Child labor is a significant issue in developing countries, as it deprives millions of children of their childhood, education, and fundamental human rights. The number of children in child labor has risen to 160 million worldwide, an increase of 8.4 million children in the last four years. The gender gap grows with age, and boys are more likely to be involved in child labor.
The United Nations has reported that the world has seen the first rise in child labor in two decades, and the coronavirus crisis threatens to push millions more youngsters into the same fate. Child labor affects millions of children worldwide by depriving them of their childhood, education, and fundamental human rights. The ILO defines child labor as work that is mentally, physically, socially, or morally dangerous and harmful to children, and interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend.
Poverty is the primary reason children are forced to work, perpetuating a crushing cycle that denies them education, a crucial tool to break. Factors such as conflict, mass migration, natural disasters, and climate change have increased the number of children that carry out forced labor. Microanalysis for Burkina Faso and Guatemala shows that the incidence of child labor increases when poor families are faced with income shocks.
Child labor occurs due to poverty, lack of access to quality education, poor access to decent work, limited understanding, and physical and mental harm. Covid-19 and a related rise in poverty around the globe have led to an increase in child labor, particularly in the supply chains of developed countries. The main reasons for the emergence of child labor in bigger cities are unhealthy family life and economic deprivation. Processes of globalization increasingly involve Western societies in these practices, through the import of commodities produced by child labor in the global economy.
📹 Why Child Labor in America is Skyrocketing | Robert Reich
Corporations are now using the “labor shortage” as an excuse to bring back child labor. It’s part of a horrifying trend: Since 2015, …
Does H&M use child labor?
It is the policy of this company to prohibit the use of forced and child labor. All suppliers are required to sign and adhere to the company’s strict anti-forced and anti-child labor policies.
What are 3 negative effects of child labor?
Child labor has long-term health impacts, including cancer, infertility, chronic backpain, and other negative health outcomes. These effects are difficult to measure and are exacerbated by poverty and inadequate health and social security schemes. Mental health is also affected by child labor, but its magnitude is less known.
The international community, including the European Union, has committed to ending child labor in all its forms by 2025. However, this target is increasingly unlikely, necessitating renewed commitments and efforts from governments, the private sector, civil society, and other stakeholders. The Sustainable Development Goals set a target of ending child labour in all forms by 2025, but this is becoming less likely. To achieve this, renewed commitments and resources are needed, as the solutions are known, but the commitment and resources needed to reinvigorate the fight against child labor are needed.
How to reduce child labor?
To help end child labor, educate yourself, contact retail stores, manufacturers, and importers, buy fair trade and sweatshop-free products, grow your own food, share your time and money, and contact local, regional, and national legislators. Child labor and slavery are deeply entrenched in the production of goods and services from many countries, making it difficult to avoid them. By educating yourself, contacting retailers, buying fair trade and sweatshop-free products, growing your own food, sharing time and money, and contacting legislators, we can work towards a more sustainable future.
What are 10 effects of child labour?
The dearth of education in contemporary society elevates the probability of infectious diseases, physical injuries, and chronic health complications such as respiratory disorders and cancer, underscoring the necessity for enhanced educational and healthcare initiatives.
Which country has the highest child labour in the world?
The International Labour Organization (ILO) ranks countries based on their child labor rates, which are defined as participation in economic activity by underage persons aged 5 to 17. Child work harms children, interferes with their education, and prevents their development. The prevalence of child labor is notable in regions like Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa. In 2020, around 160 million children worldwide were working.
What industry has the highest percentage of child labor?
Agriculture is the largest sector for childhood employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for over four out of every five children in child labor. However, older teens are more likely to work in services, including domestic work, commerce, transport, and motor vehicle repair, while industry covers construction, mining, and manufacturing. In Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Northern America, services and industry surpass agriculture. World Day Against Child Labor is observed on June 12.
Why are there so many child Labour around the world?
Child labor is a serious issue that often arises due to financial difficulties or uncertainty, such as poverty, sudden illness, or job loss. It can result in severe harm, death, slavery, sexual or economic exploitation, and restrict children’s access to education and healthcare. Migrant and refugee children, often uprooted by conflict, disaster, or poverty, also face the risk of being forced into work and trafficked, especially if they migrate alone or take irregular routes. Trafficked children often face violence, abuse, and human rights violations, with girls facing significant sexual exploitation and boys potentially being exploited by armed forces or groups.
Which country is best for child birth?
Poland is the top destination for giving birth globally, with an overall score of 7. 05. The country is recognized as the best place to give birth worldwide, followed by Estonia with a score of 6. 98, and Japan with a score of 6. 82. Belgium has a score of 71. 51, and Greece has a score of 43. 4 weeks. The birthing experience can be both magical and stressful, with factors such as access to maternity packages, healthcare fees, and hospital planning affecting the experience.
Health insurance policies may cover the baby’s birth and related services, depending on the policy. Health insurance experts at Compare the Market Australia have analyzed the benefits and difficulties of giving birth in different countries to determine the best experience.
Why is child Labour common in China?
The situation of girls in China is becoming increasingly challenging due to a combination of factors, including gender gaps, social stratification, and parental attitudes. This is leading to an alarming rise in child labor.
Does Nike use child labor?
Nike is dedicated to the eradication of forced labor, child labor, human trafficking, and modern slavery. Its Code of Conduct and Code of Leadership Standards delineate the expectations for suppliers.
When was child Labour at its highest?
Child labor has a long history in rich countries, with its prevalence in Europe and North America in the 19th century declining rapidly at the turn of the 20th century. Industrialization in Western countries initially increased the demand for child labor but eventually contributed to its elimination. The incidence of child labor was higher in rural populations for both boys and girls. Survey data on child labor in the UK is limited beyond 1911, but estimates suggest the significant impact of the First and Second World Wars on childhood employment. After a spike in employment during the First World War (1914-1918), rates of childhood labor appeared to fall to approximately 6-7 per cent of children aged 12-14 in England and Wales.
