Child Labor

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Recommended: The problem with child labor

As a new junior associate attorney at the firm of McNamara & Reynolds, LLP, I am very eager to begin my first case. My client is Bruce Lawrence, an eight year old boy who is just one of the millions of children who fall victim to abusive child labor each year. Bruce has been working in the bean fields of Florida, six hours a day, for the past three years, earning a measly fifty cents for each barrel of beans picked. Furthermore, the fields in which he labors are surrounded by large mechanical field equipment. Although Bruce has been removed from the field and is now back in school, we at McNamara & Reynolds, LLP recognize that such issues must not be let slide, and therefore, have initiated suit against his employer, a subsidiary of Del Monte. Before one can begin to truly understand the facts of the case, it is important first to gain a substantial knowledge base of the horrors of child labor. The International Labor Organization has estimated that two-hundred and eleven million children between the ages of five and fourteen are currently employed. Of those two-hundred and eleven million, about one-hundred and eighty-six million work under hazardous conditions or more than forty-three hours per week. Conditions of child labor can range from anything as severe as a four-year-old being tied to a rug loom to keep them from running away, to seventeen-year-olds helping out on the family farm. Children's rights groups estimate that the US imports more than one hundred million dollars in goods each year which are produced by bonded and indentured children, and about eighty million children begin working and being abused each day. A report from the Human Rights Watch also cites the following appalling details: 1) Childre... ... middle of paper ... ... to offer my own suggestions as to what should be done to aid the struggle against child labor. I would recommend the establishment of one powerful international organization with the sole purpose of combating unfair child labor practices. As of now I feel that there are too many individual groups trying to achieve the same thing. Their efforts are certainly driven by their good intentions, but the abundance of such groups has the effect of lessening their authority in the eyes of the public. One unified organization, who acts as the absolute authority regarding all child labor issues, would be much more effective. On a smaller scale, I would recommend increasing the wages of adult workers in factories and other undesirable jobs. This would make adults more willing to work under adverse conditions and eliminate, or at least decrease the need for children to.

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