The Regulation of Child
Labour
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•
•
•
As we saw with our first lesson, there was no
regulation of labour standards for workers in
the early era of capitalism
Without regulation, children could (and did)
work long hours, in horrendous conditions, for
whatever meagre wage their employer provided
them
Fueled by corporate greed and working-class
need
This is laissez-faire capitalism at its worst
•
Child labour eventually becomes a social
problem
The Regulation of (Child)
Labour
•
•
•
The regulation of child labour was largely reactive in nature
Proactive regulation and enforcement was
lacking
Any regulation in place tended to be in response
to crisis or social ill that needed to be addressed
British Chimney Sweeps
•
•
•
One of the first instances of regulation was in
response to one of the worst forms of child
labour
British chimney sweeps had apprenticeships
considered especially harmful and exploitative.
Boys as young as four would work for a master
sweep who would send them up the narrow
chimneys of British homes to scrape the soot off
the sides.
The first labor law passed in Britain to protect
children from poor working conditions, the Act
of 1788, attempted to improve the plight of these
“climbing boys.”
•
•
Chimney Sweepers Act, 1788- stated that no boy
should be bound apprentice before he was eight
years old. His parents' consent was required to
apprentice and the master sweep needed to
provide suitable clothing and living conditions,
as well as an opportunity to attend church on
Sundays.
A clause that would have required Master
Sweeps to be licensed was voted down in the
House of Lords
Early British Regulation
•
Parliament passed several child labor laws after
hearing the evidence collected after a series of
parliamentary committee hearings on textile
industry:
•
•
•
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Cotton Factories Regulation Act of 1819 (which
set the minimum working age at 9 and maximum
working hours at 12)
the Regulation of Child Labor Law of 1833
(which established paid inspectors to enforce the
laws)
the Ten Hours Bill of 1847 (which limited
working hours to 10 for children and women).
Mining Act of 1842- prohibited girls and women
from working in mines, fewer children worked
in mines.
Early Canadian Regulation
•
•
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Much like in Britain, early regulation focused on
women and children, lacked enforcement, and
was reactive to existing social problem
As noted in our first lesson, legislation
restricting child employment in mines was
enacted in Nova Scotia in 1873, and British
Columbia in 1877.
By 1929 children under 14 had been legally
excluded from factory and mine employment in
most provinces.
In Ontario
•
•
In Ontario, the Factory Act of 1884 declared that
no child under 12 years of age could be
employed in a factory. It also said that no child
had to work more than 10 hours a day.
In 1908, the Child Labour Act banned children
under 12 from working in stores and children
under 14 from working in factories. Slowly but
surely, children disappeared from the factory
floor.
In Canada
•
•
•
Although the law in Ontario, and other
provinces, did not allow girls under 12 and boys
under 14 to work in industry, many did, and
were seen as cheap and controllable labour.
Worked and for a fraction of the ‘standard’
wage.
Union pressure helped bring about the Royal
Commission on the Relations of Labour and
Capital (1889).
No legislative change comes out of it, but
interviews with child workers appalled
Commission members that they at lest directed
the federal government to ensure stronger
enforcement of the existing laws regarding child
labour
Enforcement
•
•
Anything can be made illegal or regulated, but
without effective enforcement, it is up to the
goodwill of an employer to cease or modify their
practices
While laws were put on the books to limit
and/or regulate child labour, there were a lack of
•
inspectors to enforce these laws, a lack of
contacts to reach out to complain, and a lack of
job security for those brave enough to speak out
Laws with enforcement mechanisms become
meaningless
Enforcement in the Mines
•
•
In Nova Scotia, the only significant provincial
restriction on boy labour in the mines was a
minimum age of 10 established in 1873 and
raised to 12 in 1891.
Although in British Columbia regulations were
nominally stricter (a minimum age of 12 was set
•
in 1877; until the age of 14 boys were limited to
thirty hours’ work per week)
In the absence of more than a handful of mine
inspectors in both provinces, these laws were
often not observed.
Contemporary Regulation
(Ontario)
• Young
workers have the same rights as other
employees in Ontario workplaces under the ESA
(although there are different minimum wage rules
that apply to "students”)
Minimum Wage
Effective Oct 202
Rate
General Minimum
$14.25 per hour
Wage
Student Minimum $13.40 per hour **under 18 working
Wage
less than 28 hrs/ week**
•
•
However, certain types of employment are
exempt from (i.e., not covered by) some parts of
the ESA
Think about the following- is this age
discrimination? Does it discriminate against a
protected ground/group (age)?
Contemporary Regulation
(Ontario)
• There
are exemptions to minimum wage
entitlements in the ESA that apply to students of any
age. For example:
•
•
students in training for certain occupations such as
architecture, law, professional engineering, medicine,
optometry
secondary school students performing work under a
work experience program authorized by the school
board that operates that student's school
•
•
•
persons performing work under a program approved
by a college of applied arts and technology or
university, and
persons performing work under a program that is
approved by a private career college registered under
the Private Career Colleges Act, 2005; and,
persons employed as a student to instruct or
supervise children and a person employed as a
student at a camp for children.
are not entitled to a minimum wage under the
ESA.
Contemporary Regulation
(Ontario)
•
•
The minimum age for working in
Ontario is 14 years for most types of
work.
14-, 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds are not to
be employed during school hours unless
they have been excused from school
attendance under provisions of
Ontario's Education Act.
•
•
•
Some regulations specify higher minimum ages for
certain types of work, as follows:
• Underground Mines: 18 years
• Construction: 16 years
• Window Cleaning: 18 years
• Logging Operations: 16 years
• Factories or Repair Shops: 15 years
• Stores, Offices or Arenas: 14 years.
**In a restaurant, the food preparation area would
be considered a factory, with a minimum age of 15
years, whereas the cash register would be a shop minimum age: 14 years.**
The above restrictions do not apply to a worker
who works as a performer in the entertainment
and advertising industry
Contemporary Regulation
(BC/Ontario)
•
Young Workers are particularly vulnerable to
injury at the workplace, especially young men.
The state is active at gearing health and safety
rights/responsibilities to these workers
•
•
According to a Canadian health survey, young
workers are twice as likely to sustain a work
injury as adults
Only 23 per cent of workers aged 15 to 24 who
were in their first year on the job reported that
they had received safety, orientation or
•
•
equipment training. Forty-six percent said they
had received no training at all.
Frequent job change means young people are
“new on the job” for a longer period of time. At
any given time, 5.3 per cent of workers aged 1524 said they were in their first month on the job
(on average), compared to 1.1 per cent of those
over age 25.
Health and Safety Rights for (Young) Workers
International Regulation
•
As a global phenomenon, child labour is also
regulated at the international level by the
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•
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International Labour Organization (ILO), a body
of the UN
The ILO introduces and adopts various
‘conventions’ and it is then up to member states
to ratify them in the domestic legislature
National law still applies, but this provides an
additional avenue of regulation, as well as
symbolic gesturing
The ILO can also help to raise awareness of child
labour and mount public pressure against it
International Regulation
• Minimum
Age (Agriculture) Convention, 1921 (No.
10)
• Children
under the age of fourteen years may not be
employed or work in any public or private agricultural
undertaking, or in any branch thereof, save outside the
hours fixed for school attendance. If they are employed
outside the hours of school attendance, the employment
shall not be such as to prejudice their attendance at school.
• Canada
has not ratified this convention
Child Labour and Education
•
•
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The ILO, and many other institutions, actively
promote education as an important alternative
to child labour
“Education is a crucial component of any
effective effort to eliminate child labour. There
are many interlinked explanations for child
labour”
“using education to combat child labour in both
formal and non-formal settings which has
proved significant in the prevention of child
labour and the rehabilitation of former child
workers. Non-formal or transitional education
has played an instrumental role in the
rehabilitation of former child labourers.
Vocational education and training have
provided the skills needed for gainful
employment, which in turn contributes to local
and national development. ”
Child Labour and Education
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•
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In some cases, a lack of education filters children
into the workplace at a young age
In other instances, the high cost of education
forces children into the workplace
In other instances, the high of education requires
children to work to afford tuition, books, etc.
Accessible, affordable education has been shown
to lower the rate of child labour
International Regulation
• League
of Nations 1926 Slavery Convention and
the ILO Forced Labour Convention of 1930.
• Article
1 expanded the definition of slavery from one of
“chattel slavery” to a definition including a ban of debt
bondage, serfdom, servile marriage and child servitude.
•
•
Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957
(No. 105)
Focus on abolishing compulsory child labour as a
form of slavery, but says
nothing of children who choose to work
•
Ratified by Canada
International Regulation
• Minimum
• This
Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138) -
fundamental convention sets the general minimum
age for admission to employment or work at 15 years (13
for light work) and the minimum age for hazardous work
at 18 (16 under certain strict conditions). It provides for
the possibility of initially setting the general minimum age
at 14 (12 for light work) where the economy and
educational facilities are insufficiently developed.
• Ratified
by Canada, in 2016(!!!!), with a specified
minimum age of 16
International Regulation
• Worst
Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999
(No. 182) • This
fundamental convention defines as a "child" a
person under 18 years of age. It requires ratifying
states to eliminate the worst forms of child labour,
including:
• all
forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery,
including forced or compulsory recruitment of children
for use in armed conflict;
• childprostitutionandpornography;
• usingchildrenforillicitactivities(drugs);
• and
work which is likely to harm the health, safety or
morals of children.
• The
convention requires ratifying states to provide
direct assistance for the removal of children from the
worst forms of child labour and for their
rehabilitation and social integration. It also requires
states to ensure access to free basic education and,
wherever possible and appropriate, vocational
training for those removed from worst forms of
child labour
• Ratified
• ILO
by Canada in 2000
enforcement in action- Thailand
An Inevitable Reality?
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•
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Regulation as necessary to combat on centuries
old issue. Regulation must also be flexible and
adaptable
As an international organization, the ILO must
be sensitive to cultural and especially economic
realities outside of the developed world
From the ILO: “Children's participation in the
labour force is endlessly varied and infinitely
volatile, responding to changing market and
social conditions.”
•
“Child labour is a stubborn problem that, even if
overcome in certain places or sectors, will seek
out opportunities to reappear in new and often
unanticipated ways. The response to the
problem must be as versatile and adaptable as
child labour itself. There is no simple, quick fix
for child labour, nor a universal blueprint for
action.”