📹 Child Labor Robs Children of Their Future
Education is the first casualty of war. In Yemen, the number of out-of-school children has doubled since armed conflict escalated …
I started working at 15. The idea was character building and learning the value of money. What I learned is how grotesque and corrupt workplaces are. The horrible people in charge and what they truly value. Enjoy your childhood if you can. Losing it leaves a massive hole in your life, which many people fill with drugs or consumerism.
One of the most serious problems with the new child labor laws is that corporations are not required to give compensation to minors that are injured on the job. Either Arkansas or one of the Dakotas literally wrote that into their law. Meaning if your child gets maimed, suffers chemical burns or even gets a minor scrape the company is not forced to give your child workers compensation. One of them went so far as to write in that the corporation will not suffer legal consequences of any type if a child is injured on the job. Not sure if either of those made it into final bills, however it will not surprise me if they did.
Child workers have been around for years. I’m in Minnesota and since the early 1990s, my county has an “educational program” for low-income families (however, it’s now for at-risk youth rather than targeting only low-income) In this program, 12-15 year old kids are allowed to work full time in this program during the summer months working below minimum wage. My husband spent his summers working for the county doing office work, bike repairs, cooking pizza and hotdogs at the pool, and working in the city garden. Its promoted as this wonderful humanitarian program, but it’s used as a way to exploit low-income or kids from abusive homes.
My first job was for a family owned bakery. I was hired the summer before I began high school. In the summers they gave me all the shifts I could handle but once school started it was weekend shifts only and my boss insisted on shorter shifts to accommodate schoolwork and extra curricular things. I ended up working for them through college. That’s honestly the way it should be. I’m lucky to have had that experience.
I’m seriously good friends with the current director of the DOL. Yes, he has told me repeatedly that they keep getting defunded and their power stripped away. That’s why they are so slow to investigate companies, etc. He’s literally doing the jobs of 9 people by himself because they don’t even get the funding for a full staff.
As FDR once said, “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by ‘workers’ I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by ‘living wages’ I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.”
This is sickening. Kids deserve to be kids, not underpaid labor for greedy companies that don’t want to pay adults living wages. The main reason for the “labor shortage” is that we’re finally waking up to the fact that we’re selling hours of our lives tp employers and all to often selling them at bargain prices.
My sister’s friend died in high school crossing a busy intersection at 3am because the restaurant he worked at consistently made him close. He lived at LEAST a 15 minute drive away from his work (or over 5 miles away), and no one ever offered him a ride. His family needed the money, so he worked, and didn’t protest. Now he’s dead.
My mom’s dad was born in 1905 and quit school after seventh grade to work in a local factory because the family needed the money. His father was a railroad right of way maintenance worker and his mother a rural mail carrier, both unionized jobs now, but not then. When I was young, work meant delivering newspapers, mowing, or shoveling snow for neighbors. Now we are heading backwards
Why are we always talking about fines? Prosecute employers who exploit child labor under something like criminal child trafficking laws. For reference, the UNICEF definition of child trafficking is “the recruitment and/or transfer, harbouring or receipt of children for the purposes of exploitation”. Under this definition, children don’t necessarily need to be kidnapped or transported long distances to be trafficked (though that type of abuse does occur). Children simply have to be RECRUITED for the purposes of EXPLOITATION, which pretty much covers all child labour that is detrimental to a child’s life, but allows non-exploitative work such as part-time summer jobs for teens in safe environments. If criminal child exploitation laws were enacted, and then rigorously enforced with jail time, you’d actually see employers avoid child labor like the plague.
These asinine corporations seem to be ignoring the FACT that treating and paying your employees right means happy workers=better quality and quantity=happy customers=referrals to more customers=more profits, etc. The employees are the single most important asset any business can have. Investing some of those profits in the employees will build a business higher and faster. KEEP YOUR EMPLOYEES HAPPY AND HEALTHY!
My boss at McDonald’s in Culpeper VA hired a 13 year old, and he was having relations with her. When I spoke up, I was terminated. Needless to say, I wasn’t mad. I was just mad that at that age, I was even working at McDonald’s. No disrespect to anyone who is. Work is work, and there is no shame in making your own money.
NO! This is not okay, and it never will be. Child labor/enslavement is bad, and corporations should not have all the power to change or dodge the rules whenever they want! 😡It is madness and senseless to let the entire planet revolve around corporations! Would reduced corporate profits really be the end of the world? I hate how useless child safety laws and other laws appear to be against corporate greed!
You are SO right about the laughably ineffectual fines that cost these corporations far less than the benefit of breaking these laws/regulations. If the fines were big enough to actually prove punishing for them, they would think twice about doing these things in the first place! There are many great examples of this in the EU, since they certainly seem to have their act together regarding worker rights and regulations.
This is decades old and just getting bigger it seems. In 1967 I was working my way through college so I started working at a plant that was part of a cooperative for the processing of citrus fruit. There were groves, fresh fruit packing plants and juice plants. I worked at plants in Plymouth and Winter Garden Florida. These were also near the extensive agricultural Zellwood farms. During this time it was well known that many immigrant families came here to pick vegetables at Zellwood and citrus all over Florida as a part of a loop through other agricultural states. When I say families I’m talking the entire family men, women and children worked the groves and/or fields. In the groves the adults would climb the ladders and pick while the children would pick up the fruit dropped on the ground. They were paid based on a box of fruit (90lbs). Citrus started about September and went typically to about April. So it started with Grapefruit and then progressed through early, mid and late oranges (i.e., first grapefruit to last Valencia’s), 7 days a week at peak season. I doubt it has changed unless we developed self picking food and I missed that. Then there was the FLSA laws that allowed the citrus plants to avoid paying hourly workers over time for work over 40 hours. There is a lot that needs to be looked at.
