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Sweatshops and Child Labor
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Sweatshops and child labor.
By: Abby Cozart
Effects of Child Labor
- Children will become much internally weaker because they are not fed when they work.
- Children also may get sick much easier and have weakened immune systems because of unhealthy working conditions and a lack of nutrition.
- Children may also sustain injuries when in hazardous working conditions.
________TRUE_STORY___________________________
When he was four years old, Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded servitude by his parents, a common practice of poor Pakistani families hoping to pay off debts owed to landlords and local merchants. For the next six years, Masih was forced to work in a carpet factory—usually chained to a loom—for up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. A small, sickly boy, Masih’s growth was further stunted by malnutrition, carpet dust, constant stooping, and beatings he received as punishment for his repeated escape attempts and occasional refusal to work. At the age of ten, however, Masih saw posters distributed by the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), a human rights organization founded by labor activist Ehsan Khan. These posters revealed that bonded and child labor were illegal in Pakistan—a fact generally ignored by the local manufacturers and civil officials. Masih secretly contacted BLLF members, who helped him escape from the carpet factory. Soon afterwards, Masih joined the BLLF and worked with them to liberate 3,000 bonded children from textile, brick, and steel factories in Pakistan.
From the clothing we wear to the toys our children play with, store shelves are stocked with goods made in sweatshops where workers labor in unsafe conditions and are paid wages so low they must struggle to feed and shelter their families. The aisles we shop are lined with products made in factories that exploit child labor and fire and harass workers when they try to improve their lives by forming unions.
The global economy has opened the American marketplace to goods from countries that routinely allow abuse of working people, but some sweatshops thrive even in this country.
- As of 2004, there were 218 million child laborers around the world.
- It is estimate to take $760 billion and over 20 years to eliminate child labor completely. The estimated benefit in terms of better education and health is over $4 trillion, a six to one difference.
- “Child labor today is at a point where violations are greater than at any point during the 1930s,” said Jeffrey Newman of the National Child Labor Committee, an advocacy group founded in 1904.
- Citations
- Laura Gove-www.ihscslnews.org -Child Labor stiil exists in America today
- Marcie Goyer- www.projectcensored.org -Child Labor in the U.S. is worse today than in the 1930's.
- Anonymous-www.aflcio.org -Stop sweatshops