Child Labor in Mexico
Veronica Hernandez began her working career in a factory sweatshop. She was only 8 years old. After more than 12 years of intense and monotonous work in a number of different factories, Hernandez still, “felt as poor as the day she first climbed onto the lower rungs of the global assembly line” (Ferriss, source#2). Veronica works about 45 hours a week for only a base salary of $55, an occupation where she assembles RCA televisions by the Thomson Corporation. While some people you know complain of not having cable or enough channels for their big screen television, Veronica is blessed that she even owns one. She lives in a one room hut that includes no more than an out-house and an old refrigerator. She has to haul water from a single faucet that services a group of other families as well as her own. Hoping that some development would come (either in working conditions or wage) since the beginning of her working career as a child, Hernandez knows that progress hasn’t developed within the last couple of years. While she continues to slave in ‘maquiladoras’ (U.S. and other foreign-owned factories that assemble products for consumers), people around the globe are searching to find alternate ways to create work. The need for improvement in working conditions and withholding laws to keep young children out of factory work is urgent. Child labor is a serious issue that needs the world’s attention now more than ever.
Child labor has become an ongoing global concern for many years. The practice sweatshops in places such as South America and Asia are responsible for much of the manufactured goods people own today. While hundreds of organized unions and corporations look for answers to this unheal...
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Many societies face the much overlooked problem of child labor and sweatshops in the fashion industry. Recently, Americans were stunned to learn that their apple pie sweetheart, Kathie Lee Gifford was associated with the exploitation of underage workers in Honduras. Gifford's story began the resurgence of knowledge of the growing problem of sweatshops in today's society. Contrary to popular belief, sweatshops still exist across the world in both third world countries and super powers such as America. Sweatshops incorporate the inhumane exploitation of workers, many of whom are underage, by providing extremely low wages as well as expecting unrealistic time commitments. In addition, the workers lack benefits and very few sweatshops abide by the required health codes. Sweatshops are obviously a growing problem that will not disappear with out change. Although the United States government has begun to take steps to alleviate the problem, there must be an increase in both awareness and legislation.
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.
Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were influential figures in our history, contributing to a course change during the Civil Rights Movement. Although, they had different solutions to ending the inequality and mistreatment of blacks, I find both of their arguments to be powerful.
What is Child Labor?Child Labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school. Around the world and in the U.S., growing gaps between rich and poor in recent decades have forced millions of young children out of school and into work. It is estimated that 215 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are currently working under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative.1 Underage children work many different types of jobs that included commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, and domestic services. Some children were involved in illicit activities that included drug trade, prostitution, and other traumatic occupations that included serving as soldiers. Child Labor involved threatening children’s physical, mental, or emotional well- being. It involved intolerable abuse, such as slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor or illicit activities and prevented children from going to school.
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.
Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were very significant during the Civil Rights Movement. Both were excellent speakers and shared one goal but had two different ways of resolving it. Martin Luther King Jr. chose to resolve the issues by using non-violence to create equality amongst all races to accomplish the goal. Malcolm X also wanted to decrease discrimination and get of segregation but by using another tactic to successfully accomplish the similar goal. The backgrounds of both men were one of the main driven forces behind the ways they executed their plans to rise above the various mistreatments. Martin Luther King Jr. was a more pronounced orator, a more refined leader, and overall saw the larger picture than Malcolm X.
The housing front is mostly vital for national economy and human settlement. Real estate as a business sector includes many services and operations, which is well beyond the real estate development and brokerage. Ethiopia real estate market is an infant stage of development to serve and potentially accommodate many services and operations for employment and investment, which in turn enhance its Development (in to maturity). But in an inefficient infant market, like what is prevalent in our country the sector has much gap to be
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...
It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires” (Kristof 2009). Many families live on the garbage dump and make their living by scavenging for valuable trash. But “talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children” (Kristof). While people in first world countries see sweatshops as abominable institutions, they are a necessary step for individuals in third world countries to escape poverty, because they provide more income than traditional jobs would. According to the New York Times Magazine journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (both Pulitzer Prize winners) although sweatshop wage is very low in first world standards, “for an impoverished Indonesian or Bangladeshi woman with a handful of kids who would otherwise drop out of school and risk dying of mundane diseases like diarrhea, $1 or $2 a day is a life-transforming wage” (Kristof et al. 2000).
There is 75% of the labor force occupied by agriculture sector which only contributes 22% of GDP. Conversely, 75% of GDP were contributed by 25% of the labor force in service, industrial and manufacturing sectors. [9] In 2012, the World Bank showed the data of Kenya’s GDP which was only $40.7 billion in 2012 considered as a low income country. The major agriculture products are tea, horticulture and coffee which are also the main export product. Corn is the major food for Kenyans, but the yield of corn is not stable due to the fluctuant weather condition. For instance, Kenya was in a food shortage during the severe droughts in 2004. In 2012, agriculture exports (horticultural produce and tea) collected $5.942 billion revenues, but the imports ($14.39 billion) the product was more than exports. Thus, it can be seen that Kenya had a serious trade deficit in the world market. The main import products are machinery and transportation equipment, petroleum products, motor vehicle, iron and steel, resins and plastics. In other words, the development of industrial sector was still weak in Kenya. It accounts for only 14% of GDP. The major industrial activity in Kenya is food-processing industries. It has an oil refinery that is able to filter crude oil to complete petroleum products which are mainly for the domestic
One summer a couple years back, I watched a documentary on how clothing was manufactured. The video was filled of disturbing images and videos of child workers. They rarely looked up to see the camera that filmed them, instead they continued to work at fast paces. I remember my inquisition as I thought of why they would allow children to be exploited and overworked at such young ages. I can recall a moment in the video where they showed a four year old boy. In the text titled “Live Free and Starve,” Divakaruni explores the consequences of a new bill on child labor and ultimately leads us to her core thought, that freedom comes at a cost.
Low wages have been a problem for a while in third world countries. For many years, because of low wages, workers from these nations do not have enough to support their families, children under eighteen are forced to work instead of learn, and health care is almost nonexistent. Although the work hard daily, the workers are paid with barely enough to get anything for themselves, let alone their families. These people are still human; they need a good amount of money to buy food, clothes, and medication. Instead of being in school, children are working in sweatshops to support parents.
Child labour is an issue that has plagued society since the earliest of times. Despite measures taken by NGOs as well as the UN, child labour is still a prevalent problem in today’s society. Article 23 of the Convention on the Rights of a Child gives all children the right to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child 's education, or to be harmful to the child 's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.1 Child labour clearly violates this right as well as others found in the UDHR. When we fail to see this issue as a human rights violation children around the world are subjected to hard labour which interferes with education, reinforces