My Sire owned a Mining Company, Mining Uranium. From age 12-16 my Sire forced me to work in the mine alongside his adult workers. I had to load dynamite into drill holes, wire, and blast the rock. After waiting for the air to clear for 20 mins, then I had to use the underground loaders to fill ore trucks and haul the ore to the surface. several days, I was rushed off the mine site only because OSHA had shown up for Air Quality Testing and to check the mine site. My brother (3 years younger than myself) broke his leg underground on one of the machines. My Sire told the Doctors he fell off of the Mesa to cover. I am now 60. Profits over People. That’s the Republican way.
It’s always bemused me that instead of having two robust incomes, as women went back to work, more men became unemployed and raised dried up. Now, one parent holding down one job and being able to support a family is practically unheard of. Now, we’re running twice as hard to stay in the same place – and they’re going after our children. Solidarity. 💪🏾
The saddest part of them using children because able-bodied adults refuse to work low paying jobs is that there are tons of disabled workers with extremely minor disabilities that have zero impact on our ability to work willing to work low paying jobs, like me, but employers refuse to hire us because we are the ‘undesirables’ in society, people they want to die off and starve to death, they don’t want us to have money to afford to live, and Social Security is providing us less and less money, and as costs rise more and more of us die from being unable to afford to live, and without jobs we cannot afford to live. Its an insidious aspect of the economic system our society has… where rather than employ willing adults to work (adults which they want to kill off), they employ children (who have no choice in the matter). Our nation is going to continue going downhill as long as corrupt evil people control all the businesses and are managers in businesses. And middle/upper middle-class people who are management hiring employees have a policy – never ever hire anyone that is an undesirable. There have embraced the upper classes in maintaining the psychotic status quo. Every middle-class manager refused to hire me over either disability or ethnic background, because they would rather back the status quo instead of overthrow it. They assume that if they protect the executives above them and follow their policy that someday they can be billionaires too.
I am from Europe. Over here, almost everyone considers the USA a third world country. Richest country in the world, but 4-6 out of 10 people are one paycheck away from homelessness, and people are dying because they can’t afford basic health care. That shit is NOT normal; the government here gives me more money for being unemployed than Americans working for minimum wage make and health care is free or almost free in every single developed country except the USA. On top of that, women in the USA do not have autonomy over their own bodies, schools are being shot up multiple times a week, police kill innocent people, and you guys are starting to ban educational books. You know who else did that? NAZIS. My heart aches for every American struggling to make ends meet. It doesn’t have to be like this, man! Do not accept it! Speak up whenever you see injustice, join protests, or at least always, always vote, for every election possible. Those in power want you to be divided, want minorities and the poor to hate and blame each other, want them to think their voice doesn’t matter. They know they won’t stand a chance if you UNITE. Please, for your own sake, but also for your future generation. Do something while you still can. Anything. You are not powerless, but you have to act now! Even if it’s just by talking to those around you, by just changing one thing in the school your kids attend or the management at your work, or if that feels unsafe, just by taking one day every couple of years to vote and to convince those around you to do the same.
I got a work permit at 15 with the agreement of my parents; I only had two classes left to take in high school to graduate. The rules were that I could only work until 9 PM (this was at a restaurant). I walked to work after school was done (10 AM) and my dad was picking me up after work. Starting the second week I was scheduled to work every night until closing at 2 PM; not starting until 9 PM. Not safe, dad couldn’t come get me, end of job.
This is part of capitalism and why it DOES NOT WORK!!! Capitalism that is controlled and regulated is good, because it encourages SOME, ETHICAL, and MORAL greed….Ie work hard and you make money….But Unfettered Capitalism the End results are simply Monopolies, Child labour, and Corp profit at all cost, including health and safety. NO corporation will pay more than it needs to for its workers because that affects the bottom line. This is WHY, Beyond ANY shadow of a doubt, we need MORE regulation, not less. We need MORE workers rights, not less. And Corporations and those that make that profit need to pay their fair share to the government to cover what they do not want to cover….the environment that allows them to prosper.
Are corporate profits more important then the safety of children? If you ask the GOP and the big businesses that keep them in office that answer would be yes. Also those stockholders of those large corporation might say yes as well. To most people that know this is exploiting children and cheep labor in our country the answer is of course no. The GOP in so many areas wants to take the country backwards and certainly exploiting children and keep wages low is a huge part of keeping themselves in power. Since the pandemic corporate greed has run rampant and the Democrats certainly not the republicans have to find a way to stop the high prices in everything we buy… Corporation need to be taxed more like in the 1960’s and the president and the congress need to take the country back from large corporations that don’t care about the small fines they have to pay when they get caught. CEO’s and other big executives and owners have to go to prison to stop this greed.
The absurdity of Republican policy is that their book bans will prevent the kid working in the meat packing plant from being able to check out a copy of The Jungle from their school library. How does the party that argues that their kids shouldn’t have access to certain books because it would ruin their purity and how we need to protect the children end up being the same party that is dropping parental consent for kids working in factories?
The answer to inadequate fines is to use the system Finland uses: specify fines as a percentage of income. Maybe modify this for corporations to also take dividend payments into account. So big corporations will hurt at least as much as small ones when they are fined. And this will also encourage shareholders to appoint CEOs who don’t endanger profitability by risking to incur those fines.
“Fiscal estimates earlier in 2022 predict the state would spend around $600 million to pay for Medicaid expansion in its first year in Kansas. But most of that would be offset by federal funding. In the end, the state’s budget director estimates that Kansas would save nearly $70 million by enacting Medicaid expansion.”
