Child Labor and Society: A Detrimental Situation
Child labor is detrimental to the well-being of the subject as well as the society to which he belongs. Throughout history, sundry civilizations have borne witness to the harsh reality termed as "child labor." The agrarian realm enlisted the help of small hands from the beginning of time. Innocent children as young as six or seven persevered in arduous working conditions on farms. However, the Industrial Revolution escalated this cruel trend to new heights. A job in the factory now meant twelve to eighteen hours of work a day, six days a week. The early and mid-1800s foresaw the release of litigation that addressed the issue of child labor for the first time (Online). Despite the fact that child labor has been globally condemned for almost two centuries, there is a long way to go.
It is one of the most pressing social problems that…...
mlaBibliography
A.A. Thabet, S. Matar, A. Carpintero, J Bankartt, P Vostanis. "Mental health problems among labour children in the Gaza Strip." Child: care, health and development April 2010.
Adame, Susana. "The Scandal of Child Labor in U.S. Farming." The Guardian 31 May 2010.
Boaz, Peter. "Hershey Chocolate Linked to Child Labour." IPS 17 Sept 2010.
"Child Labor Makes Quarter of 35m Soccer Balls." Express Tribune 25 May 2010.
However, by comparison, children in America have much better conditions that children in Africa who rarely receive payment for their services and most often they are deprived of any schooling activity or leisure time (Child Labor: when it is right/wrong?, n.d.).
The actors involved in the process of child labor include the states which allow this, most of them being African and Asian states, as well as the international organizations which try to deal with the issues arising from child labor. In terms of solutions, these are strictly related to the actors involved. Therefore, the states where such activities are practiced must take into account the legal means to regulate them to such an extent as to not pose a threat to the lives and futures of children. On the other hand, international organizations must work closely to establish a certain legal framework above the national legal standards which would…...
mlaBibliography
Brazier, Chris. "Paula's story." New Internationalist. N.d. 30 April 2008 http://www.newint.org/issue292/paula.html
The document represents the story of a 17-year-old prostitute who chose to leave school and start working because of the lack of money. Her story is important because it represents a first hand experience of such an account.
Child Labor and Global Village. Child Labor: Frequently Asked Questions. N.d. 30 April 2008. http://www.childlaborphotoproject.org/childlabor.html
The source discusses the issues which are controversial in the area of child labor. These include the definition of the term, the current situation, the situation of children under this regime, as well as possible solutions for controlling the situation.
Istanbul's native born has made little or not contribution to the population growth due to its near or below-replacement levels of reproduction (Population pp).
Child prostitution is a world wide urban social phenomenon and is considered one of the worst contemporary forms of slavery (Kantay Pp). Moreover, child prostitution is one of the most difficult and dangerous forms of child labor (Kuntay Pp).
Due to the invisibility of the children involved, they are at the greatest risk of exploitation and are subjected to harassment, violent attacks and are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases, such as HIV infection (Kuntay Pp). Although child prostitution is a legal violation in Turkey, it is almost epidemic in large metropolitan areas such as Istanbul (Kuntay Pp). Moreover, it is difficult to late these girls because they are very mobile, wandering from one customer and location to another (Kuntay Pp).
The need to supplement household income was listed…...
mlaWorks Cited
International Problems." http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761552027_1____7/Child_Labor.html#s7
ILO Turkey Representation Holds Meeting on World Day Against Child Labor." http://www.turkishpress.com/turkishpress/news.asp?ID=10975
Worst Forms of Child Labour Data." http://www.globalmarch.org/worstformsreport/world/turkey.html
LFPR of Children by Age, Region and Gender." http://www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/simpoc/turkey/report/turk94/page2-1.htm
Child labor is condemned across the globe, but is it fair for a multinational to terminate relationships with suppliers when incidents arise regarding the use of child workers, regardless of the implications to the community as a whole?
It is fair for a multinational to cease doing business with suppliers that fail to comply with ethical labor practices. This does not mean that an isolated violation justifies doing so when the suppliers are really committed to respecting acceptable labor conditions. If a multinational allows supplies to violate ethical labor practices, it would imply that the multinational is not seriously committed to those practices and is as guilty of the violations as the suppliers. The argument that maintaining the level of employment in the community takes precedence over ethical labor practices is wrong. It would mean that any level of exploitation is preferable to having to find alternative employment or being unemployed…...