Enforcement
•
Virtually every country has domestic legislation
banning child labour
•
Most of the countries in which child labour is
rampant have committed
to the ILO’s conventions to end it’s worst forms?
•
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Despite this, over 215 million children are still
victims of child labour
WHY?
Enforcement
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Laws on the books are meaningless without
proper enforcement
•
This requires resources for enforcement, which
are often not robust enough and remain under
financed
A different approach
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Many western counties, Canada included,
recognize the challenges of enforcement
In some cases, looking toward active
engagement with best practice and incentivizing
it’s end
•
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/enf
orcement-of-child- labour-laws-needs-work-labourminister-says/article30243945/
Unintended consequences
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There is a general consensus that child labour is
problematic, but a variety of approaches to next
stop
One remains a ban- legislation to stop and
aggressive enforcement mechanisms
Others, however, suggest that halting the
practice may do more harm than good, and that
creating an age barrier to hiring children is “too
•
simplistic to solve a complex social and
economic problem.”
At the very least, addressing the root cause –
general poverty- is the key
Unintended consequences
• "We
don't think children should be exploited in any
way”....but....”If children work they must have
decent working conditions. But our long experience
in the last 20 to 30 years shows that just making
child labour illegal may not mean that you have
improved their lives.“
• Olivia
Lecoufle, a child protection adviser for Save the
Children Canada
• Unless
the root causes of child labour are
eliminated, this approach suggests that the most
realistic solution is to protect children from harm
and make working conditions as tolerable as
possible.
Unintended consequences
•
In Bangladesh, when about 50,000 children were
barred from garment factory work in 1992, very
few attended schools but instead were forced
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into worse forms of labour, their incomes were
cut, their diets "deteriorated seriously" and they
used health care services much less
"Removing children from visible work can push
them into less protected areas, like the sex
trade”
• Olivia
Lecoufle, a child protection adviser for Save the
Children Canada
• Child
labour- A continued concern
Enforcement
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•
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The ILO itself has limited enforcement powersstate sovereignty is key in international relations
ILO works alongside local enforcement to
provide resources, training, best practice
The goal is often to “build the capacities of
labour inspectorates and other enforcement
agencies to take action against child labour”
Labour enforcement officers must work with
both employers and children/families/advocates
Enforcement
• To
tackle hazardous child labour inspectors can
give information on hazardous child labour to
employers and workers including advice on how to
eliminate it. They can also use their legal
enforcement powers in the workplace to ensure that:
•
•
(i) children are withdrawn from workplaces where
hazardous work is taking place, and referred to
appropriate authorities who can then get them into
school or skills training
(ii) the health and safety of children who have
reached the minimum legal age to work (14-17 years
of age depending on the country) is fully protected in
the workplace. Protection can be ensured through a
combination of general improvements in workplace
health and safety conditions and avoidance of
children carrying out hazardous tasks.
Child Labour Monitoring
(CLM)
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•
Child labour monitoring (CLM) is an evolving
area of child labour work closely linked to the
enforcement of national child labour legislation.
The task of CLM is to mobilize and train
community members to monitor child labour
•
and link the monitoring activity to local
government and official enforcement systems,
especially labour inspection, so that the
information on child labour can be used
effectively.
The monitors must be given a clear mandate and
the authority necessary to fulfil their duties
although most of their role involves changing
attitudes rather than enforcing laws.
Child Labour Monitoring
(CLM)
• Its
principal activities include regularly
repeated direct observations to:
• identify
child labourers and to determine risks
to which they are exposed, referral of these
children to services,
• verificationthattheyhavebeenremoved
• and
tracking them afterwards to ensure that
they have satisfactory results
Child Labour Monitoring
(CLM)
•
•
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Community-based child labour monitoring
committees are typically composed of
community leaders, teachers, health promoters,
representatives from the families concerned and
sometimes with children or adolescents
withdrawn from work.
They carry out monitoring visits to workplaces.
These visits are conducted on a regular basis
and often in conjunction with official visits by
labour inspectors.
Child Labour Monitoring
(CLM)
•
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CLM first started in early 1990s in the
manufacturing sector through IPEC projects in
Bangladesh and Pakistan from which it
expanded into other economic sectors, such as
fishing (in Indonesia and Philippines) and
agriculture (in Central America and Western
Africa).
These initial experiences highlighted the
importance of combining social protection with
the monitoring activity at an early stage of the
initiative, in order to provide viable alternatives
for children withdrawn from work. With the
Central America coffee and agriculture projects,
the concept of "community-based monitoring"
became more fully developed.
Child Labour Monitoring
(CLM)
•
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Using local resource persons and awarenessraising approaches to mobilize communities,
these projects began to demonstrate the capacity
of non-traditional actors to monitor child labour.
The enforcement focus has shifted with the rise
of CLM from monitoring the industry to
monitoring the child as s/he is removed from
work and provided with social protection
services.
•
The attention has also moved from the
"withdrawal" of children from work to a
coordinated child protection effort involving the
identification, referral, verification and tracking
that targeted children are provided with
satisfactory alternatives.
Tackling child labour through
education in African, Caribbean
and the Pacific (ACP) States
(TACKLE)
• Aims
to reduce child labour and to prevent further
entry of children into employment by offering
alternative education and training opportunities and
contributing towards poverty reduction
• Education,
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•
not work, as key to poverty reduction
In some countries the project supports work
aimed at developing non formal education
programmes for out of school children,
including in areas where there may be no formal
schools.
Targeted countries include: Angola , Fiji ,
Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali,
Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Sudan, South
Sudan, and Zambia
Combating child labour through
education in Bolivia, Indonesia,
Mali and Uganda
•
The ILO estimates that there are 152 million
child labourers between the ages of 5 and 14.
Most of these children belong to the most
marginalised groups in society and come from
families living in poverty. At the same time
some 67 million children are not enrolled in
primary school and a similar number are not
enrolled in junior secondary school level
•
GoalAction which will improve the
opportunities for those in or vulnerable to child
labour to benefit from education. Pursued
through:
•
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integrating attention to child labour in education
sector planning and programme discussions;
initiatives to tackle child labour through
education and to integrate knowledge of
successful interventions in policy discussions;
building capacity of stakeholders to actively
engage in advocacy on the child labour and
education linkage.
Lecture 1
Children at Work
in Early Capitalism
What is Work?
• We work. It is a fact of life.
•
It impacts who were are, and the lives we
(can) lead
•
•
We are socialized to perform work from a
very young age, and continue to our
dying days
In this course, focus is on those who
work at a young age (not just those who
are socialized to)
What is Work?
•
•
In the eye of the beholder
Economists see work merely as the
production of goods or services for the
market
•
•
Toonarrow?
It is perhaps more appropriate to define
work as: “human effort that adds use
value to goods and services”
What is Work?
• Workvs.Employment
– Formal distinction between the two
• Outputsvs.Remuneration/Forsomeoneelse
• Our focus is on both as it pertains to
children at work
Children at Work
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•
•
•
Our focus here is generally those 16 and
under, with some variations (especially
in the developing world)
Universallyacceptedcut-off
Age when schooling tends to be
mandatory
Can legally be employed before then in
limited cases, but often an age (at least in
developed world) where we might expect
children to get a job
Children at Work
• child labour- generally refers to children who
work to produce a good or a service which can
be sold for money in the marketplace, regardless
of whether or not they are paid for their work.
– Source: Economic Hist. Assoc.
•
International Labour Organization (a branch
of the UN, aka the ILO)- work that “deprives
children of their childhood, their potential
and
their dignity, and that is harmful to physical
and mental development”
•
•
A “child” is usually defined as a person who
is dependent upon other individuals
(parents, relatives, or government officials)
for his or her livelihood
The exact ages of “childhood” differ by
country and time period
•
•
The worst forms of child labour involves
children being enslaved, separated from
their families, exposed to serious hazards
and illnesses and/or left to fend for
themselves on the streets of large cities –
often at a very early age.
Whether or not particular forms of
“work” can be called “child labour”
depends on the child’s age, the type and
hours of work performed, the conditions
under which it is performed and the
objectives pursued by individual
countries. The answer varies from
country to country, as well as among
sectors within countries.
– Source: ILO
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
Childrenhavealwaysworked.Thisisespeci
allytrueinpre- capitalist agriculture
•
•
•
– First documented in the Medieval era when
fathers had their children spin thread for
them to weave on the loom.
– Children performed a variety of tasks that
were supportive of their parents work and
critical to the family economy.
This was true of both young boys and
young girls
•
The labour output has always been there.
Exchanging it for
wage is a newer phenomenon.
•
Relatedly, the final good or service being
sold on the marketplace is new
Historical DevelopmentPre Capitalist Era
•
Outside of work on the (family) farm,
some children employed in homes
•
•
•
Master-apprentice
relationshipapprentices, chimney
sweeps, domestic servants, or assistants
in the family business.
The young apprentice lived and worked
with their master and received training
in the trade instead of wages
Once they became fairly skilled in the
trade they became journeymen, often
around 21
Historical DevelopmentPre Capitalist Era
•
•
•
Both parents and children often
considered this a fair arrangement, so
long as the master was not abusive
In some instances, the child would
apprentice at home with a parent
involved in the same trade. An ideal
situation
This form of master-apprentice based
child labor was not viewed by society at
the time as being cruel or abusive. In fact,
it was accepted as necessary for the
survival of the family and development of
the child
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
Two major features of system:
•
– Production of goods/delivery of services
tends to be done in the name of
profit (Production for Profit)
•
•
– Production of goods/delivery of services
done by people who are hired by company
(Wage Labour)
An important link, profit realized through
labour
•
Workers produce not only goods, but also
profit. Goods are not produced for
themselves
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
•
With industrialization comes child labour
This first became a social problem in
Britain
•
•
Children not working on the family farm,
but (in the developing world) working at
factories and in the mines....or worse.
No real regulation of this labour
(*tomorrow’s topic*)
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
One of the first examples were textile
mills- 1770s
•
•
•
Charles Dickens called these places of
work the “dark satanic mills” and British
historian E. P. Thompson described them
as “places of sexual license, foul language,
cruelty, violent accidents, and alien
manners” (1966, 307)
For all workers, early industrial mills
were characterized by gruelling long
days, low wages, unsafe working
conditions, and strict
discipline/punishment at the hands of
the employer
For child labourers, the reality was even
worse
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
•
A master-apprentice relationship gone
wrong
These child apprentices were paupers
taken from orphanages and workhouses
and were housed, clothed and fed but
received no wages for their long day of
work in the mill.