Watching this, I question myself. Looking at the recent 2000 years of history… we had child labor, slaves… mainly because of GREED. Some people like to say we are civilized nowadays, but I STILL see RAMPAND GREED everywhere. Even in the government, THE place that could push change… but doesn’t because of money.
An ends justifying the means mentality and the ends are maximum profit potential. Our capitalist system enabled by government is all about exploitation in: labor, natural resources, environmental protection, worker safety, community safety and product safety. Everything is a 🍊 and “success” is squeezing every conceivable drop out and inflating even those results. It’s the “hustler” mentality of selling whether someone needs or can afford it matters not. Alleged greatest country yet highest violence, incarcerated, under educated, homeless and can’t even guarantee clean drinking water or air. Our social services are always one more paper to fill out or hoop to jump through away. We can’t even ensure our veterans are housed. I’m sure we’re all just too stupid to understand that the answer to all or any of our issues is that 14 year olds haven’t been doing their part. 🤬
I like almost everything you say on every subject, but you still seem to believe that capitalism can ever work. By its very nature, it always, always, always leads to exploitation and abuse. It’s built in. Even with “reforms” and “regulations,” every advance is short-lived before profit–the whole point of capitalism–overpowers everything else. Always. We must move on to a better economic system.
It’s immigration. If you have millions of people coming into the country from places where there isn’t a culture of not having children doing labor. BTW there’s a lot of immigrant factory owners (see the LA garment industry) and families (your local doughnut place) are fine with using immigrant child labor. So we have the Dems pushing open borders and GOPer looking to relax restrictions of child labor.
My best friend worked in Howard Johnsons when she was 16…for three days. She quit. When I asked her why, she said her boss told her to sleep with him or find another job. Even with Me Too I wonder if things have changed all that much. After all, the big role model for many is an angry man whose name should rhyme with molester.
Every Lobbyist and politician supporting this should be thrown in prison for 3-5 years. Every Corporation caught exploiting children should be fined 50% of their previous years Gross income and have every C-level executive incarcerated for 10 years. The goal being to be so draconian that nobody would ever dare dream of attempted a return of child labor again.
Even in Canada the Corporations have their hooks in the Conservatives. The United Conservative Party in Alberta actually rolled back wage increases for minors and lowered the minimum wage for teenagers. They did that in 2019. They’re up for reelection in just a few weeks. And they undid worker protections for children working on farms.
No, we haven’t learned, and we are slipping back fast. — “Corporate Slavery” may eventually turn out to be more than just an ironic or satirical phrase, if contracts keep changing to exclude benefits and increase debt and dependency, overtime and part-time, temp. vs. permanent employees’ rights. — At the same time, there needs to be a way for talented or needy kids/teens (under 18) to get a fair chance to do paying work if they want, to support themselves, grow their talent, and gain experience and independence. — Yet without ruining their lives and their education or their chances for fun and. a childhood. — I grew up with my dad telling stories of his early farm responsibilities from when he was very little to then when he was 12 and older. Kids had to be responsible and grow up fast. But it also meant that, while it did support their families out of need, it also meant they lost time for education and for play, just being a kid or teen. And then there are kids and teens who are homeless runaways or kicked out, or so poor that they desperately need money and people and a stable home. How do we as a society balance the two extremes to give kid and teens a fair chance?
Every generation gets to fight these battles all over again. Each labor issue. Once every 50 years or so working people demonstrate on a large scale and vote in true advocates and we see big gains then we get comfortable and watch said gains slowly erode until the working class gets a belly full again.
Time for more immigration. I worked as a farm laborer starting as an 11-year-old. I was too short to see over the steering wheel of the hay truck without sitting on a board and a mattress pad from a baby bed. I averaged more than 40 hours per week before and after school and on weekends. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt by the chain by the hay bale loader hooked to the truck I was driving. The job was dangerous for a child and my schooling suffered, but we were poor, and dad made me do it. An adult immigrant with more experience and better judgment might have taken me out of a risky situation. Who knows if my dad would have paid the wages though, because even the paltry money he would have had to pay for immigrant labor may have been a deal breaker. Of course the answer is NOT to merely find ever cheaper labor in a race to the bottom for the working guy, but with our trouble at the borders, we could use the additional labor resources.
How in the world can these two statements be true at the same time? 1. We have a labor shortage and therefore we must put children to work. 2. We do not want immigrants to come here for work and a better life. These two statemrnts are both offered by Republicans at exactly the same time. If we actually do have a labor shortage Immigrants can and will fill the need. Further, they pay taxes, including Social Security taxes making the system more solvent. Immigrants are consumers in a consumer driven economy. Demographically we aren’t having as many children and those we have are precious and must be taught and nurtured. Immigrants make up the shortfall but it’s mostly their children that are being exploited. I reject the argument that we have a labor shortage altogether. We have sent a lot of jobs overseas which makes for very long supply chains and deprives Americans of the jobs they had. We have plenty of workers but not enough jobs and very few that pay enough.. We have a deep shortage of livable wages. Pay workers a decent wage and they will show up faithfully and on time. It’s safer than crime and drugs and it’s worth the effort expended on a job. But when childcare, housing and food cost more than a job pays and it takes so much from a worker’s life and no progress or hope comes of a life of hard work, he will work in the gray economy, or turn to crime or alcohol and drugs to soothe the pain of a life of poverty and a worker will live for the moment. It’s too hard to work and still end up unable to eat and stay housed.
Would you be ok with your young barely adult daughter or son working in a bar with sleazy, drunk people coming to most likely harass them inappropriately every single day. With little to no oversight in the work enviroment by the government o authority. Of course not, but since the daughters and sons of senators don’t have to work such jobs THEY DON’T CARE.
