“The term ‘child labor’ is defined by the United States Department of Labor as the employment of boys and girls when they are too young to work for hire; or when they are employed at jobs unsuitable or unsafe for children of their ages.” (Americana 461) According to American life-styles, children should be at school or at play. Yet, the fact remains that there are Third World nations where the economy is such that families need their children to work to supplement their meager incomes. Like it or not, child labor exists, and in some places makes the difference between true hunger and abject poverty or just barely surviving. It is a fact that to many the very term “child labor” brings visions of Dickensian orphans, guided by a Fagin or some other corrupt industrialist, using children to hold down the cost of wages. Yet, there are arguments for, as well as against the employment of children, even in the 21st century.
Arguments FOR Child labor.
In many ethnic business (i.e. Chinese restaurants for example) children work alongside their parents. It is both a financial necessity, and also part of the ethnic family work ethic. As Miri Song (2001) points out in her research on the subject, “A pivotal…device…is the ‘family work contract’ (FWC) which describes the ‘diffuse understandings and expectations’ that bind children to their work.” (Song 354) What her research ends up with is that “it serves as a timely reminder that child labor is not just an issue of exploited children making soccer balls in developing countries….Child labor is not always a matter of crass exploitation.” (Song 355)
The idea of helping out in a family enterprise is not looked on with disfavor in many areas of the world. International regulations have been put in force both by the ILO, the International Labor Organization, as well as various arms of the United Nations. These regulations seem to create a sort of continuum from acceptable to not acceptable. “At one end of the continuum, tolerable work can be found which is light work which is not likely to be harmful to health or development and which is not such as to prejudice their attendance at school. The conventions stipulates a minimum age of 13….this may be lowered to 12 years. Given the social and economic situation, such work can be a reasonable means of earning a living for the children and their families.”(Kolk and Van Tulder 293)
The one key area that is being addressed, even in Third World countries, is that children may work as long as it does not interfere with their education. A number of articles which have interviewed Third World children have found that they WANT to both work AND study. “In Brazil, the govern or the capital, Brasilia….has come up with a novel scheme to help working and poor children stay in school in which poor families who keep all their children in school receive a minimum wage every month. The money is lost if any child misses more than two days in a month, except due to illness. In 1996 the program was keeping 10,000 children in school at a cost of only 9.5% of the total state budget.” (Green 27).
It is important for the various nations where child labor is rampant to “clean up their act”. Some nations, and it seems Bangladesh (one of the world’s poorest countries) is at fault to a great extent. For example, “following threats by the U.S. Congress to pass legislation preventing the import of products from Bangladesh made by children under 14, garment factory owners fired an estimated 50,000 children, mainly girls, who were forced to exchange their jobs in relatively clean, hygienic textile factories for lower-paid jobs breaking bricks or collecting garbage. Some turned to prostitution.” (Green 26)
Child labor has a place in the world economy, as long as it is neither hazardous or dead-end work, where the child=-laborers can still get an education and thereby help get their families out of poverty, since an education (which most of their parents do not have) will ensure better-paying jobs in the long run.
Arguments Against Child Labor:
The United States does not have totally clean hands in regards to child labor. Mostly, this occurs with the children of migrant farm workers. Human Rights Watch says that child farm workers in the United States- the vast majority of whom are Latino- regularly work 12 to 14 hour days, often suffering pesticide poisonings, heat-related illness, machine and knife-related injuries, and life-long disabilities. Many are forced to work without access to toilet or hand-washing facilities or adequate drinking water.” (Cray 4)
The State of California which used to be one of the worst offenders, has taken some legislative steps not only to assure clean water and better living facilities and shorter work hours, but also mandated that these children attend public schools. However, mandating such regulation and getting compliance both from the families as well as the farmers is something else.
