Child Labor In The United States

In the U.S. children ages 11 and up work in factories for a living, What is child labor? Child labor is the use of children in industry or business, especially when illegal or considered inhumane, for low pay. It’s like cheating the system, instead of using adults they use children. Why do we have child labor? Most children work due to their parents being poor, they have to help provide for their family, or they got kicked out by their family and they need any job that can help them get by, the most common one is that their family is poor or that poor immigrant families come here, seeking a better life and are in need of jobs.

In the article "Children Found Sewing Clothing For Wal-Mart, Hanes & Other U.S. & European Companies - National Labor

pag. Children Found Sewing Clothing For Wal-Mart, Hanes & Other U.S. & European Companies - National Labor Committee. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.” According to a National Labor Committee 2006 report, an estimated 200 children, some 11 years old or even younger, are sewing clothing for Hanes, Wal-Mart, J.C. Penney, and Puma at the Harvest Rich factory in Bangladesh.” These children should be going to school to get an education and instead they are working in factories, working like robots day and night. Most children in the factories have to work overtime with no extra/overtime pay. Child labor is not okay and It’s a HUGE issue in the United States. In the same article it says that the “Harvest Rich sews clothing for Hanes, Puma and Wal-Mart. According to their factory brochure, other clients include Target, Reebok and Motherswork. (We also recently learned that J.C.Penney’s St. John’s Bay label

“Corporate monitoring has again proved a miserable failure, as Harvest Rich was certified by the U.S. apparel industry’s Worldwide Responsibly Apparel Production (WRAP) monitoring group. Not only did the U.S. companies fail to notice the child workers, the beatings, the excessive mandatory overtime, but also that not one single worker in Harvest Rich was paid the correct overtime pay legally due them. Any worker daring to ask for their proper wages, or that their most basic legal rights be respected, would immediately be attacked, beaten and fired.“Right now, more than 100 children at the Harvest Rich factory are being threatened with firing,” says Kernaghan, “It is time for the U.S. companies to act immediately, today, to guarantee that this does not happen and that the children are returned to school.” If the children can go to school so many adults will have jobs and these children will be earning themselves an education and they will see how better their lives can be out of a factory rather than in, If this did happened these children can receive a better life, and these adults can get better