Why don’t we charge higher fines for the second third etc child we find in the same place. Meaning the fine if one kid slipped through the cracks wouldn’t kill a business but if you have 20 kids there your getting hit harder for the higher number. Kinda like if a working class person gets a speeding ticket or something the more you get caught doing it the worse the consequences
I worked a long stint in construction for about 6 years. I had a chat with the grim reaper almost every day. Construction is no place for a 16 year old. Imagine your child dying because he fell through 50′ of scaffolding, hitting every bar on the way down, or getting crushed under a house that was held up by a bottle jack, before being able to graduate high school.
I do hate that we’re blaming Republicans for it, anyone in office is against the people it seems, even the Democrats. There’s only really one or two jobs they could do at the plant I work at, but if they get a finger stuck in a belt just from slipping on the floor or they turn on the wrong pipe and get chemical burns, the rest of their life will be changed, and it’s a little pathetic to ask a child to consider those things and think about how they will never get a good paying job from melting their arm at 15. If it can happen, it will
We DID learn, Bob. We learned to wait until the times are just rt before we try it again. As late as the 1990’s, none other than Rush Lamebowel was behind the whole idea. He was on the air actually championing his then-new friends on the board of Nike for running their kids-only factories in SE Asia & Pakistan. He scoffed at the govt periodically cracking down on how kids were already out in the fields harvesting berries & vegetables, saying “Hey! They’re helping out their FAMILIES!”, apparently tone deaf to.the fact that “their families” who were in the field already shouldn’t NEED “help’. This illustration in callousness shows how bad business is hurting. And they would rather resort to THIS than do the rt thing. Who do they believe us going to buy their stuff after this? Nobody here will be able to afford to! It shows you that the Rs & the Cons’s & all the big business you can name have already WRITTEN US OFF as a mkt in the future. We’ll be the upside of CHINA by then: makin’ t here & shipping it over there. This is the start of what I have been warning abt for several yrs now. This begins to answer the question “How far down do we need to rescale our standard of living in the USA in order to compete w/3rd world labor?” This is the answer. And I can hear Lamebowel shrugging on the air rt now & saying he has no problem w/that bcs after all “We have THE BEST POOR in the world!”
What’s wrong with a 14/15 year old working at McDonald’s? My first job was 12 at a gun range, then around 15 i was employed at starbucks The real world is not easy and demands you work School is a made up fantasy and does not properly equip anyone for the real world especially those with privilege as they are taken care of by their parents Getting a kid to start working at 14 and see the reality of the world imo is not a bad thing As encouraging us to socialize and integrating us into society is for our government and those in power, not us
Almost all the problems in this country can be attributed to greed. No one wants to pay a decent wage. Businesses are turning record profits but still raising prices and firing employees to “save money”. No matter how much they have its never enough. They have to have more more more more MORE! And they don’t care how they get it or who it hurts.
I agree with everything here except for one point, in no way will this decrease company profits. If the regulatory conditions force them to pay more it will lead to three things: less competition, higher prices, and more automation. That’s just the literal price of doing business. The companies are not going to accept a cut in profits margins and will evade that burden in one of those three ways. Either they will automate jobs out of existence because it is cheaper to install and maintain automation. For things that can’t be automated at this time they will raise prices to compensate for the higher wages. And finally, many of those smaller middlemen companies mentioned that can afford neither will simple cease to exist and be swallowed up by the larger companies that can absorb the shock of utilizing the first two. Well, I suppose outsourcing to places like India, China, and Vietnam will also expand as well, but, as I said before, that is the literal price of doing business.
In rural south east US, it’s common for young boys to want to do farm work or landscaping to make extra money on weekends or summers. This I have no problem with, as I started working this way at 12. I leaned more valuable life lessons from that anything else during those times. But corporations hiring kids in factories (which I’ve also worked) is unethical and wrong.
Think about it this way: what would happen if you put a hard limit on immigration, would the pool of illegal (otherwise, “undocumented”) children exist for these companies to use? The fix is not a single minded view of what ought to be. Nor is it giving more money to the government. Look at the larger picture and see how interrelated these problems are at a much larger scale, rather than blaming one party over the other.
Maybe we don’t need that many McDonalds? I remember when my town didn’t even have a McDonalds. Now we not only have 2, but the town we used to drive to for McDonalds now has six. SIX!!! And it’s not just McDonalds. It’s everything from Subways to CVS. We don’t need these on every street corner. Maybe just concentrate on one in every town, quit having competing locations, and then, instead on having a skeleton crew at every location, have a decently staffed location, where work isn’t as stressful, since one person isn’t doing the job of three with close to bare minimum wage, it’s still $7.25 and hour here.
There is no labour shortage, the labour is there, there is a wage shortage. With current inflation, the abysmal minimum wage here in Canada and in the US are making jobs unprofitable or unbearable due to work at depending on the work environment. I’ve quit jobs pre-pandemic because the management staff cared more about numbers than the humans who worked for them, or who frequented the restaurant.
“Cruel Capitalism?” This is literally how the system is supposed to function. This is literally what is was going to boil down to. Sacrifice the people in the name of the all-mighty dollar. It means more to these people than the very concept of our existence to them. That’s what the phrase “earn a living” actually means. You’ll never prove to these bastards and scumbags that you actually deserve to exist, so we must overthrow them. We can only do it together in solidarity.
While I was working at TJ Maxx years ago, one of my supervisors was a high school senior, and bc she was already 18, the managers worked her until 11:30 PM on school nights during Christmas season in the midst of midterms attending a private prep school. Insane, really. No compassion. The government sets the benchmark for morality in capitalism….
For those who haven’t left the country over the decay of the US, take solace on words by the once famous activist, muckraker journalist, and writer, Upton Sinclair. In his book preface, ” The Jungle “, he brings to attention that ” You don’t have to accept América the way it is. You can impart change by your own initiative. “. And Mr. Reich, although wearing party colors ( he is a card carrying democrat ), sums up perfectly fine what it takes to change. So don’t bail out, unless you must. Go and do your bit.