We do not need to stray far from the U.S. to see the havoc child labor can cause. “There are now an estimated 17.6 million working children between the ages of 5 and 14 in Latin America and the Caribbean. For many employers, they are the perfect employees- the cheapest to hire, the easiest to fire, and the least likely to protest.” (Green 21) It is startling to see that age: 5! And, yet there are some working families in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in Colombia and Peru, where working mothers drag their toddlers with them to help. Green focuses on one 13 year old girl in Central America, who works for a friend of her father’s, washing dishes. She earns about $2.70 a day. “Of that sum, she says, she gives about $1 to her mother, spending the rest on the costs of a dress-making school. “Some of the regulars buy me a drink or an avocado,’ she says.” (Green 21)
A number of researchers in Latin America and the Philippines have come to the same conclusion: the less educated the parents, the more likely the child will work. The conclusion is simple: “poverty appears to be the main cause of child labor” (Tuttle 376). That of course is an easy conclusion. But, eradicating poverty has been a centuries-old ambitious project which has barely made a dent into the world’s poverty levels. The rich nations get richer, even with some deviant practices (as the child farm workers in the U.S.) and the poor get the contracts from Kathy Gifford and Nike to produce low-cost products which can be sold at enormous markup in the U.S.
One also has to look at the fact that child labor is not going to disappear soon, given the intensive global competition for consumer goods. In a world where price is far more important than quality in many product lines, the cheap child-labor opportunities will persist.
Again, it would be simplistic to say “Why doesn’t some sort of welfare program protect the children? Although a fundamental concern of the early 20th century child welfare system, today child labor is often seen as outside the scope of child welfare and child protective services….(Today) approximately 150 million children, ranging in age from 5 to 14, are estimated to be working worldwide. Approximately 60% and 30% of these laboring children reside on the Asian and African continents.” (Pasztor and McFadden 611)
Conclusion:
The statistics are frightening. Even more so is the age range of working children in poor nations. And, to America’s shame there are children in this wealthy nation who are forced to work under conditions most of us would run far away from. However, to totally abhor the idea of child labor ignores the pitiful economic situation of millions of families throughout the world who are forced to make their children work. If any parent had a choice, surely they would prefer the same sort of pampering American mothers and dads give their youngsters. Yet, while these children ride the water chutes at Disneyland or go to summer camp, unaware of the horrors others their own age are facing, there is little that can be done immediately to solve the child labor problems. We cannot continue to fund these poor nations with billions of dollars to eradicate child labor. Chances are, most of that money goes into some politician’s Swiss bank account and not where it would do the most good. One only can hope that others use the same incentive of that Brasilia governor who insists that working children get an education. Perhaps if there is one international effort that needs priority it is to convince both parents and children, as well as their governments and the factory owners that the one and only means to escape further child labor punishment is to further the children’s education.
Perhaps it would not be too rash a suggestion that, much like the Peace Corps, educators from the wealthier Western nations form an alliance of educators to literally “force-feed” if necessary the children of poorer lands so they can get a decent education and rise out of the swampland of poverty and hopelessness. We are adults too long to let childhood pass over us completely.
It is also obvious that government sanctions, such as the U.S. Congress’ denial of trade benefits to developing countries that do not comply with child labor laws, is not going to end child labor, in fact, literally child slavery in some Asian and African countries. And yet,. What is worse than these nations’ avoidance of child labor regulations is that we, in the comfort of our own homes, playing video games, watching television, dating, stuffing ourselves with Big Macs or pizza, seem to care very little that children- young enough to belong in pre-school classes, are toiling away at some of the goods we feel are “bargains” when we go shopping at the mall.
Works Cited:
Cray, Charlie: “Child Labor in the U.S.A.” Washington D.C.: Multinational Monitor, Jul/Aug 2000
Green, Duncan: “Child Workers of the Americas” New York: NACLA Report on the Americas, Jan/Feb 1999
Kolk, Ans and van Tulder, Rob: “Child labor and multinational conduct: A comparison of international business and stakeholder codes” Dordrecht NL: Journal of Business Ethics, March 2002,
Pasztor, Eileen Mayers, Otis, Jack, and McFadden, Emily Jean: “A forgotten focus for child welfare” New York: Child Welfare, Sept/Oct. 2001
Song, Miri: “Helping Out: Children’s Labor in Ethnic Businesses” Washington DC: Contemporary Sociology, July 2001
Tuttle, Carolyn: “The Policy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study” Ithaca NY: Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Jan, 2001
No author listed “Child Labor” Encyclopedia Americana Vol. 6,
Americana Corporation, 1956
