Disney: The Land of Child Labor
The Conditions in Various Countries
What are sweatshops and child labor?
- Barboza, David. "In Chinese Factories, Lost Fingers and Low Pay." The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Jan. 2008. Web. 02 Apr. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/business/worldbusiness/05sweatshop.html?_r=0>.
- "Disney's Sad Sweatshop History." Buzzflash. N.p., 11 Sept. 2006. Web. 10 Apr. 2015. <http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/disneys-sad-sweatshop-history/429-disneys-sad-sweatshop-history>.
How can organizations and consumers help?
- Documented by international humanitarian groups, workers in Haiti are paid 30 cents an hour, work under the legal age in factories with filthy rats, and experience sexual harassment.
- In Bangladesh, workers are paid 5 cents an hour to assemble a shirt that retails for $17.99, work 14-hour days, seven days a week, and are beaten if quotas are not met.
- In China, children are forced to work 10-13 hours a day and the conditions there are even worse. They also only get paid 33-41 cents an hour, which is even below the minimum wage of 42 cents an hour in China.
- Sweatshops are factories or workshops that employ manual labor on workers at very low pay for long hours.
- Child labor is the use of children in industry that harms children or keeps them from attending school.
TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A CHANGE TO IMPROVE THE CONDITIONS OF CHILD LABOR!!
- Organizations can help by bringing awareness to the public and government officials.
- Consumers can help by not purchasing child made products, which can decrease the demand for them.
- Instead consumers should buy fair trade products that have met the standards/requirements of fairly compensating wages and equitable working conditions.
Children sweatshop in China
- What is ironic about Disney is that while they sells products that are catered towards making children happy, the company actually uses sweatshops and child labor to produce their products in developing countries.
How can the government and corporations help?
How is it affecting the children?
- The government can help by enforcing regulations stated on paper and apply them to the factories themselves. Government officials can also assign people to check on the working conditions of the workers.
- Corporations can help by finding safer ways to manufacture their products by making sweatshops cleaner and less dangerous to their workers. This can be accomplished through the improvement of machines or ventilation systems in congested sweatshops.
- While Western consumers worry about exposing their children to Chinese-made toys coated in lead or any other harmful chemicals, children working in factories come face to face with these harmful chemicals on a daily basis.
- The numerous negative effects on their health hinder both their physical and intellectual development.
- They can’t go to school and consequently don't have the same opportunities as other children. This could lead them to become illiterate adults who will not have the means to provide for their children, leading to a snowball effect in developing countries.
- All the working children really want is to make enough money for their family to survive another day with a small meal.