Not all cases are like this. My cousin works in VA and got her 16 year old son a job working there this past summer, packaging sandwiches before they deliver them to stores. He only worked for 3 days and the government found out and sent a threatening letter to the manager saying they were breaking child labor laws and he was forced to quit. He was devastated. He was so excited about his job and loved working there. My cousin does too. The managers and employees looked out for him those 3 days he was there. And he doesn’t want to work at McDonalds or a place like that. I understand child labor laws, but that was ridiculous. Guess they didn’t want a 16 year old making over $12 an hour. Most teens don’t want to work and then you got him who loves working. Now he’s back to doing odd jobs for all of their neighbors.
Meanwhile, here in Denmark, just a few years ago at my former place of employment, Arbejdstilsynet (Work environment authority) showed up and had the company fire all youth workers (Youth workers in Denmark who work in manufacturing companies are all usually either apprentices, for whom other rules apply (They’re not working, they’re getting an education.) or “fejedrenge”, as in they sweep the floors, empty regular trash, perhaps a few minor and simple assembly tasks that do not require operating machinery.) on that very day because some of the machines in the factory were considered dangerous for people under the age of 18, and thus such young people were, by law, banned from even being on the same floor.
Our children learn work ethic in school. The only thing child labor teaches them is that there are certain people that can flout the law as they please and the only thing to do is keep your head down because they’re too rich to be held accountable for it. These assholes believe we’re living in feudalism and they’ve the right to treat their serfs as they please. Time to remind them this is a democracy.
Fines, when dealing with companies, should always be at least a percentage of revenue of that company. Since someone might create a subsidiary/scapegoat company with substantially lower revenue to do the criminal acts in order to reduce the impact of getting caught, the owners and investors should be held personally liable if the act is serious enough. Companies counting fines as just another business cost is a tragedy and should be countered by increasing the magnitude of fines until they are a serious threat to a company’s financial future. Further, some classes of corporate crime should lead to those fines also taking a percentage of the CEOs’ and owners’ personal wealth as a punishment. Claims of “but we didn’t know” should be countered with “you should have known what the company you owned/operated was doing.” If a company, for instance, was caught dumping massive amounts of cancer causing chemicals into drinking water, the CEO and owner should lose every cent they ever earned in addition to any other punishment they receive. Same with middle management. It should be so bad that ANY violation should lead to 90% of the people involved seeking whistle-blower status with the government just to get out of the firing line when the crime eventually becomes known. Getting away with a fine that amounts to less than what you made in one day and half a year in a resort style prison just isn’t enough.
In my state, it’s legal to work under the age of 14 for a family business. I went to work construction for my dad at age 13 and stuck with it for four years. Had a stable way to make cash every summer, learned a TON of life skills that i use daily, and got a huge head start on my career. Now I’m 22, finished college, can build a house from the ground up with all systems, can rebuild an engine, and love doing fine woodworking as a hobby. I believe that child labor laws are super important, but many 14+ year olds are plenty mature to make good life deacisions when it comes to work, and the system often makes it unnecessarily hard. Taking some of these overburdening restrictions off is a good thing in my eyes. Young people deserve the right to work.
When I was young and naive, I wanted to live in America because in my country, they are practically treated like a god entity. But after hearing it’s own forms of corruption, lack of labor laws, and meager pay. Im striving to try and work in europe instead, at least compared to America, they have much more strict labor laws, decent pay, and paid leave.
I dont know how all these bussineses expect to stay in bussiness if their customer base cannot afford their product? Its illogical. Credit lines cannot be extended infinitely thats unsustainable & they claim to not want wellfare. What magic Narnia bullshit impossible option do theink think is just going to magically apear?
Its both disturbing and disheartening. I, for one, completely understand not everyone is cut out for academics. Fine. I appreciate when a school offers some kind of work study or co-curriculum thing where teens work on their core classes in the morning (science, history, english, math) and instead of doing extracurricular have the OPTION to spend the afternoon at a job site. Being tied to the school means the work places are expected to keep the kids safe as any coach should and as an internship means they already have experience if they decide to go into that field. Only going in the afternoon would cut down on how many hours they work too. But again, it would be optional and the companies would have an already trained employee going into the summer. But the wording on some of these laws and the types of labor is VERY scary because it doesn’t just cut the age but the safety measures. And the whole “its to help their families” is sick because the people who say that acknowledge these are poor families that need help and instead of finding ways to help them up either with better jobs or higher pay or going after the businesses, the solution is “work harder” by getting the kids involved.
Once again it becomes obvious that stronger and more severe punishments and much higher monetary fines are necessary to just not make it worth the violations. This also comes about at the same time several state legislatures are introducing bills to lower the age a female citizen can Marry these are supposed Christian Majority States.
Wonderful. I think children should have the freedom to work. If I had my life to live over, I would not have waste any time on useless schooling, I would have worked and supposed myself and saved up 100k in 12 years instead of being made to do hard things I had no internet in. I am angry about all the years stolen from me. I want them back.
WE LEARNED THIS LESSON GUYS! There is NO EXCUSE for exploiting children! No excuse! Pay people a damn fair wage and treat them with human decency. These mega million billion dollar corporations can handle it. But not only are we not allowed to be able to provide for our own children but having to sell them as well. Disgusting. We can never go back to the way things used to be, never ever. This has to stop in it’s tracks
I worked for McDonald’s with my son while we were homeless. He was 16-17, working overnights on school nights and not ever paid overtime he was entitled to. When I complained about my overtime and need to use the toilet outside of a break time, I was threatened with firing, and also my son would be fired, which is retaliation. We needed the job or we would have to sleep in our car. It was terrible. No one would help us. 17 year olds can’t even sign a lease, but a 14 year old can get a job? I don’t support fast food places anymore.