•
BritishhistorianFrancisCollier’sconservat
iveestimateisthatby 1784, roughly onethird of the total workers in country mills
were apprentices. In some individual
mills, their numbers reached 80 to 90%
of the workforce
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
•
•
After the development of the steam
engine, mills no longer had to locate near
water and rely on apprenticed orphans
As a result, hundreds of factory towns
and villages developed in places such as
Lancashire, Manchester, Yorkshire and
Cheshire
In these instances, factory owners began
to hire children from poor and working-
class families to work in these factories
preparing and spinning cotton, flax, wool
and silk.
A growing debate
•
•
Some, including Marx and Engels, argued
that children worked under deplorable
conditions and were being exploited by
the industrialist capitalists. Critique of
working conditions AND economic
system
Picture of the “dark satanic mill” where
children as young as five and six years
old worked for as many as sixteen hours
a day, six days a week without break for
meals. Worked in hot, stuffy, poorly lit,
overcrowded factories to earn as little as
four shillings per week
A growing debate
•
•
Reformers called for child labor laws and
after considerable debate, Parliament
took action and set up a Royal
Commission of Inquiry into children’s
employment
Some legislation and regulation came out
of this, to be examined tomorrow
A growing debate
•
•
There were many supporters of child labour,
however
Some argued that the employment of
children in these factories was beneficial to
•
•
•
the child, family and country and that the
conditions were no worse than they had
been on farms, in cottages or up chimneys.
Others {Ure (1835) and Clapham (1926)}
argued that the work was easy for children
and helped them make a necessary
contribution to their family’s income.
Industrialists claimed that employing
children was necessary for production to run
smoothly and for their products to remain
competitive.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism,
recommended child labor as a means of
preventing youthful idleness and vice.
• How different is this from today? Think
about that for a few moments
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
•
The employment of children in textile
factories continued to be high until the
mid 1800s.
most common occupations of boys were
Agricultural Labourer, Domestic Servant
and Cotton Manufacture
•
•
for girls the three most common
occupations were Domestic Servants,
Cotton Manufacture and, Dress-makers
Continued development of industrial
revolution and capitalism expanded
scope of child labour
Historical Development
and Rise of Capitalism
•
Children and youth also comprised a
relatively large proportion of the work
•
•
forces in coal and metal mines in Britain,
as well as in the United States in places
such as West Virginia and Kentucky
In Canada, many young boys employed in
coal mining on Cape Breton Island.
In the UK, in 1842, children and youth in
coal and metal mines ranged from 19 to
40%.
•
•
– Coal mining- A larger proportion of the
work forces of coal mines used child labor
underground
– Metal mining- more children were found
on the surface of metal mines “dressing the
ores” (a process of separating the ore from
the dirt and rock).
The Rise of Capitalism
in Canada
• The Industrial Revolution came to Canada
later than it did to the UK, and attitudes
about child labour – at least in heavy
industry – had undergone some change
• For example, legislation restricting child
employment in mines was enacted in Nova
Scotia as early as 1873, and in British
Columbia by 1877. By 1929 children under
14 had been legally excluded from factory
and mine employment in most provinces.
•
•
Abuses still existed, despite the
legislation
Child labour drops in Canada as public
education becomes accessible and
children begin to stay in school longer
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
•
•
•
•
•
Industrial revolution dependent upon
energy/power coal
PlentifulonCapeBreton,manychildrenwor
kedinmines
Limitedoptionsforotherwork,underdevel
opededucation
Child workers ran the horses until they
were old enough to swing a pick axe and
handle blasting powder
Some started as young as 9, often in their
‘tweens’
"We had been ... working 12 hours a day
loading in a low seam on our hands,
being cursed at from morning to night by
a greedy boss and seeing daylight only on
Sundays ... We faced the prospects of a
dismal and unhappy existence."
West Virginia, circa
roughly 1900
British Columbia, circa
1911
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
According to mining historian Lynne Bowen,
“if a boy who had lived in a coal town got
tired of school and was anxious to make a
little money, the obvious thing for him to do
was to go to work in the mines. If he was
•
willing to lie a little and add a couple of years
to his age, he could start to work at 13 or 14.”
Prof. Robert McIntosh- “From his parents’
perspective, the boy’s labour provided extra
revenue for the family purse. The money the
boy earned was generally handed over to his
parents as long as he lived at home—he
received in return a small allowance.
Although this may appear exploitative, the
advantages of alternatives such as schooling
were not apparent. Indeed, the view
persisted that formal education in some way
“spoiled” a boy destined by birth to labour in
a manual occupation.”
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
•
•
In Nova Scotia, for instance, of a total
mine workforce of five thousand in 1890,
over eleven hundred were under 18
years of age. On the mine’s surface boys
were employed to clean miners’ lamps,
distribute picks, or run errands.
They filled powder cans and tended mine
animals—generally horses in Nova Scotia
and mules in British Columbia.
They also sorted and cleaned the freshly
mined coal.
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
•
The labour of boys was also useful
underground. Although they were not
actual miners—they did not cut coal—
boys were vital to both the
transportation of the coal to the mine’s
surface and to the ventilation of the mine.
The oldest boys were employed to load
the newly cut coal in to the tubs used to
transport it out of the mine; others
worked as brakemen and landingtenders, removing the filled tubs as they
came down from the miners’ workplaces
and sending empty tubs back up.
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
Horses or mules, usually “driven” by boys
aged between 13 and 16, were used to
pull the tubs of coal to the slope.
•
•
There, cage-runners were employed in
attaching the tubs to the mechanical hoist
or “rake” used in hauling them to the
surface.
The youngest mine employees, some as
young as 8, were responsible for the vital
yet excruciatingly tedious job of opening
and closing ventilation doors called
“traps”.
– “Trappers” sat all day in darkness, opening their
trap to allow the drivers and their cargo to pass them,
closing it to channel air up into the workplaces.
Child Labour in
Canada’s Mines
•
•
•
•
•
•
Working-class need created by corporate
greed. Cyclical.
For a mine operator, then, boys could be
employed to perform a variety of essential
tasks within the mine at a significantly lower
rate of pay than adult mine workers.
1880, Nova Scotia- boys averaged 65 cents
per day worked; adult labourers earned 95
cents; adult miners, $1.45.
1890, Nanaimo, B.C.- a boy received $1 per
day; adult mine workers received anywhere
between $2 and $4 for a day’s work.
Chinese workers in British Columbia were
the exception. They were often paid even less
than the boys, while performing similar
work.
Source: McIntosh, Canada’s Boy Miners, December 1987-January 1988 issue of The
Beaver.
14 year old miner, Cape
Breton
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
•
•
•
In the 18th century, children were often seen
as economic assets to families. In most cases,
this meant assisting parents, but it could also
entail paid employment outside the home.
Child labour made an important contribution
to Aboriginal culture and to the societies of
New France and early English Canada.
However, by the late 1800s and into the
1900s, children were increasingly seen as
economic liabilities to their families. Paid
•
employment needed to be outside of the
home to bring money in.
Increasingly, however, children’s time was
taken up securing a formal education. By
1911 about 40 per cent of Canadian children
aged five to nine, and 50 per cent of 10-to19year-olds were in school.
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
• Urbanization- The proportion of urban
residents grew from about 17 per cent at
Confederation in 1867 to over one-third by
1901, and to almost one-half by 1921
– Paid employment in city centres. No longer did the
farm/land provide
•
•
Class structure- working children from
working-class families
Dead ends- Aside from those with
apprenticeships, the employment
opportunities did not lead to a career
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
•
•
•
In major urban centres, children could
find employment in Montré al textile
mills, lighter industry in many cities,
mines in Cape Breton and British
Columbia, and small manufacturing
enterprises in the Maritimes
Other urban positions includes
messenger boy and newspaper vendor
Still, many jobs for children were
considered "dead end" — poorly paid,
menial positions without any
opportunity for advancement
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
•
•
•
•
20th century- trended to be less visible
forms.
Between Confederation and 1925, close
to 80,000 British children, most under
14, were brought to Canada by
humanitarian organizations wishing to
give them a “new start” away from their
working-class backgrounds.
Most of these child immigrants (parents
remained in UK) were ‘apprenticed’ to
rural farming families and rather than
adopted children as intended, became
child labourers.
Prohibition of child immigration in 1925.
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
•
•
Depression- by this point, not only was
child labour outlawed, many adults were
willing to take on the work formerly
performed by child labour
War and post-war- Many women took on
many of the industrial positions formerly
held by child labour
Historical Child Labour
in Canada
•
•
Increasingly, child labour (or at least its
worst forms) is seen as a social problem
The state begins to regulate it- our topic
for tomorrow
•
•
•
•
As we noted in our earlier lessons, the
state and global actors (notably the ILO)
have taken many steps to
reduce/eliminate child labour
While much has been achieved by the ILO
and it allies, approximates suggest that
215 million children are still in child
labour
Child labour tends to be more persistent
in the developing world
Despite this high number, the ILO
believes that a world without child labour
can be achieved with the right priorities
and mix of policies and with a unity of
effort from a variety of actors
SOME STATISTICS
•
•
Worldwide 218 million children between 5
and 17 years are in employment.
Among them, 152 million are victims of child
labour.
• Almost half of them, 73 million, work in hazardous child
labour.
•
•
In absolute terms, almost half of child labour
(72.1 million) is to be found in Africa; 62.1
million in the Asia and the Pacific; 10.7
million in the Americas; 1.2 million in the
Arab States and 5.5 million in Europe and
Central Asia.
In terms of prevalence, 1 in 5 children in
Africa (19.6%) are in child labour, whilst
prevalence in other regions is between 3%
and 7%:
• 2.9% in the Arab States (1 in 35 children); 4.1% in
Europe and Central Asia (1 in 25); 5.3%in the Americas
(1 in 19) and 7.4% in Asia and the Pacific region (1 in 14)
SOME STATISTICS
• Almost half of all 152 million children
victims of child labour are aged 5-11 years.
• 42 million (28%) are 12-14 years old; and 37 million
(24%) are 15-17 years old.
