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Child labour and how to eradicate it
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"Samsung Electronics said it has found "evidence of suspected child labour" at a factory of its Chinese supplier Dongguan Shinyang Electronics. The firm conducted an investigation into the supplier after New York-based campaign group, China Labor Watch, accused it of hiring children." - - - BBC - 14 July 2014
The majority of Americans would be horrified to support a business that exploits the use of child labor to produce its goods. However, odds are we all supported these businesses the last time we went shopping. It be it a baseball for our child, diamond ring for our fiancés, or chocolate bar for our hunger it probability was made using child labor in Indonesia, South Africa, or Ivory Cost. The use of child labor is a major driver of the global economy in today's age of globalization where U.S. companies the likes of Nike, Reebok, or Wal-Marts have taken control of the market. These companies ought to stop using child labor to produce their goods.
The west has attempted to fight child labor for years now with little dent in curving the use of child labor across the globe. The primary reason has been the failure to find practical means to translate our intuitions on practices that ought to be eliminated into effective solutions. Economically deprived countries in order to compete in the global economy have offered child labor (Low cost Labor) as competitive advantage and companies from the west have let low cost, high profit, blind their morality. Hence, rather then making sure no child labor is in their product cost they have embraced or looked the other way when it comes to child labor.
Child labor is any work that harms or exploits them in some way (physical, mental, moral, or blocking access to education). UNICEF ...
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...ssible, it is what parents will choose because we assumed they are altruistic
http://www.nupi.no/IPS/filestore/NUPIwp613.pdf
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/3334.html
References
1. ^ a b c E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (Penguin, 1968), pp. 366-7
2. ^ Hessen, Robert, Capitalism, Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
3. ^ a b Nardinelli, Clark, Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution (Indiana University Press, 1990)
4. ^ a b Friedman,Milton. Take it to the Limits: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism." Interview. February 10,1999.
5. ^ Hugh Cunninghame, "The decline of child labour: labour markets and family economies in Europe and North America since 1830", Economic History Review, 2000.
6. ^ DeGregori, Thomas R., "Child Labor or Child Prostitution?" Cato Institute. http://www.cato.org/dailys/10-08-02.html
For the first time in history children were an important factor of the economic system, but at a terrible price. The master of the factories employed children for two reasons. One, because of their small body which can get inside the machines to clean it and use their nimble fingers. Second, the masters use to pay low wages to the children who could be easily manipulated. The average age for the parents to send their children to work was ten. Although, Conventional wisdom dictates that the age at which children started work was connected to the poverty of the family. Griffith presents two autobiographies to put across her point. Autobiography of Edward Davis who lacked even the basic necessities of life because of his father’s heavy drinking habit and was forced to join work at a small age of six, whereas the memoir of Richard Boswell tells the opposite. He was raised up in an affluent family who studied in a boarding school. He was taken out of school at the age of thirteen to become a draper’s apprentice. The author goes further and places child employees into three groups, according to the kind of jobs that were available in their neighbourhood. First group composed of children living in rural areas with no domestic industry to work in. Therefore, the average of a child to work in rural area was ten. Before that, farmers use to assign small jobs to the children such as scaring birds, keeping sheep
Large corporations such as Nike, Gap, and Reebok and many others from the United States have moved their factories to undeveloped nations; barely pay their employees enough to live on. Countries such as China, Indonesia, and Haiti have readily abundant cheap labor. There should be labor laws or an obligation of respecting workers to provide decent working conditions, fair wages, and safety standards.
In the late 1700’s and early 1800’s big business began to boom. For the first time companies were developing large factories to manufacture their goods. Due to the new mechanics and cheap labor, factory owners could now produce their goods at a cheaper rate. As big businesses brought wealth and capitalism, it also widened the gap between the wealthy elite and the poor. One class in particular was horribly affected by the growth of big factories. This class was the poor working class. According to the article “Child Labor in the United States” written by Robert Whaples, a big proportion of the labour work force was made up of children: “In 1820 children aged 15 and under made up 23 percent of the manufacturing labor force of the industrializing
Shah, Anup. "Child Labor." - Global Issues. Anup Shah, 17 July 2005. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. .
During the 1870’s the United States experienced great changes with the end of the Civil War. America was going through a period called Reconstruction. Tensions were fairly high and an air of freedom was present throughout the nation. By 1877, it was obvious the United States was beginning to develop into a recognizably modern economic system of making, earning, spending, and living (Brown 60). In 1880, “over half of American workers worked on farms and only one in twenty worked on manufacturing” (Brown 59). Farmers outnumbered factory by a large number, but factories were still abundant. Child labor occurred after the Civil War as well. By 1872, more than 10,000 children were employed in Philadelphia’s industrial workplaces. That number was even larger in cities such as New York, and it increased as the years progressed (Brown 60).
"Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution." EHnet. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Dec. 2017. (-- removed HTML --) .
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.
Nardinelli, C. (1990). Child Labor and The Industrial Revolution. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Forms of labor included child slavery that existed throughout American History. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work. Children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to start a rebellion.2 Growing opposition to children in the North caused many factories to move to South. By early 1900’s, states varied considerably in whether they had implemented child labor standards.3Child labor peaked in the nineteenth century. American children worked in large numbers in places like mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, shoe shiners and peddlers....
“Child Labor in U.S. History.” Child Labor Public Education Project. 2011. Web. 2. April. 2014
The Industrial Revolution restructured the employer-employee relationship into an impersonal association exhibited by indifference to the quality of life of the worker. Children were especially exploited because they could be hired for lower wages and were made to work equally long days (Miller). Around the 1830s, children constituted about one-third of the labor in New England (Illinois Labor History Society). The conditions of workers as a whole necessitated action on behalf of the rights of laborers.
China has always been put under the spotlight for being one of the top nations in the world to use child labor, and by no means try to enforce their laws to stop this. There have been many cases in China were workshops are raided and hundreds of abducted children forced into slavery are found working under horrible conditions and against there will. The problem is that China’s government does not have to disclose to the public about their child labor reports. This makes it unclear to know exactly how many children whether abducted or not are working in these types of places. I will try to go more in depth into the critical and horrible working conditions in which these kids are put through, the main causes of child labor in china today, and finally try to come up with possible ideas the government and its people could make to reduce and eventually stop this
Child labor refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children; interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely or by requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work (International Labor Organization). Child labor has been a big problem ever since the Victorian Era. Many counties worldwide have used and still to this day use child labor. Though there are many laws that have been implemented against using children to work, many countries tend to ignore them. In my paper I will be discussing countries where child labor is present, push to stop child labor, companies that use child labor, the effects on children, and the reasons for child labor.
So I believe that the issue of child labour is not simple. As Unicef’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Report argued, children’s work needs to be seen as having two extremes. On one hand, there is the destructive or exploitative work and, on the other hand, there is beneficial work - promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest. ‘And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development.’ My firm belief is that there is a difference between child labour and child work and that in both cases the issue is whether or not the child is deliberately being exploited.