Disney Products and Child Labor

Child labour is much worse than it is portrayed by the media. Child labour includes the employment of children in the business, food, clothing industries that is considered to be illicit or exploitative (Bonnet, 2017). It denies children their basic rights such as protection and freedom from exploitation. Children, instead of going to school, work in dangerous and physically damaging work due to limited access to resources. Reliable statistics are scare as child labour continues to grow each day in third world countries such as Africa. An abundance of evidence supports the idea that child slavery still exists in modern societies, where an estimation of 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are affected by slavery around the world (ILO,

“Child workers work with heavy machinery and toxic material” according to John H. Cushman in the article Nike pledges to end child labor and apply US standards aboard. Many children have gotten sick lost limbs or even died in horrific and painful ways because of their working conditions. Every day when they go to work they risk losing an arm or even losing their life they are in no way safe. Additionally in some areas if children are not working hard enough they get physically punished. these are only a few of the many cruel ways child labor works.

Child labor is a serious problem that affects children from third-world countries all over the world. These children are exploited by multinational corporations ,for their cheap labor all over the world. People, then buy products that come at a cheaper price, from these multinational corporations.These children are often overworked and treated unfairly. People need to stop buying items from countries that endorse child labor.

When one hears the term “Child Labor”, an image of children making low quality clothing in some dingy third world sweatshop inevitably comes to mind. While this imagery is unfortunately founded in fact, the third world is not the only area complicit with this heinous practice. Truthfully, we, as a nation are also guilty of propagating this heinous practice. For over a century, this nation’s youth were subjugated to exploitation and abuse at the hands of captains of industry in the hopes of extracting every ounce of profit they could. Fortunately, sympathetic individuals recognized the children’s need for advocacy and rose to their defense in the form of organized dissent that appealed to the highest powers of this country to fight for those who could not fight for themselves. In this paper, we will look at what exactly child labor is, the circumstances that gave rise to the widespread acceptance of child labor usage, what working condition these children experienced, and how the United States eventually made its use illegal.

While in child slavery or labor countless innocent lives are lost. “Each year, as many as 2.7 million healthy years of life are lost due to child labor.” Healthy years of life can be lost in many ways, mental and physical diseases, drugs, and much more.One big reason is that while working lots of children get mental illnesses and can be driven crazy. To get these mental illnesses it

Since the early 19th century child labor has always been socially accepted and tolerated. Often times it was enforced by parents in order to sustain a way of living for families, but at the turn of the century the Industrial Revolution only made it more apparent that forcing children to perform manual labor would be considered unethical. In fact, thee issue of child labor has never been extensively researched or viewed as detrimental until recently. However, this issue of child labor isn’t just a violation of ethics, or as the author of Child Labor In Human Rights Law and Policy Perspective, Burns H. Weston, states, “it is undeniable and indisputable that child labor is a human rights problem, with increasing recognition all over the world

When the United States passed the bill that banned the importation of goods made by child labor, Americans thought that it was a victory for children in third world countries. What Americans neglected to consider was the possible negative side effects that the children were to face. Due to the ban, millions of children have lost their jobs and have been left to starve. Prohibiting theses imported materials is not an effective way to make the lives of working children better. When confronting the controversial issue of child labor, one needs to step into the shoes of the children, diminish child labor stereotypes, and focus on regulations and goals to improve working conditions.

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

In conclusion there aren’t many child labor issues in America they are mainly in South America, Asia, China, and India. I have learned a lot about child labor throughout this research.

The next time when you are out on your shopping trip, chances you may have support a business that exploits children. It is very disturbing and heartbreaking to learn many children are chained to looms for 12 hours a day because families need to have their child bringing home a small amount of moneys. Child labor has always been a difficult subject to address, the topic have become much more complicated and prolific.

They are working long, grueling hours while being treated harshly. Some children work as long as twelve to eighteen hours a day, six days a week. More than half are exposed to the worst forms of child labor such as slavery, drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict (continuetolearn.com). Many of these children are between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, some are even ten years of age or younger. These ages are too young for a child to be put in harms way just to get the job done. Adults should not be associated with this kind of labor, let alone a poor innocent child. By treating children this way, it damages their mental and physical health. A boy who worked on a farm was constantly beaten with branches or a bicycle chain. He was forced to sleep in a small room with eighteen other boys (laborawareness.wordpress.com). These children go long days without obtaining an adequate amount of food and sleep. Treating them in this harsh manner will eventually make them lose trust and become vulnerable. Children become traumatized into thinking the world is a cruel

However, behind the scenes of Disney lies human rights violations being committed around the globe. Factory workers are being paid staggeringly low wages, and not only that they work in dangerous conditions as well. This problem not only happens to third world countries, but also for Americans as well. Disney's slave-like treatment includes; sweatshops in china force young children to work 10-13 hours a day producing Disney's children's books six or seven times a week. Workers are paid 33 to 41 cents an hour (below Chinese minimum wage of 42 cents an hour).

Disney company was found to be using child labor as investigators have found many problems in Disney Factories, Children from 10 to 16 years of age were found making Disney toys, when one group was making Winnie The Pooh toys and other Disney dolls and stamps (martin, 2010).

In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.

In the past, women and men fought for the children of America to liberate them of the burden of harsh work and give them their childhood back. Although we want to believe that child labor is now history, child labor is still significant in our time, all around the world. Today the number of children, ages 5-14, working around the world are estimated to be increasing. Children are constantly working in dangerous working environments that cost them their lives or hamper their ability them to have a basic normal childhood that children have in America. These children miss the opportunity to run and play with friends, have friends their own age, to explore the world around them that they live in every day, have the opportunities to go to school to learn about the world they live in, and expand their imagination. Instead children in some part of world are going to mines and sweatshops to work instead of to school. They are working in dangerous places instead of playing with kids their own ages, and we in America are helping with the growth of child labor.