• Hazardous child labour is most prevalent
among the 15-17 years old. Nevertheless up
to a fourth of all hazardous child labour (19
million) is done by children less than 12
years old.
• Among 152 million children in child labour,
88 million are boys and 64 million are girls.
SOME STATISTICS
•
•
58% of all children in child labour and 62% of
all children in hazardous work are boys. Boys
appear to face a greater risk of child labour
than girls, but this may also be a reflection of
an under- reporting of girls’ work,
particularly in domestic child labour.
Child labour is concentrated primarily in
agriculture (71%), which includes fishing,
forestry, livestock herding and aquaculture,
and comprises both subsistence and
commercial
farming; 17% in Services; and 12% in the
Industrial sector, including mining.
•
Source: ILO, Global Estimates of Child Labour: Results and trends, 20122016 , Geneva, September 2017.
ECONOMIC REALITIES
•
•
“Child labour is a stubborn problem that,
even if overcome in certain places or
sectors, will seek out opportunities to
reappear in new and often unanticipated
ways.”
Linked to local and global economic
conditions. A reality of capitalism
• In the years leading to 2008, child labour
was on a slow but steady decline. The
global economic collapse saw a steady
increase in child labour
MADAGASCAR
• In Madagascar, extreme poverty and lack of
opportunities push many adolescent children
into prostitution
• In the city of Tulear (southern Madagascar),
the International Labour Organization (ILO)
along with UNICEF, SOS Children’s Villages,
and employers’ and workers’ organizations
are trying to raise awareness about children
working in sex tourism.
• They offer young people the opportunity to
learn new vocational skills.
MADAGASCAR
• The beneficiaries of the ILO program were
children, most of them girls but also boys
who worked as intermediaries
• They received three months of training in
the hospitality sector – as wait staff,
housekeepers, cooks, bar staff – a sector
where employers find it difficult to recruit
qualified staff
• The theoretical training was followed by a
three-month on-site internship that in
several cases led to job offers.
MADAGASCAR
• The local labour inspector, Patrick
Andriavelo, faces widespread commercial
sexual exploitation of children.
• Worked closely with the ILO project, set up
neighbourhood watches in the villages and
flushed out several foreign perpetrators, who
were subsequently convicted.
• But he is the first to admit how difficult it is
to apply the law, and says “financial
arrangements” are more common than
criminal convictions.
INDIA
•
•
The Indian Constitution ensures the right of
all children 6-14 years to free and
compulsory education; prohibits forced
labour; prohibits the employment of children
below 14 years in hazardous occupations;
and promotes policies protecting children
from exploitation.
The Child Labour (Prohibition and
Regulation) Act, 1986, prohibits employment
of a Child (defined as under 14) in any
employment including as a domestic help. It
•
is a cognizable criminal offence to employ a
Child for any work.
Children between age of 14 and 18 are
defined as "Adolescent" and the law allows
Adolescent to be employed except in the
listed hazardous occupation and processes
which include mining, inflammable substance
and explosives related work and any other
hazardous process
INDIA
•
•
•
•
•
So all is well, right?
No!
Despite a variety of clearly worded and
strong laws, that include criminal
punishment for employing a child, child
labour in rampant in India
Over 10 million child labourers in India,
accounting for 13% of the workforce
That said, a decline in recent years,
especially in rural areas
INDIA
• Causes- varied, but tend to be similar as
they are elsewhere
•
•
•
•
poverty and illiteracy of a child’s parents
the family’s social and economic
circumstances
a lack of awareness about the harmful
effects of child labour
lack of access to basic and meaningful
quality education and skills training
•
•
•
high rates of adult unemployment and
under-employment
the cultural values of the family and
surrounding society
Sometimes bonded to labour due to a
family indebtedness.
INDIA
•
•
•
Children are engaged in manual work, in
domestic work in family homes, in rural
labour in the agricultural sector including
cotton growing
They also work at glass, match box and
brass and lock-making factories, in
embroidery, rag-picking, beedi-rolling,
and in the carpet-making industry
And work in heavier industry, such as in
mining and stone quarrying, and brick
kilns
INDIA
• Child labour in India (and elsewhere for that
matter) is gendered
• Traditionalgender-
specificroles,withgirlsperformingmore
domestic and home-based work, while boys
are more often employed in wage labour.
INDIA
• Informal work, or precarious work, as we
may know it is a reality for child workers
• Due to enforcement and education, more
invisible because the location of the work has
changed from the more formal setting of
factories, to business owners’ homes. There
has also been an increasing involvement of
children in the home- based and informal
sectors.
INDIA
• As UNICEF rightly notes, this linked to
economic system and employer greed:
• “children are employed because they are cheap and
pliable to the demands of the employer and not aware
of their rights”
Award winning Indian film on child labour
INDIA
• Like many places, India has focused o
education as an effective means to reducing
child labour
• The Right to Education Act (2009) has made
it mandatory for the state to ensure that all
children aged six to 14 years are in school
and receive free education. Along with Article
21A of the Constitution of India recognizing
education as a fundamental right,
• UNICEF- “this constitutes a timely opportunity to use
education to combat child labour in India”
INDIA
• As noted, education is a key to preventing
child labour. No different in India
• has been one of the most successful
methods to reduce child workers in India
• A focus on education includes expanding
access to schooling, improving the quality
and relevance of education, addressing
violence in schools, providing relevant
vocational training and using existing
systems to ensure child workers return to
school
• Relatedly, a focus on employing adults for
fair wages is also important
CENTRAL & EASTERN
EUROPE AND THE
CAUCUSUS
•
•
Child labour occurs in Europe as well, and
is less well-known that child labour in
Africa and elsewhere in global South
Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Moldova,
Romania and Ukraine are the countries
most seriously affected by the worst
forms of child labour (WFCL) in Central
and Eastern Europe
• The WFCL include trafficking for labour
and sexual exploitation, street work, illicit
activities (begging, petty theft and drug
peddling) and hazardous work in
agriculture
CENTRAL & EASTERN
EUROPE AND THE
CAUCUSUS
•
•
The ILO’s Global Report on Child Labour
suggests an overall decline in the number
of children working in transition
economies in Eastern Europe and Central
Asia. Economic growth and poverty
reduction linked with political
commitment to combating child labour
have led to significant progress.
The ratification rate of both of the ILO
Child Labour Conventions has been
encouraging. All 10 countries of the
region have ratified both fundamental ILO
Conventions No. 138 and No. 182
CENTRAL & EASTERN
EUROPE AND THE
CAUCUSUS
• Large informal economies foster the
exploitation of children.
• In urban areas, many street children still fall
victim to the worst forms of child labour–
sexual exploitation, drug trade, and other
work that is harmful to their physical and
mental development.
• In rural settings, children still perform
hazardous work in agriculture, especially
during cotton harvest.
CHROME PICKERS AND
CAN COLLECTORS IN
ALBANIA
CENTRAL & EASTERN
EUROPE AND THE
CAUCUSUS
•
•
Problematically, and unlike many of the
countries where child labour is a major
concern, the last 15 years have seen a
steep decline in pre–school attendance,
secondary schooling and Vocational
Education and Training.
Illiteracy is also on the rise in some of
these countries.
• These trends contribute directly to the
child labour problem.
FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
•
Sialkot, Pakistan- soccer balls began when
British soldiers brought the first ball to town
about 100 years ago.
•
•
Since then, the city has grown to become the
soccer ball capital of the world, making
roughly 75% of ‘match-grade’ footballs and
exporting hundreds of millions of dollars per
year
By the late 1990s, child labour in Sialkot
becomes a major international issue
• As a whole, the industry at this time was rampant with
child labour in India and Pakistan
• At that time, about 7,000 children between the
ages of 5 and 14 did not attend school because
they worked full-time manufacturing soccer balls,
earning about 50 cents for each (hand stitched)
ball they produce
FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
• In response to the media frenzy and public
outrage, companies, governments, and other
stakeholders committed to eliminating child
labor in the industry by supporting the 1997
Atlanta Agreement which aimed to end child
labor within the soccer ball industry
• Some improvements followed, at least on
the child labour front
FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
•
In lead up to 1998 World Cup, the
industry began to clean up its act, and big
buyers like Nike, Reebok and Adidas
began to set up model factories that use
•
adult-only workers. These workers were
also paid slightly better almost $2 a
day
By 2000, the local chamber of commerce
said that 66 manufacturers, representing
90% of the district's exports, had
submitted to inspection by the
International Labour Organisation.
• “A Child Employed is a Future
Destroyed” reads a sticker pasted up at
the chamber of commerce building, and
manufacturers believed it.”
FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
• The combined efforts of the ILO, in
combination with the Federation of
International Football Association (FIFA), the
World Federation of Sporting Goods Industry
(WFSGI), Trade Unions, Manufactures,
UNICEF to combat child labour produced
important results for child labourers...
FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
•
•
Some of the footballs used by English
Premier League as late as 2006 matches
may have been stitched by children in
Pakistani homes, the league's official
supplier Nike admitted today.
Nike in turn fired its main manufacturer
of hand-stitched balls, a Pakistani
company called Saga Sports, because of
concerns about "significant labour
compliance violations".
• The American multinational said that a
six-month investigation had concluded
that Saga was outsourcing many of the
balls to casual workers who sew them
together in their homes around the city of
Sialkot, near the Indian border.
•
•
Unfortunately, the past decade’s eff orts
have not resulted in the eradication of
child labor in soccer ball stitching though
it appears to have decreased in Sialkot,
Pakistan.
Despite efforts undertaken by
governments, advocacy groups, and
industry members alike, child labor still
exists in the soccer ball industry where
stitching is now simply outsourced to
home- based work.
A SUCCESS STORY?FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
• Some 6,000 children are in schools run by
“partner” charities established in the era of
the Atlanta programme
• The ILO has endorsed the Sialkot Soccer Ball
Industry Model as a way forward for other
industries to do business in the current GSP+
(Generalised scheme of preferences)
environment
A SUCCESS STORY?FOOTBALLS (SOCCER) IN
PAKISTAN
• ......but precarity continued for the adults
that were employed.
• At one Pakistani manufacturer, researchers
found that all interviewed stitching center or
home-based workers were employed on a
casual basis and almost all of them were paid
below the legally required minimum wage
• In addition, other issues, such as the use of
casual or temporary labor, low wages,
overtime and hazardous working
environments persist.