So the rich corporations want a reserve army of labor to draw upon when the economy heats up and when the economy cools down this reserve would be the first to go. In the past this reserve was mainly made up of women and immigrants but with a dwindling workforce (and Gen-Zer’s being very choosy about their jobs) they have now turned to a new cheap reserve in the form of child labor. This is what America has become. No better than a third world country of cheap labor.
How can children work a 48 hour work week and go to school 35 hours a week. No time for homework. A lot of children will quit school to work. It’s difficult to keep up with the number of Republican efforts in recent years to roll back child labor laws.😢 A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks, cut unemployment benefits, reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers..The proposal is being championed by Republican state Rep. Roger Wilder, who owns some smoothie franchises across the region, and who said many of his child employees want to work without lunch breaks. All of this and more is in Project 2025.
Or enforce immigration laws so there are no undocumented children to exploit. Or stop inflation so that a workers salary retains it’s purchasing power. Or crack down on Wallstreet, hedge-funds, mutual-funds, and what not funds, which all encourage corporations to cut cost and save on the bottom line to benefit shareholders. Or start enforcing the laws we have already written and on the books.
Exactly why they dont want women to have rights either. They want to turn your kid into a good little robot but absolutely by no means do they wanna make sure the kid ends up there. They are just playing the odds that you the most likely poor person and your children will end up in a situation where you cant refuse to work.
There’s no labor shortage. Greedy stockholders don’t want to give up a penny to pay people a decent wage. Back in ’76 I heard that a shortage in labor would be in the retail and hospitality jobs in about a generation. I was working retail at the time. And I couldn’t conceive why there would be a shortage of people working retail. Senior year I bet all of us worked. I had a car that needed go-go juice. Some kids were working towards college or towards a place to live. We were waitresses, fast food people, life guards, and retail associates. And we were all 16 and older. I’m once again back to retail, and they won’t let anybody under the age of 18 work past 9:45 p.m. If the Supreme Court wants to do something decent for children, now is their hour
I read comments about protecting your children by moving to Canada, so I wanted to point out that Canada allows child labour and always has. Each province has its own rules beyond the federal restrictions which are very lax, for 17 and under (no underground mining, nuclear, explosives, certain regulated shipping/receiving, or job that is “likely to be injurious to their health or to endanger their safety,” which is open to interpretation and statistics). The US has much stricter, and far more numerous, protections on child labour. In most provinces here, you can begin full-time work outside school hours at 14- and in some places before age 12- as long as you don’t work between 11pm on one day and 6am the very next until you turn 17. Your children are safer from labour exploitation in the US as US citizens, unlike Canadian citizens in Canada. If you did move here, they would not be allowed to work until 18, whereas Canadian citizens have no such protection.
This doesnt get fixed without violence… these people making the decisions need to be afraid for their lives and the lives of their families before they’ll change. We need to make examples. Not through the government but as individuals en masse at random times and places whenever possible anywhere in the world. They have no defense. They rely on our decency to continue doing what they do. Take that from them aswell as their safety and confidence.
i am in the construction union in sweden and as part of the latest negotiations the union can now fine the contractor and the buyer of the property for violations like unlawful work permits and lacking education that a sub-contractor and a sub-sub-contractor hire. simply put sub-contactor is just a means to protect the main company from punishment. so it is totally fair to go after main contractor for lax sub-contracting checking.
Well, I worked regularly during long holidays since 14, because my family wasn’t rich and my parent couldn’t afford lot of stuff for me. Construction, butcher shop, garbage collection, street cleaning, car wash, warehouse. And to be honest, I still think it wasn’t that bad. Sure, children shouldn’t be forced to work and when they do work it should be regulated: shorter, much shorter shift than a regular worker and no dangerous tasks, and it should be only in school-free time. Because if you are in a position of a YA in a desperate need of money and there is no official way for you to earn it, that wouldn’t fix the need, so you would rather go to unofficial way and it’s quite more dangerous and sometimes criminal.
Even if this is true, which I doubt most of it is. 4k cases is like 4, 14 or 15 year olds, in each town in the us with 50k population or more. Many “immigrants” come from places where their 10 year olds and up are already suppose to be working, contributing to the family. I could see franchises trying to get away with things cause they are privately owned, but big corp isn’t gonna get involved for a few extra workers, don’t be dumb.
Look at all the countries that allow child labour; what do they have in common? Is it possible that America is doing this for reasons that go beyond just “the evil republicans”? I suspect the underlying reason is that people are so desperate that they have to send their kids to work, to make ends meet. If that’s true, then the implications it has on the state of America’s economy are extremely dire! 😢
GOP: Let’s raise the minimum voting age because kids aren’t smart enough to understand things like politics! Also GOP: Let’s put the kids in factories because we’re sure they know how to operate dangerous machinery! Also ALSO GOP: Let’s ban contraceptives and abortions because the “labor workforce” isn’t big enough! This isn’t about freedom anymore. This is about profit and control.
Only reason I ever heard for why child labor was bad was because it relates to another thing I disagree with. Two years work experience is worth more than sixteen years of education, Cheaper too. Child labor was only banned for the same reason minimum wage was passed, so white men wouldn’t have to compete for jobs.
Why are parents putting their kid in a job? It is the parents place to support the child, not the young kid that is not in high school, make the business that do this lose their right to own a business or pay the adults a livable wage, sue all these companies that hired kids under 16 years old, if you can’t drive, you can not work a job
I am a Spanish speaker and there is a Hispanic meme (in which I don’t know if it exists in its Anglo-Saxon version), but the meme is something like: “Company seeks a 21-year-old worker with 40 years of work experience”. perusal this article I realized that this meme has come true. Many a true word is spoken in jest.
