Child Labor Around the World
Child Labor in Mexico
Eight to eleven million children under the age of fifteen work in Mexico. There is a small number under fourteen. The children are employed in export oriented maquiladoras, or assembly factories between Mexico and the United States. Maquilas are affiliates of American owned companies that assemble goods for export, transportation equipment, electrical and electric products, toys , sporting goods, textiles and furniture. The work force is made up of mostly young females. The maquilas like to use children because it is really easy to get underage work and the owners do not have to pay the children that much.
Most of the girls start just between minimum age,
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Ninety one percent lived and slept in weaving sheds without things like light, ventilation or toilets.
During professional weaving, three to six children and adults sit shoulder to shoulder in a damp pit where the loom is located. Health related problems include over ninety percent of children complained of lower body swelling and pain in the joints. Constant skin problems form from the woolen fluff. There is extremely bad lighting and many children have developed bad eyesight because of it. At many places the children are beaten if they try to leave.
In a bonded labor system, parents are given a cash advance or "loan" by recruiters. The child is taken to work off the family debts. Debts never paid off, the child is a servant.
Gemstone Polishing
Gemstone polishing is the largest export to United States. Six thousand to one hundred thousand children work in the diamond industry, cutting and polishing. Suart, Gujart is a major diamond exportand also has the largest amount of child labor.
Mostly boys twelve to thirteen polish for seven to nine hours a day. The children are paid by the number of diamonds polished.
Jaipur, Rajasthan is a very large gemstone export and has seven thousand to thirteen thousand child workers.
There are two categories of child workers:
1. Children from six to ten years of age and come from families
Many different variables play a part in finding a solution to help end child labor. Unfortunately, this form of labor plays a large role in Mexico’s economy. Although the country has anti-child labor laws, the children of Mexico are forced to work for a variety of reasons. Most families force the children to work due to their struggle with poverty and lack of income. Although some organizations (like the North American Free Trade Agreement) look at solutions to help boost Mexico’s economy, large international corporations enter the country’s struggling economy capitalizing on it’s low cost manufacturing and wages, thus forcing children to work. Solutions must be looked at in order to stop kids from working their childhood away instead of getting an education to ultimately help Mexico’s economy.
Children were needed to go beneath machines all day,every day in tight places to scrub and clean the oil from machines. If they were caught sleeping or showed up to the job late, they were tortured by their supervisors. Cruelty and torture was enacted on children by master-manufacturers to keep up high output. The children’s bodies become crooked and ill-shapen from the add the mills and factories. Their bodies and bones became weak that they could not hold themselves up.They would begin to work at the age of four. an outsized proportion of kids operating within the mines were beneath thirteen and a bigger proportion from ages of Thirteen to eighteen. Mines weren't engineered for stability, rather, they were tiny and low and kids were required to crawl through them. The conditions within the mines where not safe in any way shape or form, bodies distorted or could be killed. Children may wander away inside the mines for days at a time. The air within the mines were horrible to breathe and could cause painful and fatal
children had to labor to maintain a standard of living. Many shared accounts of the lackluster life
Child labor is the working of young adults slaving away for low payment. Since old times, adolescents have worked to support their household, especially the families that live on a farm. Most children worked to help bring in money because their parents didn’t have jobs.The young children were forced to slave away long hours in risky and unsanitary conditions, with their pay extremely
Some children will work in very harsh conditions which could include drug trafficking, prostitution and sometimes in some countries the young children will work in types of military position for their country. A lot of children work in many types of commercial business if they can. You would never believe what these children work in and it is not safe at all for the these children to be working in it, cause it is not safe for adults sometimes also. What’s not safe for adults should not be safe for children you would think? A lot of the work that these children work in are extremely hazardous and the children that will work in these conditions come from extremely poor families and they may also live in a low economic state also. Sometimes these children will work with either no pay at all for their hard work or just little pay for the jobs that they complete. A lot of the commercial jobs that these children are involved have very extreme health risk and concerns to the children
Child labor remains a major social issue in the world, it is not as severe an issue as it was centuries ago, but it still affects millions of kids all over the world today. Children have historically been a part of the world's labor force especially, with the arrival of industrialization. There are many occasions throughout history in which children have been indentured or forced into child slavery within the labor market. Children were viewed as a cheap, manageable and sustainable labor resources by many businesses. Child Labor increased in the United States when the population increased. When many immigrants began moving to the United States to rural areas, they began urbanization, which meant that more people moved to urban areas. There were local needs however there weren’t enough workers, so businesses resorted to hiring children.
