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Child labour problems
Child labour problems
Solutions for child labor in general
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We are often unaware or pick to disregard the problem of child labor in sweatshops. However, even though most people are not conscious of this, it is a reality that many children are deprived of their childhood and are enforced to work. It has been estimated by the International Labor Organization (2013) that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in emerging countries. More than half of these child laborers are hired in Asia, others work in Africa and Latin America mostly. Sweatshops are factories where workers bear unhealthy and exploitive conditions, such as long hours, unventilated workspaces, low pay, or exposure to toxic resources. Sweatshops are not a perfect place of work for anyone; however possibilities are …show more content…
Nevertheless, negotiating the children’s health and learning to help their families out of debt or to nourish their siblings is too high a value to pay in my belief. According to Bhakti Varma (2011), children taking occupations in sweatshops produce a cycle which must be destroyed. The malicious sequence begins when circumstances force children to work which almost unescapably leads to very little chance of them ever being able to create a superior life for themselves. When they start labor young they commonly obtain very little or no education; as they grow up, they remain unschooled and have their offspring young. With no learning or skills, they are lucky to be able to keep their low paying and frequently depressed and hazardous jobs. However, that is not constantly the case; most frequently older grownups lose their occupation to younger workers. Lingering in a low paying job or being jobless makes it hard to have enough money to feed and lead the children to school. Consequently, the children are forced to become child laborers themselves and carry on the …show more content…
The response is meek, it’s all about the dough. Owners of clothing lines, shoe products, toy shops, electronic businesses and many more see the poor, stranded, unschooled children as a way to censored production costs and rise their incomes. Right now, agreeing to COOP America, “sweatshop workers earn as little as ½ to ¼ of what they need to provide for basic nutrition, shelter, energy, clothing, education and transportation”. Still, for a smaller amount than 1% of Nike’s yearly marketing budget, the salaries of all their employees could be doubled. Unfortunately, the health and well-being of their employees is not what they are fascinated in. As the Maquila Solidarity Network, a work and women's privileges organization has said, corporations hire youngsters for the humble reason that they are less probable to complain about illegal and unjust circumstances. And more significantly, they are less expected to form unions. They are uninformed of their human rights and also will naively have faith in all the falsehoods employers tell them about the cash they will be making. Once they are employed, it is nearly difficult for them to
Sweatshops started around the 1830’s when industrialization started growing in urban areas. Most people who worked in them at the time were immigrants who didn't have their papers. They took jobs where they thought they'd have the most economic stability. It’s changed a bit since then, companies just want the cheapest labor they can get and to be able to sell the product in order to make a big profit. It’s hard to find these types of workers in developed areas so they look toward 3rd world countries. “sweatshops exist wherever there is an opportunity to exploit workers who lack the knowledge and resources to stand up for themselves.” (Morey) In third world countries many people are very poor and are unable to afford food and water so the kids are pulled out of school and forced to work so they can try to better their lives. This results in n immense amount of uneducated people unaware they can have better jobs and that the sweatshops are basically slavery. With a large amounts uneducated they continue the cycle of economic instability. There becomes no hope for a brighter future so people just carry on not fighting for their basic rights. Times have changed. 5 Years ago companies would pay a much larger amount for a product to be made but now if they’re lucky they’ll pay half, if a manufacturer doesn't like that another company will happily take it (Barnes). Companies have gotten greedier and greedier in what they’ll pay to have a product manufactured. Companies have taken advantage of the fact that people in developing countries will do just about anything to feed their families, they know that if the sweatshop in Cambodia don't like getting paid 2 dollars per garment the one in Indonesia will. This means that there is less money being paid to the workers which mean more will starve and live in very unsafe environments. Life is
With the continued rise of consumer "needs" in "industrial" countries such as the United States, and the consistently high price that corporations must pay to produce goods in these countries, companies are looking to "increase (their) profits by driving down costs any way possible... To minimize costs, companies look for places with the lowest wages and human rights protections" (Dosomething). Countries with lax or unenforced labor laws grant multinational corporations the leeway to use cheap foreign labor to mass-produce their commodities so that they can be sold in countries like America. These inexpensive, sometimes borderline illegal, establishments are known as sweatshops. In his book Timmerman discusses the topic of sweatshops in great detail. Originally in search of "where (his) T-shirt was made(;) (Timmerman) (went) to visit the factory where it was made and (met) the people who made (it)" (Timmerman5).
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
All of my life I have considered myself as a person who loves children. I enjoy playing with them, helping them, and just being around them. So when I first agreed with corporations who use child labor I shocked myself completely. After examining two articles; one “The Case for Sweatshops”, by David R. Henderson, and two “Sweatshops or a Shot at a Better Life”, by Cathy Young, I came to the conclusion that in some cases when young children work under proper conditions it can keep them out of the streets and be helpful to them and their families.
