors to police them all, which is why public outrage comes in handy. "Consumer pressure is vitally important," he says. "We have also begun naming names." Every three months the department lists the manufacturers that are dealing with sweatshops. Some, like J.C. Penney last week, have finally agreed to start policing themselves, after being warned four times by the Labor Department. Others, like the Gap, Levi Strauss and Sears, have pledged to fight exploitative practices and are winning praise and awards for their efforts.

For Gifford, who is gifted at both self-promotion and self-preservation, this has become a consuming cause. When the charges first hit, her tearful self-defense rightly noted that of her clothing line's $9 million profit last year, she donated $1 million to the Association to Benefit Children, which opened shelters for crack-addicted children and children with AIDS. She promised to monitor factories where her clothes are made and said she would recruit other famous endorsers like Jaclyn Smith to help pressure manufacturers to police labor practices more closely.

Michael Jordan, busy with work, passed the ball to Nike, which adamantly defended its labor record overseas while pointing out the complexities and hypocrisies in the whole debate. "We've taken a leadership role in trying to promote trade and act in an ethical way," says Nike spokesperson Donna Gibbs. "Often the human-rights groups and Made in the U.S.A. have their own agendas. The reality is, we live in a global economy." A global company like Nike, she says, with long-term partnerships overseas, can use its might to fight abuses.

Nike's Indonesian workers are paid about 50 [cents] an hour and receive free meals and health care. While that amount seems like little more than slavery, it's roughly twice the country's minimum wage--if the factory owner abides by the rules. Nike, like most of the big American firms, does not own any factories in Indonesia; it hires Korean and Taiwanese-owned factories to supply footwear made to Nike specifications. The company has some 800 staff members in Asia whose responsibility includes factory inspection. Yet, says an industry source, "shoe factories are huge. There are 3,000 workers in there. Our inspectors try to manage, but it's a big beast." Overall, the lot of Indonesian workers is improving. Real wages increased 55% from 1990 to 1995, according to the World Bank. "This is a pretty decent story," says Dennis de Tray, a bank director in Jakarta.

Nike's main credibility problem in Indonesia is that it claims to meet the Indonesian government's labor standards--which is saying very little. "If you go to those factories, you see children who don't look a day over 10 years old," says a labor-union activist. Another problem is subcontracting, which is even harder to police. Activists says it's no excuse. "American companies cannot escape the moral responsibility," says Kailash Satyarthi, one of India's leading child advocates. "They are the people placing the orders. So they are the principal employers of those children." In response to such criticisms, Nike declared last week that its contractors have agreed since 1991 to a Memorandum of Understanding that binds them to rules on child labor, worker and environmental safeguards. "We feel that over time, our conscience, our way of doing business, has influenced the families that own these factories," spokesperson Gibbs says.

If companies do not clean up the shop voluntarily, they may find Washington eager to force their hand. House minority leader Richard Gephardt, who took issue with child-labor standards in Mexico in his opposition to NAFTA, is mulling over a proposal that would prohibit imports of goods made by children under substandard conditions. Gephardt does not expect every country to abide by American standards and child-labor rules; but as a first step, he thinks they should adhere to the laws in their own countries. "No children should be robbed of their childhood because of lax enforcement," Gephardt says.

And if moral or political pressure doesn't do it, economic pressure might. "If I find that we can't effect change in relation to this problem," Gifford told TIME last week, "then I will consider leaving the clothing industry." Which would represent, for Wal-Mart, a loss of millions. But in the never ending irony that revolves around this issue, that might mean a greater loss for the people making pennies an hour.

--Reported by John F. Dickerson/Washington, Elaine Rivera/New York and Michael Shari/Jakarta

With reporting by JOHN F. DICKERSON/WASHINGTON, ELAINE RIVERA/NEW YORK AND MICHAEL SHARI/JAKARTA