Entries by Reid Maki

Child Labor Horror – 16,000 being Forced to Work in Jamaica

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Jamaica’s child labourers mainly boys 15-17 BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Observer staff reporter husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com AT least 16,000 Jamaican children are being forced to engage in some form of economic activity, even as the Government tries to stem the problem through work with the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Marva Ximinnies, director of the Child Labour Unit in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, said of the 16,000 child labourers, just over 7,000 are engaged in more hazardous work — which includes prostitution, the production of pornographic material and child slavery. This information, she explained, was taken from the last official survey that the ministry relies on for its data. The majority of Jamaica’s child workers are found in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries, while there have been prosecutions of persons who involve children in prostitution, she said. Other workers include street children and market vendors in the larger metropolitan areas of Kingston, Spanish Town and Montego Bay. Jamaica’s child labourers are predominantly male, aged 15-17 years. “Over 60 per cent of the children involved in child labour are usually found to be working in the agricultural sector. There were also children found to be working in manufacturing, construction and installation, while in wholesales and restaurants, a little over 4,000 were found to be working in those particular sectors,” Ximinnies said […]

Bringing More Danger Than Cash – Teens should be cautious of some summer jobs

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By: Nicole Collier TOLEDO, Ohio (WUPW) – When summer jobs are hard to find, teens might get desperate for work and cash. Minimum wage might not be enough to fund all of a teens summer plans. One local author says when opportunities seem too good to be true, offering chances for travel and loads of cash, teens should beware. Adventure, travel, rock and roll. At the age of 18, Adam Brandt was looking to start a career, and was seduced by a newspaper ad for work promising those three things. The job was selling magazines, but Brandt says the job was more about selling lies. It required him to be a different person every day. “I’m so and so from whichever college was in town,” Brandt explained. “As a part of our trip or year end classwork we’re selling magazines. Generally people feel more comfortable opening up their wallets to someone that’s local and from the neighborhood who’s trying to accomplish something.” Brandt says traveling sales groups like these prey on teens with big dreams of making it. “When you’re that age you want to do it on your own. You’re not going to tell your parents I’m doing this, or that, you say hey I got this job and I’m going to be traveling across the country making tons […]

HRW Lauds New Landmark Treaty to Protect Domestic Workers Global Labor Standards for up to 100 Million People Worldwide

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(Geneva, June 16, 2011) – The adoption by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on June 16, 2011, of a new, groundbreaking treaty to extend key labor protections to domestic workers will protect millions of people who have been without guarantees of their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today. Governments, trade unions, and employers’ organizations that make up the ILO overwhelmingly voted to adopt the  ILO Convention on Decent Work for Domestic Workers, which establishes the first global standards for the estimated 50 to 100 million domestic workers worldwide, the vast majority of whom are women and girls. ILO members spent three years developing the convention to address the routine exclusion of domestic workers from labor protections guaranteed to other workers, such as weekly days off, limits to hours of work, and a minimum wage. Domestic workers face a wide range of grave abuses and labor exploitation, including excessive working hours without rest, non-payment of wages, forced confinement, physical and sexual abuse, forced labor, and trafficking. “Discrimination against women and poor legal protections have allowed abuses against domestic workers to flourish in every corner of the world,” said Nisha Varia, senior women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This new convention is a long overdue recognition of housekeepers, nannies, and caregivers as workers who deserve respect and equal treatment under […]

Children Working in one of the world’s most dangerous mines in Bolivia

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Thomas Nybo, UNICEF POTOSÍ, Bolivia, (June 14, 2011) — Thirteen-year-old Agustin’s life revolves around mining. He lives in a shack right outside the entrance to a mine shaft at the famous Cerro Rico mine in the city of Potosí, where he worked two hard years digging for ore from the age of nine. UNICEF’s Thomas Nybo reports on young Bolivian children working in one of the most dangerous mines in the world. Back then, the older miners would only pay him the equivalent of $3 per day, so he quit and now leads tours of the mine instead. Cerro Rico, which means ‘rich mountain’, has been called one of the most dangerous mines in the world. It’s been in operation for more than 400 years, and once held the richest supply of silver in the Americas. “There aren’t too many children working here – it’s too dangerous,” Agustin says. “To get the minerals here, you need to go deep into the mine. Most kids work in mines that are less deep and easier.”

GOP Set to Roll Back Child Labor Laws

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JESSICA VANEGEREN | The Capital Times | jvanegeren@madison.com If you’re a 16- or 17-year-old looking to make some good money this summer, you could be in luck. Just in time for the long summer break, the Republican-controlled Legislature is expected to vote this week on a proposal that would roll back the state’s child labor laws, making them the same as federal child labor laws that govern 16- and 17-year-old workers. The move would expand the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds could work in any given week and on any given day, essentially treating them no differently than adults in the eyes of the law. The proposed changes —  pushed by the Wisconsin Grocers Association — were included in a lengthy motion authored by Joint Finance Committee co-chairs Rep. Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, and approved along party lines June 3 by the panel. They never received a public hearing and are now part of the proposed biennial state budget.