SOMETHING TO REFLECT
UPON BEFORE YOU GO
FURTHER
• Who eats chocolate?
• Do you think about how it is sourced?
• Can we separate ourselves and our
enjoyment from the product’s creation?
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
•
•
•
More than 70% of the world’s cocoa is
grown in West Africa, and the vast
majority of that supply comes from two
countries: Cote d’ Ivoire and Ghana
Together they produce 60% of the global
total
Cote d’ Ivoire alone exported nearly 2
million metric tons of cocoa (2015), or
two-fifths of the world’s production.
Demand for chocolate is going up, as a
growing number of consumers in
countries like China and India have more
disposable income.
• The two nations have a combined GDP of
around $73 billion, according to the
World Bank—or significantly less than
Nestlé ’s $100 billion in sales last year
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
•
In some cases, sensational stories about
child labor have focused on boys and girls
•
•
who’ve been kidnapped. held against
their will and abused
In the more common story, however, sees
hundreds of thousands of children used
as free labor by their own families and
often asked to take on dangerous tasks
like harvesting with machetes or hauling
100-pound bags of beans
“Here in Africa, the ones who are young
and strong have to use their legs, the
older ones get to work sitting down. But
when it’s time to sell the crop, the ones
who are sitting down get to keep all the
profits.”
- Daouda Ouattara, Ghana
• How do we address a situation when the
labour is family driven?
• Does it require a culturally sensitive eye? •
Or is it simply inherently bad?
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• In 2014, a study at Tulane Univ found that
2.1 million children had been engaged in
inappropriate forms of child labor in Ivory
Coast and Ghana combined
• a 21% increase over the 1.75 million identified in its
survey five years earlier.
• 96% were found to be involved in
“hazardous activity”
• The number of children reported to be performing
dangerous tasks fell by
6% in Ghana but jumped by 46% in Ivory Coast.
•
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
•
A child’s workday typically begins at six in the
morning and ends in the evening.
•
•
•
•
Some of the children use chainsaws to clear
the forests.
Other children climb the cocoa trees to cut
bean pods using a machete. These large,
heavy, dangerous knives are the standard
tools for children on the cocoa farms, which
violates international labor laws and a UN
convention on eliminating the worst forms of
child labor.
Once they cut the bean pods from the trees,
the children pack the pods into sacks that
weigh more than 100 pounds when full and
drag them through the forest
Aly Diabate, a former cocoa slave:
• “Some of the bags were taller than me. It took two
people to put the bag on my head. And when you didn’t
hurry, you were beaten.
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• Holding a single large pod in one hand, each
child has to strike the pod with a machete
and pry it open with the tip of the blade to
expose the cocoa beans.
• Every strike of the machete has the
potential to slice a child’s flesh. The majority
of children have scars on their hands, arms,
legs or shoulders from the machetes.
• in addition to the hazards of using machetes,
children are also exposed to agricultural
chemicals on cocoa farms in Western Africa.
•
Tropical regions such as Ghana and the
Ivory Coast consistently deal with prolific
•
insect populations and choose to spray
the pods with large amounts of industrial
chemicals.
In Ghana, children as young as 10 spray
the pods with these toxins without
wearing protective clothing.
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
•
•
•
The farm owners using child labor usually
provide the children with the cheapest
food available, such as corn paste and
bananas.
In some cases, the children sleep on
wooden planks in small windowless
buildings with no access to clean water or
sanitary bathrooms.
On cocoa farms, 10% of child laborers in
Ghana and 40% in the Ivory Coast do not
attend school, another violation of the
International Labour Organization’s (ILO)
Child Labour Standards.
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
•
“It is clearly a complex problem that has its
roots in poverty, and rural poverty no less.
And if the problem is rooted in poverty, then
the solution, in a way, is as complex as
poverty eradication.”
- Nick Weatherill, executive director of the
International Cocoa Initiative, a Geneva-based
nonprofit funded by major chocolate makers that
focuses on addressing child labor in cocoa in West
Africa
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• What accounts for the prevalence of child labour
in the chocolate industry?
•
•
Poverty - Farmers don’t make enough to support
their business. Cocoa prices are low, yields are low,
and farmers are unable to pay for adult laborers,
thus leaving them with no choice but to use their
children as labor.
Limited Access to Education - There is a dramatic
shortage of schools and teachers in West Africa. Even
where schools exist, many families can’t afford
•
necessary school-related expenses such as tuition,
uniforms, and books.
Lack of Enforcement - While there are laws
prohibiting child labor in West Africa, the extreme
prevalence of child labor, combined with
overextended governments tasked with addressing
many difficult issues, truly limits enforcement of
these laws.
• The U.S. Department of Labor’s 2014 report on the worst forms
of child labor in Ivory Coast found that the national police’s antihuman-trafficking unit had an operating budget of just
$7,700/yr
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• PotentialSolution(s)?
• Fair Trade Chocolate. A market-based
solution, as opposed to
• Local governments working together with
cocoa manufacturers and farmers themselves
• Fair Trade aims to address the root causes
of child labor by:
•
•
•
Raising farmers’ incomes such that they can earn a
sustainable livelihood,
Providing communities with a financial Premium
that they can invest in things like education.
Ensuring that strict standards that prohibit the
use of child labor are monitored and enforced.
stricter enforcement
invest in their farms, and hire adult workers.
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• Since 2010, not much has changed (aside
from a 21% increase in the price)
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• Seeks to provide farmers with the resources
to invest in education.
• The primary way this happens is via the
Community Development Premium.
• For every metric ton of Fair Trade cocoa sold,
farmers earn an additional $200 to invest in farm and
community level projects. Farmers vote to spend these
funds on important needs like school tuition, lunch
programs, and in some cases entirely new schools
•
•
There are many different labels on
chocolate bars today, such as various fair
trade certifications and the Rainforest
Alliance Certification and UTZ
No single label can guarantee that the
chocolate was made without the use of
exploitive labor.
• For example, in 2009, the founders of
the fair trade certification process had to
suspend several of their Western African
suppliers due to evidence that they were
using child labor
• The success of fair trade certification
will depend greatly on the genuine
support (or suffer from the lack of) from
the chocolate industry over the coming
years
•
http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Campaignandadvoc
acy/wdacl/2018 /lang--en/index.htm
CHOCOLATE- GHANA AND
COTE D’IVOIRE
• The Dark Side of Chocolate (documentary)
CHILD SLAVERY IN THE
CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY
• Some children end up on the cocoa farms
because they need work and traffickers tell
them that the job pays well.
• Other children are “sold” to traffickers or
farm owners by their own relatives, who are
unaware of the dangerous work environment
and the lack of any provisions for an
education.
• In some cases, traffickers will abduct the
young children from villages in neighboring
Burkina Faso and Mali, two of the poorest
countries in the world.
• Once they have been taken to the cocoa farms, the
children may not see their families for years, if ever.
CHILD SLAVERY IN THE
CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY
•
•
Investigators have discovered children trafficked
into Western African cocoa farms and coerced to
work without pay.
Abby Mills, campaigns director of the
International Labor Rights Forum, adds, “Every
research study ever conducted in [Western Africa]
shows that there is human trafficking going on,
particularly in the Ivory Coast.”
•
•
•
(Child) slavery in the cocoa industry involves the
same core human rights violations as other forms
of slavery throughout the world.
Cases often involve acts of physical violence, such
as being whipped for working slowly or trying to
escape.
documented cases where children and adults
were locked in at night to prevent them from
escaping.
• Former cocoa slave Aly Diabate told reporters, “The beatings
were a part of my life. I had seen others who tried to escape.
When they tried, they were severely beaten.”
• Aside from large-scale production in
Western Africa, a significant amount of cocoa
is also grown in Latin America. This is where
the majority of organic cocoa originates.
• neither child slavery nor child labor have been
documented on these cocoa farms.
• Possible that some Latin American farms
may employ these practices, not widely
documented as it is in Western Africa
“TONY’S CHOCOLONELY”
• "If you look at certification like the Rainforest
Alliance or Fair Trade or UTZ, those are all good
but they don't manufacture a product ... and as a
product owner you feel responsibility and it's
your responsibility to sell something you can be
proud of.”
• Henk Jan Beltman, chief chocolate officer at Tony's
Chocolonely
•
•
"Whether it's fish or phones or chocolate
bars, it's always the owner who is responsible
for the stuff that they sell ... and a certification
body is never going to take that responsibility
away."
Focus on the fine details of its supply chain, it
traces the origin of the cocoa it buys -- all the
way from the beans purchased directly from
its farm cooperatives in West Africa to the
finished product.
• “Isn't it weird that all pieces in most
chocolate bars are the same size when in the
chocolate industry things are shared so
unequally? That's why our bars are unequally
divided, to illustrate the inequality in the
cocoa chain and to make people aware of this
in a tasty way.”
• Slave-free chocolate
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• We tend to think of child labour as being a
problem ‘over there,’ but it is a reality in
North America as well
• If poverty and a lack of long-term careers
are factors that lead to child labour, this
should come as no surprise
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• The primary legislation that regulates child
labour in the United States is the Fair Labor
Standards Act.
• Fornon-
agriculturaljobs,childrenunder14maynotbeemplo
yed. Children between 14 and 16 may be
employed in allowed occupations during limited
hours, and those between 16 and 18 may be
employed for unlimited hours in non-hazardous
occupations
•
•
A number of exceptions these regulations
exist, particularly for those employment by
their parents, in newspaper delivery, and
child actors.
The regulations for agricultural employment
are generally less strict.
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• Like elsewhere, the presence of regulations
on child labour doesn’t mean the absence of
child labour
• In the US, there are also exemptions to the
legislation which permits child labour,
especially in agriculture (a topic we’ll explore
in more detail on Monday)
• The United States is the only nation in the
world that has not ratified the United
Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child
(UNCRC), a document drafted in 1989 that
serves to protect children’s rights (including
labour and educational rights) through
government action.
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
•
The Occupational Health and Safety
Administration, or OHSA, had fewer health
and safety inspectors in 2011 than in 1981,
even though there are now twice as many
•
•
•
workplaces. OHSA is responsible for
conducting workplace inspections and
following-up on complaints about labor
violations, including child-labor laws).