…textile mills, coalmines, flourmills, machine shops, garment factories, tobacco factories, shoe factories, and carpet plants, in order to provide a source of income for their families. In numerous industries children labored around unsafe machinery. Children labored for many hours, but received wages that were much lower than those received by adult laborers for comparable
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
The distribution and production of diamonds is largely controlled by a few key players, the main one being Antwerp. Antwerp is where 80 percent of all rough diamonds, 50 percent of all cut diamonds, and 50 percent of all rough, cut and industrial diamonds are controlled. In New York almost 80 percent of the world diamonds are sold. De Beers is the world’s largest diamond miner and holds a governing position in the industry, and has done so since it was founded in 1888. De Beers owns or operates a large portion of the world’s rough diamond production mines and distribution networks. The DTC or Diamond Trading Company is a subsidiary of De Beers and markets diamonds from De Beers run mines. After being mined the diamonds are then sent to be cut and polished. The polishing and cutting of diamonds is a specific skill that is done in a limited number of locations worldwide. Original diamond cutting centers are Amsterdam, Antwerp, Johannesburg, New York, and Tel Aviv. More recently, due to the lower labor cost, diamond cutting centers have opened in China, India, Namibia, and Botswana. Diamonds which have been prepared as gemstones, such as the ones you would see in most engagement rings, are sold on diamond exchanges called bourses. “There are 28 registered diamond bourses in the world” (Linetskaya,Yelena. “Big Apple Secrets”).
The younger children, who were not old enough to use the equipment, were sent to help the textile workers. The people who the children served would beat them, verbally abuse them, and take no consideration for their safety. Both girls and boys who laboured in factories were given beatings and other harsh forms of painful punishments. One punishment for being late or not working hard enough would be to be weighted. A slave master would tie a heavy weight to a child’s neck, and have them walk through the factory aisles so the other children could see them and become intimidated. This could last sometimes an hour. Boys were sometimes dragged naked from their beds and sent to the factories only holding their clothes, to be put on there. This was to make sure the boys would not be late, even by a few minutes. There were people in this time period that strongly advocated the use or the abolishment of child labour, or at least the improvement of conditions. Factory owners loved child labour, and they supported their reasoning with ideas that it was good for everything from the economy to the building of the children's characters. Parents of the children who worked were almost forced to at least allow it as they needed the income. There were some relevant people that fought for the regulation, improvement, and abolishment of child labour. The first phase to improving conditions was
The social studies text, ‘’Child labor around the world’’, By: Nelda Marquez discusses Child labor. The text is about children around the world who work for a living and do not have any schooling. In this article children work for a living.
Child labor is work for children, but also harmful to their growth physically, mentally or emotionally. Children were forced to work because of their family’s extremely poor condition where they may be needed to drop out of school. In most kinds of
Poverty is the main reason for child labour. Poor households need the money, which their children can earn. Children contribute to 20 – 25 % of family income. It is obvious that the survival of certain families depends on the children’s earnings.
To target child labor and other abusive labor relationships, the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) was created in 1993, as part of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). Its initial focuses primarily were to gather information and increase knowledge of child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking practices worldwide and to promote international cooperation to eliminate the “worst forms of child labor”, defined as slavery (or practices similar to slavery), the sale or trafficking of children, debt bondage or serfdom, the forcible recruitment of children for armed conflict, the commercial sexual exploitation of children, the involvement of children in drug trafficking, and the involvement of children in work that is likely to harm their health, safety, or morals (The U.S. Dept. of Labor).
"Child labor," is a term that will probably never be clearly defined. The World Book Encyclopedia