More progress needed to reduce child labor; Urgent action required on Uzbekistan, Domestic Workers Convention, and U.S. farmworker children

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Child Labor Coalition Press Release/For release: June 10, 2011 Washington, DC—As World Day Against Child Labor on June 12 approaches, the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) is alerting the public that more than 200 million children still toil around the world, often in dangerous jobs that threaten their health, safety, and education. Here in the United States, the CLC is applauding the anticipated re-introduction of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment (CARE), which Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) plans to sponsor once again next week. The legislation would close loopholes that permit the children of migrant and seasonal farmworkers to work for wages when they are only 12 and 13 years old, often in harsh conditions—10- to 12-hour days of bending over and performing repetitive tasks in 90- to 100-degree heat. “It’s time to level the playing field by closing these loopholes, which go all the way back to 1938, when the Fair Labor Standards Act was introduced,” said CLC Co-Chair Sally Greenberg, the Executive Director of the National Consumers League, a consumer advocacy organization that has worked to eliminate abusive child labor since its founding in 1899. “We must offer these children the same protections that all other American kids enjoy.”

Child Labor Continues – Unabatedly and Shamelessly

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 From [Newkerala.com]  New Delhi : Pramod is all of nine. His tender age, however, does not give him the luxury of a carefree and fun-filled life. He and his younger brother toil on the streets of Delhi, selling cigarette and other tobacco products for a living. “My family is very poor and there is not much scope to earn a decent living in my village in Kanpur,” Pramod told IANS, working in a kiosk in the INA market in south Delhi. “That’s why I and my brother came to Delhi a year back and we have been selling cigarettes here to earn some money,” he added. Said his younger brother, who said he was aged eight: “If we had enough money we wouldn’t have come here on our own… Maybe we could have gone to school.” 

Firms must do more to Fight Child Labor – Norway Fund

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By Oslo newsroom | Reuters OSLO (Reuters) – Europe’s largest equity investor urged companies to step up the fight against child labour on Friday and said nearly half of the 527 companies it surveyed were failing to address the issue properly. Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) manages Norway’s half-a-trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund, which invests the Norwegian state’s tax revenues from oil and gas activities abroad. NBIM is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world along with those of the United Arab Emirates and China. “In the three years since we began examining how companies manage child labour risks, we’ve seen an increase in the number of businesses that address these issues,” Anne Kvam, global head of ownership policy at NBIM, said in a statement. “However, the overall level of reporting on these issues is still far too low and companies need to step up efforts if the international community is to meet targets for eliminating hazardous child labour by 2016.”

Uzbekistan Weekly Roundup

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by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick [From Eurasia.Net] The annual meeting of the International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) proved to be a forum for a serious and methodical condemnation of Uzbekistan’s failure to eliminate the use of forced child labor in the cotton industry. Prior to the meeting, the ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations prepared a exhaustive report based on the testimony of non-governmental groups as well as UN agencies, notably UNICEF, detailing the state-sponsored practice of removing students from school to work in the fields, and threatening them and their parents for failure to comply with orders of local administrators to meet quotas. The Committee noted that Uzbekistan had failed to submit reports about compliance and failed to implement the two conventions signed on the worst forms of child labor. On June 6, the ILO’s Committee on Application of Standards then discussed the Experts’ report. As a result of ongoing concerns about forced child labor in Uzbekistan, the ILO Committee was set to include a paragraph in its conclusions that would flag Uzbekistan as an egregious case of violations of ILO conventions. Uzbekistan sent Botir Alimukhamedov, first deputy minister of labour and social protection to the ILO meeting, along with the smooth-talking Akmal Saidov, director of the National Human Rights Centre, who is […]

Child Labor – A Non-negotiable Evil

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Despite several Constitutional provisions and laws that safeguard the rights of all children, India has the dubious distinction of having the largest number of child labourers in the world. If one were to believe Government’s estimates, there are about 1.20 crore economically active children below the age of fourteen. However Non-Governmental sources estimate a staggering 6 crore children engaged as labourers across the country. Almost 70 percent of these children work in the agricultural sector, while the rest continue to languish in the informal & unorganized sectors like garment, embroidery, carpet weaving, glass bangles, brass ware, shellac jewelry, sporting goods, leather, plastic goods, stone quarries, mica & coal mining, tea plantation, brick kilns, construction sites, roadside restaurants and domestic work. India is the breeding ground for the worst forms of child labour. At least one crore or one out of every six child labourers is trapped in slavery as bonded labourer. Tens of thousands of children are trafficked from one state to another on tall claims and false hopes of a decent life. Several others are trafficked across the national borders. India is known to be a destination for large number of Nepalese and Bangladeshi children. Child prostitution, child marriages, “Devdasis”, forced amputation and beggary, children misused or abused by militant groups are some of the many forms of contemporary […]