There were 864 federal inspectors in 2014,
down from 1,469 in 1980
When adjusted to 2013 dollars, OSHA’s
budget for the upcoming fiscal year is $535
million, compared to $592 million in 2010,
said Katie Weatherford, regulatory policy
analyst for the Center for Effective
Government.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/howcommon-is-chid-labor-in-the- us/383687/
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• "Our feeling is that there has got to be a
certain level of enforcement for employers to
really pay attention. Once they get a sense
that the laws aren't being enforced at all, it's
like a carte blanche.“
• Reid Maki, director of child-labor advocacy at the
National Consumer’s League
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• Soon after the 2010 US midterm elections,
many states mad changes and rolled back
regulations on child labour.
• A Missouri elected official had called in
2011 for the elimination of funding for the
state’s nine labor investigators, saying
that he’d heard they were “harassing and
picking on” non- union contractors. By 2014,
the state had just six investigators
• In Idaho, the state passed a bill allowing
students 12 and above to be employed by
school districts for up to 10 hours per week.
• “It teaches job skills, you have to be on time, you have
to do what your supervisor tells you,” said district
spokesman Eric Exline, defending the program to a
local TV station, and adding that the program saved
the school district from having to hire additional
employees.
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
•
•
Wisconsin lifted restrictions on the
number of hours 16 and 17- year-olds
could work during a school week
(previously 26 hours, now unlimited
hours, as long as they also go to school).
Michigan also increased the number of
hours students could work during the
school week, to 24 from 15.
• Maine also upped the number of hours a
minor could work each week—to 24 from
20. Some wanted students to be able to
work until 11 p.m. on school nights, but in
a compromise, the legislation set the
curfew at 10:15 p.m.
CHILD LABOUR IN THE
USA
• A law went into effect in August in
Minnesota creating a youth wage of $6.50 an
hour for workers under 18 (there had
previously not been a separate youth wage)
• A similar youth wages exists in Ontario
• Iowa introduced a bill allowing people aged
16-17 to work in laundry establishments
(previously prohibited)
Children, Work,
and
Agriculture
Child Labour in Agriculture
• In many countries child labour is
mainly an agricultural issue
• Worldwide 60 percent of all child
labourers in the age group 5-17 years
work in agriculture, including
farming, fishing, aquaculture, forestry,
and livestock. This amounts to over
98 million girls and boys.
• The majority (67.5%) of child
labourers are unpaid family members.
In agriculture this percentage is
higher, and is combined with very
early entry into work, sometimes
between 5 and 7 years of age.
Child Labour in Agriculture
• Agriculture is one of the three most
dangerous sectors in terms of workrelated fatalities, non-fatal accidents
and occupational diseases. About 59
percent of all children in hazardous
work aged 5–17 are in agriculture.
• Informed, in part, by traditional
attitudes towards children’s
participation in agricultural activities.
• Especially in the context of family
farming, small-scale fisheries and
livestock husbandry, some
participation of children in nonhazardous activities can be positive as
it contributes to the intergenerational transfer of skills and
children’s food security.
• It is important to distinguish
between light duties that do no harm
to the child and child labour
• Participation in some agricultural
activities is not always child labour.
Age-appropriate tasks that are of
lower risk and do not interfere with a
child’s schooling and leisure time can
be a normal part of growing up in a
rural environment.
Why is child labour so
prevalent in agriculture? • Let’s
also think more broadly than simply
‘capitalism’
•
•
•
•
– Limited coverage of agriculture and
family undertakings in national labour
legislations
– limited unionization
– low capacity of labour inspectors to
cover remote rural areas,
– majority of child labourers working as
unpaid family labour without formal
contracts
•
– continuity between rural household
and the workplace, and traditions of
children participating in agricultural
activities
• The seasonality of agricultural
production and migration makes
enforcement more difficult
• A global problem......with a North
American dimension
Introduction
•
•
•
As noted in a previous lesson, The
Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
banned child labor in American
factories and mines, but (racist)
Southern politicians ensured the
existence of enough loopholes for
the agricultural industry
This was, in some part at least, to
keep black children working on the
farm
More recently, however, there has
been an upsurge in young migrants
performing these jobs
• In many parts of the south, the
children white working poor work
in the Tobacco industry, alongside
predominantly the children of
Latino migrants
• The FLSA was a seminal
achievement, but it has significant
loopholes. Influenced by racist
Southern politicians, who argued in
the 1930s that “you cannot put the
Negro and the white man on the same
basis,” the law left out minimum wage
and overtime protections for
agricultural and domestic workers—
the industries that employed the
majority of African-Americans at the
time.
– Source: The Nation, 2013
• Child labor on farms helps fuel a
cycle of poverty where kids drop out
of school or perform poorly so that
they can work as many hours as
possible
Introduction
•
OnewaythatyoungpeopleintheUnitedStatess
ufferfromchildren’s rights violations is
through child labor – especially in the
agricultural sector.
•
AccordingtotheHumanRightsWatch(HRW),
childrenintheUnited States working on
farms are unprotected from the danger of
using dangerous tools and machinery, as
well as many other dangers of working on
farms.
–
numerousreportsofchildreninjuredwhenusingsharpto
ols,heavymachinery in their jobs – and almost no
children interviewed by HRW had health or safety
training or protective gear.
•
DatafromtheUSgovernmentillustratesthatagr
icultureisthemost dangerous industry for
young workers
–
In2012thereweremorethan1,800nonfatalinjuriestochil
drenunder18 working on US farms, and two thirds of
children who died from work injuries were
agricultural workers.
Legal Exemptions
•
Lawsinplaceallowchildrenworkinginagricult
uretoworklonger hours, at younger ages, in
more hazardous conditions than in any
other industry.
•
•
With parental permission, children as
young as twelve can be hired for an
unlimited number of hours (outside of
school hours) on a farm of any size.
There is no minimum age for children to
work on small farms.
Children at age 16 can work in jobs
deemed “hazardous” by the US
department of labor in agricultural
•
settings – but in other sectors, workers
must be 18 to do hazardous work.
In2011,federalregulationswerealmostpasse
dthatwouldhave restricted workers to be
16 or older to work on tobacco farms –
however, with the influence of Big
Agriculture, these regulations were
withdrawn.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
• Several hundred thousand children
work in US agriculture every year –
but there is no specific data on exactly
how many work on tobacco farms.
Most children working in agriculture
make only minimum wage
– others report being paid less than
minimum wage, with no overtime.
• In an interview by HRW, many
children reported that they started
working on tobacco farms at age 11 or
12 during the summer months, in
order to help support their families.
The majority of these children are
those of Hispanic immigrants.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
•
Tobaccofarmsareparticularlydangerousto
childrenastheyare exposed to nicotine
and the toxic pesticides often sprayed in
the air to protect the plants. There have
been reports of children suffering from
vomiting, nausea, headaches, and
dizziness – the symptoms of nicotine
poisoning. Nicotine is absorbed through
the skin while these child laborers gather
and handle tobacco leaves
– Onestudyestimatedthatonahumidday—
andvirtuallyeverysummer day in North Carolina
is humid—a tobacco worker can be exposed to
the nicotine equivalent of thirty-six cigarettes.
•
Inthissector,childrenhavealsoreportedto
worklonghours (50-60 hours each week)
in the extreme heat with little or no
shade, no sufficient breaks, and little or
no protective gear.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
•
•
AHumanRightsWatchreportreleasedi
nMay2014documented the dangers to
children working on American
tobacco farms based on a year’s
research and interviews with 141 child
tobacco workers, ages 7 to 17, in the
country’s four largest tobaccoproducing states: North Carolina,
Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
Tobaccogrowninthesefieldsisusedtopr
oducepopular cigarette brands,
•
including Marlboro, Pall Mall and
Newport.
Nearlythreequartersofchildreninterviewedreporte
dfeeling sick—with nausea, vomiting,
headaches, dizziness, difficulty
breathing, or other serious symptoms
while working in tobacco fields.
–
Manyofthesesymptomsareconsistentwithacu
tenicotinepoisoning, also known as Green
Tobacco Sickness.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
• Most of the children spoke to by HRW
labored for 50 to 60 hours a week in
sweltering heat, often without shade or
adequate drinking water.
•
Theyplantseedlings,weedtobaccofieldsan
dworkamongtall tobacco plants, breaking
flowers off the top of the plants and
removing leaves called “suckers” that
reduce the yield and quality of the
tobacco.
•
InKentucky,TennesseeandVirginia,childr
enoftenhand- harvest tobacco plants by
cutting them with small axes and
spearing the stalks onto long sticks with
pointed ends. Some climb high into the
rafters of curing barns to hang heavy
sticks of tobacco to dry.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
• Many of these child workers are
those of migrant workers, from
Mexico and elsewhere in Latin
America
• Their work position is made worse
by immigration status- this provides
employers considerable leverage over
them
• Although some Caucasian children
work in farm labour, the workforce is
predominantly Latino/Latina. There is
a growing intersection of race, class,
and immigration status
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
•
•
•
•
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor
proposed a draft regulation that included
working in tobacco among the hazardous
tasks prohibited for children under age 16.
These regulations were later withdrawn after
intense lobbying by agricultural interest
groups. No progress since
Even some in the tobacco industry have been
more proactive than legislators, in response
to reports on the risks to child tobacco
workers.
In July, the Kentucky-based Council on
Burley Tobacco, which represents 5,000
tobacco growers in four states, adopted a
new policy stating that it “does not condone
the hiring of anyone under the age of 16 for
work in tobacco anywhere in the world.”
A spokesperson for Philip Morris
International said that they would welcome a
strengthening of the U.S. regulatory
framework regarding children working in
tobacco.
– Under its own labor policies, Philip Morris already
bars children under age 18 from performing the most
hazardous tasks in tobacco farming.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry
• The main argument against the
failed regulations was that they’d hurt
family farms.
– “That’s why we opposed the rules. They
would have impacted farm kids and their
ability to be a part of the family farm or
ranch.” says Mace Thornton, a Farm Bureau
lobbyist
• In a letter to the agency, the Farm
Bureau and its allies asked the Labor
Department to withdraw the rules to
allow “family farms to continue to
operate as they have for generations.”
• That the rules would be a blow to
struggling family farms held
tremendous narrative power.
Child Labour in the Tobacco
Industry • One only problem: it
isn’t true.
• No child labour laws in the US apply
to family farms.......or to the estimated
half a million children who work on
them.