Labor in Europe in the 19th Century: Exploitation and the Rise of Labor Unions
As Carolyn Tuttle of Lake Forest College points out, the first textile mills in England were bad enough to elicit the opprobrious condemnation of none other than Charles Dickens in the 19th century, who scorned them as "dark satanic mills" (Tuttle). By the beginning of the 19th century, the First Factory Act of 1802 was passed -- but it did little to amend the strict, severe, and inhuman conditions in which "labor shortage" issues were solved by "employing parish apprentices" (i.e., via the exploitation of child labor) (Tuttle). Dickens would become a proponent of labor and education reform in England, depicting the latter as pernicious as the former in Hard Times (a novel which portrays the headmaster of a school as stubbornly insistent on the rote memorization of "facts" and "nothing but facts" (1) -- a subtle…...
mlaWorks Cited
Blake, William. "The Chimney Sweeper." Songs of Innocence and Experience, Plate 45,
"The Chimney Sweeper" (Bentley 37). Yale Center for British Art, 1794. Web. 1 May 2016.
Carr, E. H. What is History? Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Print.
Cunningham, Hugh. "The Decline of Child Labour: Labour Markets and Family
Child labor is condemned across the globe, but is it fair for a multinational to terminate relationships with suppliers when incidents arise regarding the use of child workers, regardless of the implications to the community as a whole?
Yes it is fair for multinational companies to end relationships with suppliers when incidents arise regarding the use of child labor. It is more the responsibility of the local governments to monitor the use of child labor than it is of the company itself. There are often rules and regulations within each country that have to be followed and these would be the responsibility of the local government to enforce.
Every company that does business around the world has to be cognizant of the rules and regulations in each place that they do business. They also have to be aware of how things get done in certain places affects them everywhere. For example, in…...
Child Labor and Chocolate Consumption
1
Labor practices in another country should be a relevant consideration in international trade if ethics matters at all. In the U.S., slavery was ended in the 19th century—but it is disconcerting to hear that in reality it hasn’t ended but has rather simply been relocated. Essentially today’s world consists of a globalized economy, which impacts all societies (Meyer, 2000). If slavery and child labor is deemed unethical in the West, it should not be allowed that Western companies can profit from these practices simply by outsourcing the work to regions of the world where slavery and child labor is routine. Fair Trade certification helps companies to be honest, but it is still a shame that so few companies care to be ethical about their products. Just because the slavery is not happening on domestic shores does not mean it is somehow okay: those people abroad are…...
mlaReferences
De Pelsmacker, P., Driesen, L., & Rayp, G. (2005). Do consumers care about ethics? Willingness to pay for fair?trade coffee. Journal of Consumer Affairs, 39(2), 363-385.Madeira, M. A. (2018). Intra-Industry Trade: Cooperation and Conflict in the Global Political Economy. By Cameron G. Thies and Timothy M. Peterson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. Perspectives on Politics, 16(1), 288-290.Meyer, J. W. (2000). Globalization: Sources and effects on national states and societies. International Sociology, 15(2), 233-248.Renard, M. C. (2005). Quality certification, regulation and power in fair trade. Journal of Rural Studies, 21(4), 419-431.
NGOs intervention on Child slavery - labor abuse
Child labor and slavery is a global problem that has raised concern among various agencies and bodies of governments in different countries. Global organizations like WTO, ILO and GATT among others have prohibited its members from any forms of child labor and encouraged them to take proactive measures towards curbing the vice. With the direct and indirect pressure from these global organizations, there are hardly any nations that do not have explicit laws that ban and condemn the various forms of child labor with serious jail sentences attached to any offence related to child labor, what remains to be done is the implementation of the laws. ILO[footnoteef:1] recommended that the member states needed to have a time-bound program of the actions they will undertake to eradicate child labor which manifests in the form of forced labor, slavery and slave like conditions, debt bondage,…...
mlaReferences
International labor Organization, "Amsterdam Conference Condemns Intolerable Forms of Child Labor: Call for New International Standards and Global Solidarity" (1997): par-33. Accessed April 13, 2015. -- en/index.htmhttp://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/media-centre/press-releases/WCMS_008044/lang
Global March International Secretariat, "Child Trafficking." 2015: Par-2, Accessed April 13, 2015 from http://www.globalmarch.org/issues/Child-Trafficking
Youngwan Kim, "The Unveiled Power of NGOs: How NGOs influence States' Foreign Policy Behaviors." 2011:Pp-17, Accessed April 8, 2015 http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2537&context=etd
Anup Shah, "Non-governmental Organizations on Development Issues." (2005). Accessed April 8, 2015 http://www.globalissues.org/article/25/non-governmental-organizations-on-development-issues
Child Labor
The world should be free of the type of child labor that is more akin to slave labor than to "doing one's bit" as Morrow (2010, p. 436) calls it. Morrow points out that in the old days (i.e., during WW1), children were called upon to do their part to help support families, as the world was in dire circumstances, the men were off fighting the war, and women and children had to do more than their fair share to keep the home going. Thus, child labor was a norm and a part of life for a great many people in that era. Yet, after the war and especially after WW2, the quality of life in the West increased and children were not required to "do their part" as much as they had been in the past. They could spend more time playing, or going to school, or exploring…...
