By Lauren Felton
WMS
USA
Child labor in the United States is not something that is often discussed. It is a problem, but I don't think many people are aware of it.
I found a report by David Foster and Farrell Kramer at: http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/munmei/labor.html entitled, Secret Child Labor in America. It is a recent news report that talks about the problem. The first three sections of the report will surprise many people: Fifty-nine years after Congress outlawed child labor in its most onerous forms, underage children still toil in fields and factories scattered across America. The poorest and most vulnerable among them start working before other children start kindergarten. Many earn wages below the legal minimum, often in exhausting, or even hazardous, jobs. These children live in a world apart from most Americans, hidden from consumers and even the companies that buy the products of their labor. Yet those products can sometimes be as close as the local mall or the corner grocery.
The report says that the Associated Press found 165 children working illegally in 16 states. A study by economist Douglas Kruse estimates that 290,200 children were employed unlawfully last year. 59,600 of those children were under age 14, and 13,000 worked in factories with labor violations. Close to 4% of all 12-17 year-olds working in any given week are employed illegally. Employers saved $155 million in wages last year by hiring underage children.
It is not always possible to find out about child labor violations in the United States because some children work as migrant workers, are illegal immigrants, or are very young.
Some examples of the type of work that underage children do in the United States are: making garments in the sweatshops of New York City, pulling chilies from plants in the chili fields of New Mexico, working in Florida's bean fields, working in a cherry packing plant, stitching dresses, folding and bagging dresses up to 12 hours a day, and picking cucumbers in Michigan, green peppers in Tennessee, apples in upstate New York, working in the vineyards of California, mushroom sheds of Pennsylvania, and packing peaches in Illinois and hoed sorghum in Texas.
In the United States federal child labor laws say that children must wait until they are 16 to work in factories or during school hours, and that children under 14 are barred from most jobs, except farming; children less than twelve who only work on their parents' farm or a small farm are excused from national minimum-wage laws. Children under 18 (16 on farms) are banned from a list of hazardous jobs.
These laws are not always obeyed. I found another website about child labor in the United States: http://www.stopchildlabor.org/USchildlabor/childlaborUS.htm.
It says that the Child Labor Coalition estimates that 50,000 children work as youth peddlers on any given day of the year. They sell magazine subscriptions, candy, and other user things door-to-door in suburban neighborhoods and on city street corners. The CLC guesses that this business makes about $1 billion yearly in untaxed sales profits.
In addition, the website shows that the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) estimates that 200,000 adolescents are injured in the workplace every year and 70 are killed on the job. According to NIOSH, more than 64,000 working teenagers sustained injuries serious enough to seek treatment in hospital emergency rooms in 1992. Another NIOSH study showed that 670 16- and 17-year-olds died from workplace injuries from 1980-89.
I also found that: Agriculture was classified as the most dangerous occupation in the country in 1989 [National Safety Council, Accident Facts, 1989] and continues to compete with mining and construction for the dubious honor of being one of the top three most dangerous industries.
Children are a significant part of the agricultural workforce. Although accurate counts of the farm worker population continues to evade even the best statisticians, United Farm workers Union estimates that as many as 800,000 children work in agriculture. The National Association of Community Health Centers reported in 1991 that 38% of farm workers consist of women and children under the age of 14.
Migration from one agricultural work area to another also compounds the problems for the migrant farm worker family. Constant moving, short periods of employment, longer periods of unemployment, income fluctuations dependent upon the crop and crop conditions, and annual disasters all play a part in the disruption of education and economic stability of the migrant and seasonal farm worker family.
Almost half of all documented farm workers in this country are U.S. citizens, and the overwhelming majority of foreign-born farm workers are legal U.S. residents. [National Agricultural Workers' Survey, U.S. Department of Labor] http://www.stopchildlabor.org/Consumercampaigns/fields.htm
Finally, children who work in agriculture have a much lower life expectancy and are exposed to many hazardous chemicals and pesticides.
Yours,
Lauren Felton
We think our country is great,
That only child labor occurs in Asian and African areas.
We are wrong,
It occurs in our own country.
People have secret employees that are underage,
Somewhere around the ages of 4 and 14.
Do you think our country is so great anymore?
That all these People are just plain mean?
We try and build schools,
educate them, improve their lives.
We give them money,
for all of their food.
We give them a home,
can't live without shelter.
The one thing we can't give,
the love they have lost.
Jamie