Outsource child labor to Asian countries and no one bats an eye… Use local child labor and everyone loses their minds!! If the government lowered business taxes in order to let employers pay higher wages, adults would’ve returned to the workforce and there would be no need for child labor. Yet, we live a state of helplessness, where the government can only rise taxes and people become tired, then create their own businesses.
I agree with most of what you say, but there is one thing which I am afraid you missed (though you did get close to hitting it). You said near the start of the article that greed was the root cause of the widespread child labor, but there is another underlying issue involved. That issue is pride. Granted, some of your points make the pride evident, such as the majority of the children hired being poor and/or migrants, and the provided justification being “they would otherwise be homeless, so I’m doing them a favor.” The people running these businesses don’t just want their assets to grow, but they perceive such growth as more important than the well-being of the children, or the adult employees. Thus, both greed AND pride are at the heart of this problem. That said, I think that the solutions which you presented can still work if a lot of people contribute.
I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment, Robert (if by some improbability you happen to be reading this), but do you legitimately think that the capitalist mode of production is ever going to cede such practices as child labor on a permanent basis given the current massive debt overhang that has been plaguing much of the global economy for the past four decades? It’s a sordid business for sure, but there’s only one way to ensure that it ceases to be economically “necessary” forever, and I think you and I both know what that way is.
The penalty being so low If you could employ a child at minimum wage for 1 year instead of paying an employee $15 an hour and you got caught and fined the maximum amount, you’d still be ahead. Makes me think of the Wells Fargo case of them fraudulently charging customers fees through bogus accounts. They were fined $68 million, which sounds like a lot until you realize they made roughly $3.5 BILLION from the scheme. Their punishment for getting caught robbing people was having to give away roughly 1/5 of the money they took. worse yet the executives that oversaw this whole criminal plan were only personally fined 18 million collectively. That’s barely half of what ONE of them makes in a year. Why wouldn’t they do it again?
The shitty thing is that rn as someone who is well above the legal working age it’s impossible to get a job right now. I think the point is that they want to pay less than the minimum wage and the only people who would ever accept a wage like that are migrant children, arguably the most vulnerable group in the US.
Many child labor violations are intentional. Some are inadvertent (e.g. can they work til 9 pm on nonschool nights during the school year or only during summer breaks?). And say, for example, in a fast food chain is it a corporate store or a privately owned business, for example. Yes. The law is the law, but when you show a mcd road sign, it could be one of the 80% non corporate locations and while still breaking the law some violations might be misunderstandings. That being said, we do need to be more vigilant, on both the local/privately owned business and the corporate levels. And we cannot return to the bad old days of child labor. And when people try to use the issue of kids want to work, they want more hours, well, kids want lots of things that are not good for them. And to use kids because you can get them For less (e.g. lower minimum wage than for adults) let’s just get rid of that issue right away. Same minimum wage for kids and adults(although the minimum wage is currently a disgrace) I am disgusted by the right wing and corporate attitudes towards kids these days. Anything for a buck.
I started working during summers when I was 14. It kept me out of trouble and gave me spending money that my parents didn’t have. It taught me to have a good work ethic. I was babysitting at 11, the summer after 5th grade (for $1/hr, despite # of kids – talk about exploitation 😄). That also taught me responsibility and to hate children. 16 is Way too old to start developing a good work ethic. I think that’s part of the problem with ‘kids’ being too entitled. What the problem actually is is greed, as you say. Everybody should be paid a fair working wage. I know 40 year olds who struggle to make very modest ends meet. Food, housing, utilities, gas, insurance … no $ left for anything ‘frivolous’ like a movie or new dress, dinner out or a new rug. Not for common hardworking people. Unless they want to charge it, become indebted to boot. Meanwhile, their ‘betters’ have far more money than they can possibly use. How do they sleep at night? Who do they tell themselves they are?
I think there are a lot of people in this thread, likely business owners, as the way they speak about workers as property signifies that, miss the point of what it means to be a part of a society at large and a community at the local level. Every job has to get done, from medical care to mopping floors, and adults (16+ yrs) need to do them. If the garbage fuys don’t pick up the trash and laborers don’t show up to work, things start getting bad real quick. Those jobs are just as important as an accountants or nurses. Of course those who put in the time or money to obtain skills should be paid more, but those less skilled jobs still need to pay enough to live a life off of. We are all cogs in this machine we call society and it doesn’t matter which cog comes out, but when it does, the whole of society suffers and runs more inefficiently or breaks down completely. The solution isn’t putting children to work or having people work 2 or 3 jobs, because now those adults can’t raise their kids. The same kids those more fortunate like to complain about being drags on society. I could go on and on, but hopefully you all get the point. Have a blessed day!
And yet no blame attributed to the parents who send or allow their children to go to work. Why not hold BOTH responsible? It’s not just Republicans. Democrats hold political power as well. They control the executive. The DoL is a cabinet position under the Biden administration. Blaming one party is the only song Reich knows. Blame the corporations, blame the Republicans. Blame everyone but his own party and the parents who send their children off to work.
When companies don’t wanna pay a decent living wage that rises according to inflation, this is what we get. And unfortunately, with the Democratic failure at the border, things will only get worse as trades and other businesses will hire dirt cheap illegal immigrant labor over someone who wants a livable wage. Companies, Corporations, Both Political Parties, etc. are all causing these massive let downs and issues.
People seem to forget that child labor for nearly all of history was the norm, and it’s only the past 100 years that any sort of labor laws came into existence much less ones for kids, and only during a period of massive economic prosperity. The government can’t fix it, so much as they are going to make it worse either through further Economic meddling driving companies towards cheaper labor, or through regulations which have repeatedly created new problems. The corporate entities have no obligation to do anything other than generate money, so begging them to change does nothing. The only way to win is to not play, or cheat.