mlaReferences
Morrow, V. (2010). Should the World Really be Free of Child Labour? Some
Reflections. Retrieved from http://chd.sagepub.com/content/17/4/435.full.pdf+html
United States Department of Labor. (2014). List of Products Produced by Forcedd or Indentured Child Labor. Retrieved from http://www.dol.gov/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-of-products/index-country.htm
Koppel, T. (2005). Nightline: Stolen Childhoods. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/17350618
So, the market forces of supply and demand continued to drive labor practices despite attempts at government reform. Some experts, however, do believe there was some reduction in the number of young working children and reduced labor hours.
What labor reforms came out of these investigations?
Following the investigations, a series of Factory Acts were passed to reform labor practices over many years. The first three were the Factory Act of 1833, the Factory Act of 1844 and the Factory Act of 1847. The Factory Act of 1833 limed hours of employment for women and children in textile work with the following provisions:
Young people (ages 13-18) must not work more than 10 hours a day.
Children (ages 9-13) must not work more than 9 hours (48 hours per week).
Children (ages 9-13) must have two hours of education per day.
Later, the Factory Act of 1844, also applicable to the textile industry, further reduced hours…...
mlaBibliography
Factory Acts." Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_Act#Factory_Act_of_1833
Gaskell, P. The Manufacturing Population of England. London, 1833, pp.161-162, 202-203. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers2.html
Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. 3rd Series, vol. XIX. July 18, 1833, p.912. http://www.victorianweb.org/history/workers1.html
Parliamentary Papers. 1831-1832, vol. XV. pp. 44, 95-97, 115, 195, 197, 339, 341-342.].
The Secretary of Labor shall provide by regulation or by order that the employment of employees between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years in occupations other than manufacturing and mining shall not be deemed to constitute oppressive child labor if and to the extent that the Secretary of Labor determines that such employment is confined to periods which will not interfere with their schooling and to conditions which will not interfere with their health and well-being. (29 U.S.C.S. 201 § (3)(l).
Chinese law is theoretically as strict about prohibiting child labor as American law is. Under the egulations on Prohibition of Child Labor, which was adopted by the State Council in 2002, employers are prohibited from hiring children under the age of 16. Moreover, "The regulation stipulates that employers will be fined 5,000 yuan ($720) for every child laborer they hire for one month. If they continue to do…...
mlaReferences
The Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U.S.C.S. 201et seq., (2004).
Global Exchange. (2007). Nike campaign: frequently asked questions. Retrieved September 7,
2009 from GlobalExchange.org
Web site: http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshops/nike/faq.html
Children and Child Labor in Liberia and Sierra Leone
Two of the world's most beautiful countries are also, unfortunately, the poorest as well. The nations of Liberia and Sierra Leone are faced with a number of severe obstacles in their quest to join the international community and diversify their stagnated and monolithic economies; while much remains to be done, some progress has been made. In this regard, a brief overview of each country is followed by a discussion of these challenges as they directly affect the children of these two countries; a summary of the research is provided in the conclusion.
Liberia.
General Economic and Political Situation. A costly and bloody civil war and government malfeasance have adversely affected much of Liberia's economy, particularly the infrastructure in and around Monrovia, the capital; in addition, continued international sanctions on diamonds and timber exports will constrain the growth of these major industries in the…...
mlaReferences
Brocklehurst, Helen. 2003. "Kids 'R' Us? Children as Political Bodies." International Journal
of Politics and Ethics, 3(1): 79.
