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1

Congressman Morgan McGarvey Introduces Bill to Help USDOL Build Its Labor Inspectorate

[The following is a press release from Rep. McGarvey’s office dated December 06, 2023] Congressman Morgan McGarvey Introduces Bill to Crack Down on Labor Rights Violations WASHINGTON, D.C. (December 06, 2023) – Today, Congressman Morgan McGarvey (KY-03) introduced the Workers Protecting Our Wage Earners’ Rights Act, or Workers POWER Act, alongside Rep. Bobby Scott (VA-03), Ranking Member of the House Education & Workforce Committee, Congressional Labor Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Donald Norcross (NJ-01), and Rep. Greg Casar (TX-35). The bill will equip the Department of Labor with the resources needed to tackle federal labor law violations including child labor, wage theft, and workplace health and safety violations. “Everyday working people are the ones who power this country, and they deserve to work with dignity, free from concerns of stolen wages or having their health and safety put at risk,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey. “This bill creates a better future for our country’s workers by empowering the Department of Labor to crack down on bad actors engaging in conduct ranging from child labor violations to wage theft. I’m proud to lead my colleagues in the fight to prevent our workers from being exploited and will continue working to ensure every worker in our country makes good wages and has safe working conditions.” The Workers POWER Act grew out of a federal investigation […]

4

201 Organizations Endorse Legislation (CARE Act) to Close Child Labor Loopholes that Endanger the Health, Safety and Educational Development of Farmworker Children

The Child Labor Coalition is reaching out for organizational endorsements of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety,  which would end exploitative child labor in U.S. agriculture. [The bill was introduced on Cesar Chavez Day, 3/31/2022 in the 117th Congress. We will post a bill number as soon as it is available.] 201 great national, regional, and state-based groups have endorsed this much-needed legislation. We ask organizations to help us advance this vital legislation which would remove the exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act that allow children to work unlimited hours in agriculture at the age of 12; these exemptions also allow child farmworkers to perform hazardous work at the age of 16. A text of the bill can be found here. The educational impact of child labor on U.S. farmworker children has been devastating. We estimate that two out of three children who work in the fields drop out of school. The CLC’s press release explains why there is an urgent need to protect farmworker children and how the bill accomplishes this. Child farmworkers perform back-breaking work for long hours in excessive heat while they are exposed to pesticides and other dangerous agro-chemicals. Organizations that wish to add their names to the list of endorsers, please email reidm@nclnet.org . The 201 groups below have endorsed the […]

5

Child Labor’s Prevalence Perception Problem–What the Consumer Surveys Reveal

There are a lot of obstacles to ending child labor that the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) and its nearly 40 members confront on a daily basis. Poverty, governmental indifference, educational access issues, and a lack of awareness of the negative, long-term impact of child labor on children are all big factors, but another is lack of knowledge of the scope or prevalence of the problem. The average American consumer doesn’t understand that child labor is a pervasive problem affecting an estimated 152 million children in the world – and that’s an estimate developed before the pandemic started. We think the number has grown significantly since COVID-19 began, throwing hundreds of millions of families into deeper poverty. We became aware of the gap between the public’s perception of the problem and the reality of situation seven years ago when the group Child Fund International commissioned a survey of over 1,000 consumers. Only one percent knew that roughly 150 million children were trapped in child labor globally. That number translates to one in 10 children. It’s staggering to think about. Even more disturbing: 73 percent of survey respondents – essentially three out of four—incorrectly guessed that the global total was less the one million. They were off by a factor of 150! It’s hard to galvanize public and political opinion to confront […]

6

Child Labor in U.S. Tobacco: Why Can’t We Make it Stop?

By Kendra Moesle, Program Communications Coordinator Children in the Fields Campaign (CIFC) is an active member of the Child Labor Coalition, which strives to combat child labor here in the U.S. and abroad.  Also partners with us on that coalition is the 100 Million Campaign:  a worldwide movement led by kids advocating for kids, whose call to action is “for a world where all young people are free, safe, and educated”. In the U.S., the local chapter of the 100 Million Campaign has taken on child labor in tobacco, something that has been a problem in the U.S. for a long time due to the inequality of U.S. labor laws.  When the 100 Million Campaign’s youth-led National Planning Committee met and discussed the number of issues before them, Executive Director of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation US, Anjali Kochar, says they felt this was “the moment in time” when something could finally be done about child labor in tobacco.  In conversations that the campaign hosted in schools across the country, this seemed to be the most galvanizing issue to young people, simply because “it just didn’t add up.”  How is it illegal for minors to buy tobacco products, kids wondered, and yet it can still be perfectly legal for them to manufacture the stuff?   Group picture of Child Labor Coalition members on the steps of AFT, following a February […]