•
Thelegislationcoversonlytheroughly30
0,000orsowho work as hired hands on
larger agricultural farms
And not just tobacco
• Child workers used in other
agricultural industries outside of
tobacco
• An “ugly secret” in US agriculture.
And it’s not just a Southern secret
• Child labour in Michigan on
blueberry farms reported in 2011.
Research suggests this wasn’t just a
one-off
In Canada?
• "It's very common in this industry.
We've known it for many, many years.
Enforcement is lacking.“
– Charan Gill, president of the Canadian
Farmworkers' Union.
• "All the politicians know this, what's
happening on the farms. But there's
not a will to change those things yet.”
In Canada
•
•
In 2016, a berry farm owner in BC
was fine over $3,500 for having an
11 year old work on his farminadvertently he claimed
There, children under 12 can work,
but employers must have written
permission from the provincial
director of employment standards
In Canada
•
•
The prevalence of the Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Program (or
SAWP) reduces the need for child
labour in Canada, though this
program is fraught with it’s own
issues
Employers needing low-cost, hardworking labour for agricultural
work are more likely to look
directly to Mexico or Jamaica as
opposed to children living in
Canada
In Canada
•
Inmostprovinces,childlabourinthefarmin
gindustryisalmost entirely unregulatedespecially at the family farm
–
theyoungestpersontoreceiveworker’scompensati
oninQuebecin2007 was eight years old
•
Farmingwasentirelyexcludedfromemploy
mentcodesin Canada’s prairies
• “Soyoucanhireaneight-yearoldtorunatractor[notallowed under the
provincial code.....Or, you can simply
direct your own eight-year-old to run the
tractor [not considered employment].”
–
BobBarnetson,associateprofessoroflabourrelatio
nsatEdmonton’s Athabasca University
In Canada
• Farmworkers Union of Alberta
– “I found myself working with 8, 9 and 10year-old paid labourers, not farmers
children.”
– Many of them were Mennonite Mexican
children who work alongside, or even apart
from, their parents.
– At the time of the FUA’s founding, there
were no regulations (H&S or labour) applied
to farming
In Canada
•
•
Saskatchewan,2014
CoolSpringsRanch&ButcheryYorkton,Sask.
– family-run, allowing their daughters Emma, 8, and
Kate, 10, to help raise their
animals, bring them to slaughter and prepare them
for market.
•
•
OccupationalHealthandSafetyorderissue
dthatprohibitedthegirls from working in
the chicken processing plant, a major
part of the farm’s operation.
Familypostedtosocialmedia,receivedconsi
derablesupport
–
criticalofanoverbearinggovernmenttryingtomess
withtraditionand
grassroots family life.
•
withdrew the order, but said a 14- and 15year-old who worked at the farm and
were not members of the Covlin family
would have to quit
In Canada
•
Isthereadistinctionbetweenworkandc
hores?
•
Whataboutfarmchores,especiallyonafa
milyrunfarm?
• Provincial labour laws still apply to
family run businesses (outside of
agriculture)
Working With
Children
Care Work
•
Workperformedthatprovidesdirectcareorsupporttoan
otherpersonwhois considered to be a dependent
•
Generally, care work done of behalf of the young,
the elderly, the sick, the dying, and people with
various intellectual and physical disabilities
•
•
It is work- a paid job (though often underpaid and
informal)
It is often also unpaid labour (caring for own
family, neighbours etc)
2
Child Care Work
• For many, it serves as a first job and introduction to
working
• Highlygenderedservice,bothformallyandinformally
• Childcare work is both paid and unpaid, depending
upon the situation
Introduction
• Childcarework:
•
•
•
Involves care for children when parents and other
family members are unavailable.
They provide supervision for children and care for
children's basic needs, such as bathing and feeding.
Some may be directly responsible for educating (such as
in a child care centre), but while others may help
•
•
children prepare for kindergarten or help older children
with homework.
This work can be performed in one’s own home, in the
home of a client, or in a local centre
Babysitting is often the first introduction into this field
• Three main forms of care—daycare centres, home
daycare and private arrangements—are most often used
for children under the age of 5.
• Before and after school care is the leading choice for children
aged 5 and older.
•
Average full-time monthly fees for a two-year-old,
2010, in Quebec: $154 (the lowest
for any province or territory).
•
•
Average full-time monthly fees for a two-year-old,
2010 in B.C.: $850 (the highest for any province or
territory).
Generally, parents belonging to a higher income
household were more likely to have used some form
of non-parental care. More precisely, about twothirds (65%) of parents with an annual household
income of at least $100,000 used child care for their
preschooler. This was nearly double the rate
recorded for households with an income below
$40,000 (34%).
• The use of child care was lower at the other end of
the age spectrum, that is, for children aged 11 to 14
years (19%).
•
Childreninthisagerangeareoftenconsideredemotionall
yand developmentally mature enough to be
unsupervised for short periods of time (i.e., before and
after school), resulting in a reduced need for child care
• Forbabysitting,thereisnolegalagerequirement
•
•
Some child care is regulated by the provincial
government, but large sections of this industry are
completely unregulated and left to cash exchange
and direct negotiation
Median income for full-time, qualified child-care
program staff with a post- secondary qualification,
2006: $27,000.
• By 2017, this figure is around $30,000
•
•
The need for quality child care has gone up; wages
have not followed
A high cost industry
Where is care provided?
• All provinces/territories license regulated child care services
according to their provincial legislation and regulations. Regulated
child care services include:
•
•
•
•
centre-based full-day child care
regulated family child care
school-aged child care
most provinces/territories, nursery schools or preschools
• **only is Quebec is there a province-wide, universal, and publicly funded childcare
program
•
•
As of 2016, there are enough regulated spaces for only 27.2 per
cent of children aged 0-12 years old in Canada. There are only
enough full and part-time spaces in for 28.9 per cent of 0-5
year olds
Therefore, we must assume that the majority of child care is
provided either by relatives or through unregulated
•
arrangements, either in the caregiver’s home (unregulated
family child care) or in the child’s home (a nanny or a
babysitter).
Kindergarten, provided as a separate program through public
school systems in all provinces/territories may also serve as
part of working parents’ child care arrangements.
• Why do we pay so little to those who provide care for
our children? • Doweundervaluethiswork?Ifyes,why?
• Let’sthinkaboutit
• ChildCareisaRight?
•
•
Nationalnot-forprofitprojectthatreturnstotherootsofthewomen’s
movement to explore child care from a women’s,
children’s and family rights position.
ThecoreofthisprojectistoexploreCanada’sinternati
onaltreatyobligationsto women, children and
families as they pertain to child care. It focuses on
the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC),
the Convention to Eliminate Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) and the Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
•
•
•
•
Overall, child care rates were significantly above the
national average in Quebec, where 58% of parents
placed their children in care.
Those least likely to use child care were parents
living in Manitoba (34%), Alberta (40%) and Ontario
(43%). All of these rates were below the national
average (46%).
The cost of care also varied widely across Canada.
Reflecting Quebec's subsidized daily rate of $8;05
per day, Quebec recorded the lowest monthly cost of
full-time care for children under the age of 5, with a
median monthly cost of $152 per child.
The cost in the second lowest region, the Atlantic
provinces, was $541, almost four times the Quebec
cost.
•
The highest cost for full-time child care was found in
Ontario, with a median monthly cost of $677.
•
Licensedchildcareisoftenmuchtooexpensiveforfamilies
.
• Median monthly fees range from $451 per child for
preschool-age care in Winnipeg to $1,649 for infant
care in Toronto. And fees are rising faster than
inflation.
Intersectional Feminism
•
•
•
•
Care work is a useful lens to explore intersectional
feminism
Care work is highly feminized (both paid work
and unpaid labour)
It is also highly racialized (both paid work outside
the home, and also paid work within the home- ie/
the live-in caregiver)
Totheextentthatpaidcarehappensinthehome(ie/an
anny),itisoftentothe benefit of a higher-wage
white woman
14
Emotional Labour
•
•
•
Care work is inherently emotional. It is part of the
job required (compassion, caring, etc) and what
employers pay for
Morethanjustthework(ie/cookingandcleaning)
Theriseofwhitecollarworksawariseof“emotionallabour.”Thistermi
s central to an understanding of care work
Emotional Labour
•
Likecareworkitself,emotionallabourisoften,thoughnota
lwaysgendered: Typical masculine and feminine traits
•
•
It is the traditionally feminine traits that are
sought out and central to care work
Management of feeling to create a publicly
observable facial and bodily display;
emotional labor is sold for a wage
• Arlie Hochschild, 1983
16
Emotional Labour
• Hocschild’scriteriaforjobsinvolvingemotionallabour:
•
•
require face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact with the
public
require the worker to produce an emotional state in
another person
•
allow the employer, through training and supervision,
to exercise a degree of control over the emotional
activities of employees
• Theseareallcentralelementsofcarework
Emotional Labour
•
Hocschildutilizedtheterm‘emotionaldissonance’todefi
netheprocessof "maintaining a difference between
feeling and feigning“ (to represent falsely, or a false,
outward appearance)
•
Workershavetoregulatetheirownemotions/expression
sonthejobandfeel (or feign) according to a desired
norm
• You need to feel a certain way in front of the client. It
likely is not the way you actually feel.
Emotional Labour
• ‘strategic friendliness’ (an example of surface acting)
as a way to manipulate other through
emotion/expression
•
•
“being nice, polite, welcoming, playing dumb or
behaving courteous”
These are required emotions in care work
Who Cares?
•
•
Oftenwomen
Asdaughters,mothers,partners,friends,paidemploy
ees(in house or outside of home),or as volunteers,
women are the overwhelming majority of unpaid
primary caregivers and spend more time in
providing care than men.
•
20
Historicallymorelikelythanmentodopersonalcarea
ndoffer emotional support.
Care Work
Increasingly a form of paid
labour outside the family
Historically, care work
performed by entire family
With industrial revolution and
rise of male breadwinner model,
increasingly performed by
women (wife, mother)
21
Care Work
• Highly gendered- upward of 90% of care work
performed by women
• Highlyracializedalargeproportionofthoseprovidingcareworkareracializ
ed women. Many, though not all, are on temporary
work permits (ie/ Live-in Caregivers)
• Careworkglobally
22
Care Work
• Why is care work so predominantly female
dominated?
•
Istheresomethinginherentaboutwomenthatexplainsthi
s?
•
Istheresomethingabouttheworkitselfthatmakesit(un)a
ttractive?
