Child Labour - Past and Present

Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organisations and is illegal in many countries. In many developed countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a child below a certain age works (excluding household chores, in a family shop, or school-related work). An employer is usually not permitted to hire a child below a certain minimum age. This minimum age depends on the country and the type of work involved. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions. Based on this understanding of the use of children as labourers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be a human rights violation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate child labour. During the Industrial Revolution, the children of the poor were expected to help towards the family budget, often working long hours in dangerous jobs for low pay, earning 10-20% of an adult male's wage. In England and Scotland in 1788, two-thirds of the workers in 143 water-powered cotton mills were described as children. In 19th-century Great Britain, one-third of poor families were without a breadwinner, as a result of death or abandonment, obliging many children to work from a young age. In coal mines, children would crawl through tunnels too narrow and low for adults. Children also worked as errand boys, crossing sweepers, shoe blacks, or selling matches, owers and other cheap goods. Some children undertook work as apprentices to respectable trades, such as building or as domestic servants (there were over 120,000 domestic servants in London in the mid-18th century). Working hours were long: child builders worked 64 hours a week in summer and 52 in winter, while domestic servants worked 80 hour weeks. In the early 1900s, thousands of boys were employed in glass making industries. Glass making was a dangerous and tough job especially without the current technologies. The process of making glass includes intense heat to melt glass (1733 degrees Celsius). When the boys are at work, they were exposed to this heat. This could cause eye trouble, lung aliments, heat exhaustion, cut, and burns. Since workers were paid by the piece, they had to work productively for hours without a break. Since furnaces had to be constantly burning, there were night shifts from 5:00 P.M. to 3:00 A.M. Many factory owners preferred boys under 16 years of age. Children as young as three were put to work. A high number of children also worked as prostitutes. Many children (and adults) worked 16 hour days. As early as 1802 and 1819 Factory Acts were passed to regulate the working hours of workhouse children in factories and cotton mills to 12 hours per day. A Royal Commission recommended in 1833 that children aged 1118 should work a maximum of 12 hours per day, children aged 911 a maximum of eight hours, and children under the age of nine were no longer permitted to work. This act however only applied to the textile industry, and further agitation led to another act in 1847 limiting both adults and children to 10 hour working days. Child labour is still common in some parts of the world, it can be factory work, mining, prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labour occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in housesfar from the reach of ofcial labour inspectors and from media scrutiny."

Wednesday, 16 May 2012

TODAY According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 250 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour. Child labour accounts for 22% of the workforce in Asia, 32% in Africa, 17% in Latin America, 1% in US, Canada, Europe and other wealthy nations. The proportion of child labourers varies greatly among countries and even regions inside those countries. Many Child labours are bonded labours. It refers to children who are sold by their parents for a petty sum, a loan or to pay off debts. A form of long run employer-slave relationship is formed when these children are tied to this debt bondage to work for their employers for a time period that could be stretched to a lifetime, and usually it is for a minimal or no wages. There has been no universally accepted number of bonded child labourers in India, but one estimate in 2000 shows that there were 15 million child labourers who were bonded. Bonded child labour is practiced widely across many parts of rural India and across multiple industries.

Although the abolition of slavery in much of the world has greatly reduced child slavery, the phenomenon lives on, especially in Third World countries. According to the Anti-Slavery Society; "Although there is no longer any state which legally recognizes, or which will enforce, a claim by a person to a right of property over another, the abolition of slavery does not mean that it ceased to exist. There are millions of people throughout the world mainly children in conditions of virtual to slavery." It further notes that slavery, particularly child slavery, was on the rise in 2003. In 1990 reports of slavery came out of Bahr al Ghazal, a Dinka region in southern Sudan. In 1995, Dinka mothers spoke about their abducted children. Roughly 20,000 slaves were reported in Sudan in 1999: "The handmade woolen carpet industry is extremely labor intensive and one of the largest export earners for India, Pakistan, Nepal and Morocco." During the past 20 years, about 200,000 and 300,000 children are involved, most of them in the carpet belt of Uttar Pradesh in central India. Many children in Asia are kidnapped or trapped in servitude, where they work in factories and workshops for no pay and receive constant beatings. Slaves have reappeared following the old slave trade routes in West Africa. "The children are kidnapped or purchased for $20 - $70 each in poorer states, such as Benin and Togo, and sold into slavery in sex dens or as unpaid domestic servants for $350.00 each in wealthier oil-rich states, such as Nigeria and Gabon" QUESTIONS 1) What emotions and feelings does this article evoke? Do you believe Child Labour/Slavery is wrong? Why/Why Not? How different is your life to these children (past and present) and are you lucky to live in Australia? (Provide detailed examples in your paragraphs - this Question is worth 30 points)

Wednesday, 16 May 2012