7

Teen Workers May Be Dying to Produce Sugar in Nicaragua

By Deborah Andrews, Contributing Writer Legal protections for children working in hazardous conditions in Nicaragua are robust on paper, but systematic publicity, implementation and enforcement of the law is missing. Nicaragua has ratified all of the core international covenants in regards to child labor and has passed national laws that clarify in which hazardous environments child labor is prohibited, but the positive impact of these has not become reality. In 2015, La Isla Foundation produced a report entitled, ‘Cycle of Sickness: A Survey Report on Child Labor in the Nicaraguan Sugarcane Fields of Ingenio San Antonio’ which investigated child labor among Nicaraguan sugarcane workers. Agriculture, particularly the rapidly expanded sugarcane industry, is one of the most hazardous sectors of the economy and child labor within it is widespread. Nearly four in 10 Nicaraguan children live in poverty.  In rural areas poverty, affects 50% of children. The Teenage pregnancy rate is 23.3%. Only 49% of Primary School students successfully completed 6th Grade and over 72% of the population does not finish Secondary School. Child labor is a major problem in the country and a huge barrier to education, reducing life-time earnings for many individuals. Nicaragua is the only Latin American Country where school is compulsory only up to age 12, as opposed to age 15 in all others. Although illegal for […]

8

110 Groups Urge President Obama to Ban Child Labor in US Tobacco

August 3, 2016 President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, In August 2014, dozens of organizations counting millions of Americans among their members wrote to you, alarmed at reports of acute nicotine poisoning and other health and safety hazards faced by children working in US tobacco fields. We are writing again regarding measures you should take to protect these vulnerable children before you leave office in January 2017. On May 5, the FDA announced new regulations prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes to children under the age of 18. In announcing the new regulations, the Secretary of Health and Human Services stated, “We’ve agreed for many years that nicotine does not belong in the hands of children.” We agree. Yet US law allows children as young as 12, and in some cases even younger, to work in direct contact with tobacco in US tobacco fields and curing barns. There are no regulations or special provisions in place to protect child tobacco workers from exposure to nicotine and awareness raising efforts have limited effect given that the extreme poverty many tobacco farming families experience is the principle reason these children work in the tobacco fields at all. The health risks tobacco farm workers face are considerable, leaving workers vulnerable to heat stroke and green […]

9

The Top 10 Child Labor Stories of 2015

by Sally Greenberg Executive Director, National Consumers League and Co-chair of the Child Labor Coalition [Originally published 1/6/2016 in the Huffington Post] There were plenty of ups and downs in the fight against child labor this year. With an estimated 168 million children still trapped in exploitative labor, including 85 million doing hazardous work, we have an ambitious agenda ahead of us in 2016. Here are 10 highs and lows from 2015: The U.S. Department of Labor’s international child labor programs avoided the ax of conservative appropriators in the Congressional budget package released on December 17. During the battle, the child labor advocacy community argued that the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB) plays a vital role in the fight against child labor, which has seen a reduction of nearly 80 million children over the last 15 years. ILAB documents the prevalence of child labor on a country-by-country basis, and then uses that information to fund about $60 million in remediation programs each year. In the end, appropriators shaved off $5 million but kept these valuable programs intact. In June, India’s government provisionally approved a huge loophole in a 2012 ban on child work under the age of 14. Unfortunately, it allows children under that age to work in “family enterprises,” which will make child labor laws harder to enforce. Last […]

10

Hyatt Hotels Chain Signs ‘The Code’

By CLC Contributing Writer Mary Donovan On December 10, 2015, Hyatt Hotels Corporation re-affirmed its efforts to fight child trafficking by signing a code of conduct known simply as “the Code.” This is a big step forward in the fight against human trafficking and the abuse and exploitation of girls and young women, and in some cases, boys and young men caught in the so-called “sex industry.” The Code is an industry-driven initiative to prevent the sexual exploitation of children in the tourism industry through awareness, tools, and support. It was developed by End Child Prostitution and Trafficking (EPCAT) the United Nations World Tourism Organization, and UNICEF. The sexual exploitation of children often takes place in hotels. Hotels are a prime place for this crime because traffickers and pimps can avoid being caught by paying for hotel rooms in cash and switching rooms nightly. Polaris, a global anti-trafficking non-profit, reported that 35% of survivors said hotels and motels were the primary places sexual exploitation occurred. These facts make the tourism industry a good place to start to combat the sexual exploitation of children. When an organization signs the Code, they commit to following six steps. These steps include training employees and providing information for travelers on how to report suspected cases, adding clauses to contracts with a zero tolerance policy […]