Bruce, Beverlee. 2001. "Toward Mediating the Impact of Forced Migration and Displacement
among Children Affected by Armed Conflict." Journal of International Affairs, 55(1):
Education
Addams, Jane. (1994). Child Labor Legislation -- A Requisite for Industrial Efficiency. In On Education (pp. 124-135). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
Famous education reformer Jane Addams expresses her different views on a liberal and decentralized American education during the late 19th to early 20th centuries. In this particular essay, Addams criticizes the U.S. government for encouraging children at young ages to work for factories and manufacturing companies instead of studying in school. In presenting her argument, Addams places emphasis on the importance of education, not overproduction, as a prerequisite to an industrially successful society. Addams' essay offers a critical view of capitalism and American governance and legislation as focusing on economic gains rather than giving attention to human development resulting to a developed American society.
____. (1994). The Public School and the Immigrant Child. In On Education (pp. 136-142). New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
In the same book source, another essay that contributed to…...
NoteSome options in articulating the issues that workers face in the Global South is to point out the rising inequality between the Global North and the Global South. Many nations in the Global South have not participated in globalization and as a result the gulf between them and the developed world has widened. The governments of the Global North should be more inclusive in terms of doing business with and trading with the Global South so as to promote equality. These views could be presented to governments and employers through grassroots activist groups and by supporting companies that engage with the Global South so as to give them a better economic opportunity. Corporate social responsibility programs should be developed to help the Global South gain a foothold in the global marketplace. Consumers have the power to demand this of all companies. If companies dont want to support laborers in the…...
mlaReferences
1. The Nation, May 23rd 2017, Is Banning Child Labour Really That Controversial? https:// www.thenation.com/article/banning-child-labor-really-controversial/
2. Thorsen, D. (2006). Child migrants in transit. In Navigating youth, generating adulthood: social becoming in an African context. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutete
3. Trafficked in America, documentary
4. A Kind of Childhood, documentary
Globalization and Its Ethical Implications
The dynamic force of globalization, a phenomenon of interconnectedness and integration of economies around the world, has resulted not only to increasing opportunities for trade diversification but presents inherent risk such as global financial instability, increased inequalities, terrorism. In an increasingly interdependent world, increasing world population, scientific and technology innovation advancement, global human development issues, global governance, peace and security, global environment and natural resources are emerging global issues of interest to both national and international governments and critical for maintaining global stability (Bhargava, 2007).
Forces of globalization have contributed to multilateral trade liberalization, which has an economic value such as increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), greater economies of scale and scope and knowledge, and technology spillovers (Bhargava, 2007). It's enabled the development of competitive and comparative advantage in manufacturing by developing countries. The expansion of economic activities across the globe has put pressure on the supply…...
The term global perspective actually has a few different meanings, depending on the discipline. It can refer to an individual’s personal lens and how they view the globe; to various perspectives about an issue from around the globe; and to views linked to globalization and the impact of individual or nation-wide actions on the world and its inhabitants. We are going to provide a range of topic suggestions that incorporate all of these different definitions of global perspectives, with the most suggestions coming from the last topic, as it is the most commonly used across academic disciplines.
A-levels....
Certainly! Here are a few suggestions for social injustice essay topics:
1. Income inequality and its effects on marginalized communities.
2. Gender bias and discrimination in the workplace.
3. Racial profiling and its impact on communities of color.
4. Access to quality education for low-income students.
5. Environmental racism and its consequences on disadvantaged communities.
6. The criminal justice system's disproportionate treatment of minorities.
7. Discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in society.
8. Disability rights and the challenges faced by disabled individuals.
9. Child labor and exploitation in developing countries.
10. The refugee crisis and the global response to displaced populations.
Remember, when writing about social injustice, it is essential to research....
1. The impact of child labor on education and opportunities for children in developing countries.
2. The ethical implications of companies using child labor in their supply chains.
3. The role of government regulations in combating child labor.
4. The psychological and emotional effects of child labor on children.
5. The connection between poverty and child labor.
6. The historical roots of child labor and its prevalence throughout different time periods and regions.
7. The relationship between globalization and child labor.
8. The effectiveness of international organizations and initiatives in addressing child labor.
9. The intersectionality of child labor with other social issues, such as gender inequality and....
1. The Historical Roots and Evolution of Child Labor: An Exploration of Causes and Consequences
Trace the origins and development of child labor practices throughout history
Examine the social, economic, and political factors that have perpetuated child labor
Analyze the impact of industrialization, globalization, and social movements on the prevalence of child labor
2. The Ethical Implications and Human Rights Violations of Child Labor: Confronting Exploitation and Injustice
Discuss the ethical dilemmas posed by child labor and its violation of fundamental human rights
Examine the psychological, physical, and developmental hazards faced by child laborers
Evaluate the role of international conventions and....
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