23
Does it become socialized from
a young age?
24
Historical Evolution
• Wetendtothinkofemployingliveindomesticcareworkersassomething exclusively for
the elite. It hasn’t always been this way.
• Forcenturies,awoman’ssocialstatuswasclearcut:eithershehadamaidor she was one.
• “Servants”—
whooftenlivedinthehomesofthoseemployingthem—
didthe bulk of the cooking, laundry, and childcare
were an indispensable part of life for those who didn’t
themselves work as domestic workers
25
•
Thisdeclineimpactswomenmuchmorethanmen.Ironica
lly,aswomenenter the paid workforce outside the
home – and are now generally without paid help
inside the home – they are left to do much of this work
• Child care work disproportionately still done by
women
26
Historical Evolution
•
Inadditiontobeinghighlygendered,earlycarework(inclu
dingchildcare)was also highly racialized
•
Intheearly1900s,AfricanAmericanwomenhistoricallyto
okonthebulkof these exploitative jobs
•
Thiscontinueduntilthe1930s,whentherewasashifttoem
ployingwhite women who were out of work, or who
needed to support family, during the depression
27
Child care
• 2006census,2millionpreschoolchildren(06years),2.7millionschoolaged children (7-12) , of these
nearly 5 million children, there are 3 million mothers
who are part of the paid workforce
• Most daycare costs require a dual family income,
what happens in a single family income?
28
Quebec: Universal child care •
Formerlyuniversalat$7/dayperchild
• As of 2018, the fee ranges from $8.05 per day (for those
making less than $51,340) up to $21.95 for the first child
(for those making more than $165,000).
• Costsprovince1billion
• Allows more women (mothers) to join the paid
workforce
29
• Isuniversalchildcarepreferable?
Who works in childcare?
• 98%ofearlychildhoodeducatorsarefemale
• A very high percentage are educated. Not skilled
work per se, but involves clear skills (and patience!)
• Averagesalaryaround$30,000
31
Unionization and Child Care
Workers
•
•
21.5 per cent of Canada-wide child care staff
identified as union members
Onethirdor31.7%oftheunionizedrespondentsindic
atedthatwagesand benefits were the main reason
they took their current job.
• In contrast the main reason non-unionized staff gave for
taking the job was the reputation of the centre.
•
In every part of the country unionized staff were
more likely to work for an organization that
•
operated centres at more than one location than
non- unionized staff.
Union membership for public sector femaledominated occupations is generally strong.
However, in spite of low wages and poor working
conditions, unionization has been difficult to
accomplish in the early learning and child care
sector.
•
•
•
Canada-wide mean wage for unionized child care
staff was $20.11. On average staff respondents in
unionized centres earned $4.61/hour more than
those in non-unionized centres. Their wages were
more likely to be in the top 25% of all staff in their
province or territory.
Staffinunionizedcentresweremorelikelytoreceivep
aidsickdays,extended medical, life and disability
insurance, pension plans or RRSP contributions,
paid breaks, and parental and maternity top-up
benefits.
unionized staff was more likely than nonunionized staff to be paid or have time off in lieu
for overtime, paid release time for ECE-related
professional development and have access to a
staff room.
Why universal childcare
• Dilemma: How do feminists both support a woman’s
right to work in the public sphere as well as the option
to become mothers and raise children? How can child
raising as a career become valued?
Susan Prentice argues that universal childcare is the
best option because it “supports women and children
in both the public as well as private sphere”.
36
Unpaid Care Giving
•
•
•
Requirestime,skills&resources.....andmaynotalway
sbe voluntary
Accorded little value- by society, the market, and
often by those receiving the care
Canmean:career&financiallosses,loweredopportu
nitiesto advance at work, loss of benefits and
pensions (esp. if time taken off from paid work)
•
out-of-pocketexpensesforhiringshorttermreliefcaregivers, mental and physical fatigue,
social isolation, family stress and breakdown
37
Paid Care Work
•
Ascareworkmovestowardtheprivatesector,awayfromb
oththefamilyand the state, there are concerns
• Forthosewhoneedit:
•
As care work is increasingly bought and sold on the
market, there is a possibility that
those that need care- ie/ children—will not be able to
afford the care they need
•
•
38
This may put downward pressure on wages for child
care workers, especially in the informal and nonunionized sector
Another concern is that the quality of care may decrease
in response to the call for profit-making and efficiency
The LCP
• A former government program, often targeted
toward providing child care
• Primarily Filipina women providing (child) care
•
OneoftherequirementsoftheLCPwasthatcaregiversresi
dewiththefamily they worked for (ie/ live-in, as
oppose to live-out). This left the potential for
vulnerability to abuses such as unpaid overtime, poor
working conditions, or worse. Always on the clock (but
not always paid)
•
TheirstatusinCanadadependedontheiremployer.Losing
/leavingjobmeant leaving Canada. Critics argued that
the program needed reformation.
• 2014facilitatedapplicationforPRafter24monthsofwork •
Children
• High medical needs
39
The LCP
•
2014- The live-in requirement was lifted in
response, but if live-in caregivers chose to move
•
•
40
out, they required a new Labour Market Impact
Assessment (LMIA) and work permit. Live-out
caregivers are no longer considered part of the
LCP and would not be eligible to apply for
permanent residence under the LCP.
2014PilotprogramTheymustnowapplyundertwocategories—
thosecaring for children, and those caring for
people with high medical needs.
Folks also require a regular work permit
The LCP
•
Toqualifyforpermanentresidencycaregiversmustnowh
aveoneyear-post secondary study in Canada or a
foreign diploma or certificate that has been given
equivalency here.
• Caregiversmustalsopassstringentlanguagetest.
•
Thegovernmentalsonolongerentertainshumanitariana
ndcompassionate
appeals for caregiver’s dependants
• The five year pilot is being phased out in November,
2019
41
2019 changes
•
On June 18, 2019, Ministerial Instructions were
issued to create 2 new permanent residence pilots
for caregivers:
•
•
•
•
Home Child Care Provider Pilot (HCCPP)
Home Support Worker Pilot (HSWP)
Applicants under the 2 new permanent residence
pilots (HCCPP [NOC 4411] and HSWP [NOC 4412])
have all permanent residence requirements
assessed upfront, except for the 24 months of
eligible Canadian work experience, unless they
have already acquired it.
We’restillwaitingtoseeandanalyzethelongtermchangesandimpactshere
Children at
Work
on TV, Film,
and
Social Media
Who are they?
We’ll refer to child actors, broadly, as those under 18
We should distinguish between teen actors for a
variety of reasons
In short, we wish to identify those ‘child’ actors who
are not yet legally adults
Children at
Work
on TV, Film,
and
Social Media
LABR 3Q96
Who are they?
We’ll refer to child actors, broadly, as those under 18
We should distinguish between teen actors for a
variety of reasons
In short, we wish to identify those ‘child’ actors who
are not yet legally adults
The legal context
The United States' Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)
prohibits those under the age of 14 from working in
most industries, restricts hours to no more than three
on a school day until 16, and prohibits hazardous
work until 18 for most industries.
With some exceptions
The legislation specifically exempted minors working
in the
Entertainment Business from all provisions of the
Child Labor Laws
•
•
To the extent that there are laws, these are
mandated at the state level. 17 of the 50 states in
the USA lack any specific laws for children
working in film
In the event that the production company is
unionized, the workers (actors) have a collective
agreement to cover their working conditions.
These should provide added protection to child
actors
Issues:
Hours of work:
Work vs. childhood
Wages:
Ensuring that child actors receive their wages when they
turn legal age
Access to schooling: Long term impacts:
When the fame stops and it’s ‘back to reality’ for the former
child actor
Issues:
Financial issues:
Child actors, due to their wages, pay for financial advisers,
lawyers, and taxes. A complex part of childhood that child
actors deal with (and often pay others to deal with, or trust
their parents)
Health and safety stunts
High stakes:
We often think of child labour as children working for sub-
poverty wages. Child actors are multi-million dollar earners
working high stress jobs in a very public realm
“I don’t think young people should be allowed to be
famous.” Jeannette McCurdy (iCarly, Sam & Cat).
The case of Jackie Coogan
Child star born in 1914, worked with Charlie Chaplin
as early as 1919. Known for Chaplin’s “The Kid” (1921)
and Oliver Twist (1922)
You may recognize him from his later work as Uncle
Fester in the Addams Family
As a child star, Coogan earned an estimated $3 to $4
million from 1919 to 1935, which would be roughly
equivalent to $44 to $59 million in 2021 dollars. When
he turned 21 in October 1935, his fortune was
believed to be waiting for him
•
•
•
His biological father died in a car crash (Jackie
was the only survivor) when Jackie was 20
After turning 21 and trying to access the money,
Coogan found that the entire amount had been
spent by his mother and stepfather, Arthur
Bernstein, on fur coats, diamonds and other
jewelry, and expensive cars.
His money? That was the question
Coogan's mother and stepfather claimed Jackie
enjoyed himself and simply thought he was playing
before the camera, insisting that, "No promises were
ever made to give Jackie anything
•
•
In 1938, Jackie Coogan sued his mother and
step-father, and while “successful” in that he was,
after his legal expenses, he received just $126,000
of what remained of his earnings ($250,000)
This case prompted the passage of the California
Child Actor's Bill (commonly known as Coogan Act
or Coogan Bill). This is a piece of state law
(California) and applies only there, but as the film
capital of the world, it is often applicable
See:Terry,JenniferRobin(2018)."TheWolfattheDoor:ChildActorsinLimin
alLegalSpaces".The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth. 11: 57–
62.
The Coogan Law
Under the legislation, the money earned and
accumulated remains the sole legal property of the
minor child
•
•
The law requires a child actor's employer to set
aside 15% of the earnings in a trust (often called a
Coogan Account) that can only be accessed by the
child, and codifies issues such as schooling, work
hours, and time off
By default, parents still manage the wages until
the child becomes of legal age, but there are legal
protections from the parents stealing the money
Seehttps://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/young-
performers/coogan-law/coogan-law- full-text for the full text
Seealso:Krieg,Jessica(2004)."There'sNoBusinessLikeShowBusiness:Chil
dEntertainersandthe Law" (PDF). U. Pa. Journal of Labor and
Employment Law. 6 (2): 433–38.
An imperfect law
•
As we have seen throughou...
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