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
Most sweatshops have been known to be unlawful, but yet it doesn’t stop them to still be around today. Workers working in sweatshops are known to be getting paid small amount of money while working long tiring shifts, sometimes without being allowed to take a break. Many corporations have their products produce in third-world countries such as Guatemala, Pakistan, Vietnam, etc. where it costs them less to produce goods since they are paying their workers almost nothing. It is believed that it
We have all at one point seen or read an article of young girls and boys being abducted or simply forced into manual labor. Many reasons have been given as to why child labor occurs in these foreign countries such as: poverty, low pay, and unskilled work. These foreign companies or sweatshops find it easy to simply abduct poor and uneducated children, and force them into slavery for little to no pay and horrible working conditions. This is because there is greater demand for low skilled, and low cost labor that employers prefer to fill with child labor, instead of having to deal with more expensive and less flexible adult employees. Throughout the years there has been an increase in the supply of child labor mainly because of young kids in
U.S. companies hoping to lower costs and increase production is resulting in exploitation of laborers, in factories around the world, who are working for extremely low pay and in substandard conditions. Factories that fail to offer their employees fair working conditions, living wages, and those that utilize child labor can be considered sweatshops. There are differing opinions about who should be held responsible for the conditions in these factories and also what should be done about the factories identified as sweatshops. But, there does seem to be an overall consensus that, as a human rights issue, some sort of change needs to be made to ensure the safety and welfare of these workers.
Think about the cotton in your shirt, the sugar in your coffee, and the shoes on your feet, all of which could be products of child labor. Child labor is a practice that deprives children of their childhood, their potential, and their dignity and includes over 200 million children worldwide who are involved in the production of goods for companies and industries willing to exploit these kids for profit. Although most countries have laws prohibiting child labor, a lack of funding and manpower means that these laws are rarely enforced on a large scale. However, even for a first-world country like the United States, that has a large number of state and federal law enforcement officers, child labor is still a problem because priority is given to crimes that are more violent or heinous. Child labor must be made a priority issue because it is a global plague whose victims are physically and psychologically scarred, lack a proper education, are impoverished, and whose children are doomed to the same fate if nothing changes.
What are sweatshops? The Miriam-Webster dictionary defines sweatshops as: A shop or factory in which employees work for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions. These factories are mainly located in Third-World countries, although there are still a few in the United States. Many popular, name brand companies like Nike, use sweatshops around the world. Today there is much controversy about sweatshops and whether they should be banned and closed. In reality, the conditions of these factories are terrible. The employees are paid very little, even after working long, hard hours. The supervisors of these shops are often cruel, malicious, and brutal. Sadly, these factories are often the only source of income for Third-World workers. As bad as these sweatshops might be, they have pulled many countries and individuals out of poverty. So, are sweatshops beneficial?
Sweatshop is a common term used to refer to factories that typically produce apparel; that have very low wages by modern U.S. standards, long working hours, and unsafe or unhealthy working conditions; that often don't obey labor laws; and that would generally be considered
When children are working in sweatshops, it interrupts their educational studies, since they are working in these factories for over 16 hours a day, leaving no time for school. Without an education, they stop learning the fundamentals of life. They are not giving themselves a chance to be able to better their life, and find a job that does not involve inhumane working hours, little pay, mental and physical abuse. Sweatshops strip children from having an education, and with that it sets them up for a challenging road ahead. Children who are working part time in these sweatshops, have been recorded to perform 12% lower than children who have an education, and the percentage is even lower for children who work full time at these sweatshops .
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
The US Department of Labor defines a sweatshop as any factory that violates two or more labor laws. UNITE, the US garment workers union, defines a “sweatshop” as any factory that does not respect workers’ right to organize an independent union. Global Exchange and other anti-sweatshop movements would add that a sweatshop is any work place that does not pay its workers a Living Wage. Sweatshops violate basic human rights, as stated in The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “ Article 1 – “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Article 5 – “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Article 23 – (2) “Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work,” and (4) “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his/her interests.” Article 24 – “Everyone has the...
Nowadays, we could see sweatshops are over all around the world especially in the third world countries. A sweatshop is a manufacturing facility which means people work in a poor working environment with low wages. It has been a big and serious problem in the developing countries such as El Salvador, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. However, I believe sweatshops have both sides, because they do provide job opportunities to developing countries. At the same time, sweatshop makes the workers suffer low wages, unsafe workplaces, physical abuse, and verbal abuse.