Entries by Reid Maki

The Child Labor Coalition’s letter to Wisconsin Gov. Evers, Urging Him to Veto Legislation that Would Weaken Existing Child Labor Laws

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January 21, 2022   Dear Governor Evers:   The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) based in Washington, D.C., represents 38 groups who work to reduce child labor and the dangers of child work in the U.S. and abroad. We write with concern about legislation, SB 332, which just passed the Wisconsin Assembly yesterday. The legislation would weaken current Wisconsin child labor protections by lengthening the hours 14- and 15-year-old workers would be allowed to work—both on schools days and on non-school days. The CLC fears that lengthening the hours of work will increase student fatigue and increase the likelihood of students dropping out.  Extending school hours makes it harder for kids to perform school work, participate in after-school activities, do homework, and get a good night’s sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than one quarter of high school students fall asleep in class now. Driving to and from the job is one of the most common ways teen workers are injured or killed. Even if teen workers are being driven by older drivers, fellow co-workers, or parents after 11:00, their chances of dying in a car accident escalate with late hours of work. Drunk driving fatal accidents are four time more likely at night—the later the hour, the more likely the accident is to involve a drunk driver. Currently, […]

Child Labor is Growing: Which Side are the Democracies On?

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CHILD LABOR IS GROWING: WHICH SIDE ARE DEMOCRACIES ON? This is the Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. What can democracies do to make this a reality? By Timothy Ryan | According to the International Labor Organization’s latest report last fall, despite years of declining rates worldwide, child labor is indeed on the rise again. And the increase began before COVID exacerbated the situation. Shortly before Bolsonaro issued his statement, more than a dozen anti-child labor organizations from Central and South America came together in Costa Rica to take stock of the struggle and make plans for 2021, the UN-designated Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. One challenge had become clear: the surge in right-wing authoritarian governments across Latin America has threatened years of progress. “This is particularly worrying,” said Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Global March Against Child Labor, in 2019, “since Latin America has seen some of the most significant progress over the past decade to eliminate child labor.” Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his decades of rescuing tens of thousands of child laborers and advocating for the rights of children. From the viciously anti-civil rights platform of Bolsonaro to the string of authoritarian governments coming to power in Central America, child labor activists in the region feel embattled and under pressure. The forum participants from […]

Keeping Teens Safe at Work — Tips for Parents, Employers, and Teens”

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Tips for parents, employers, and teens: While work plays an important role in the development of teenagers, teens and parents should carefully think about prospective jobs that teens are considering and assess possible workplace dangers that those jobs might possess. Tips for teen workers NCL urges teens to say “no” to jobs that involve: Door-to-door sales, especially out of the youth’s neighborhood; Long-distance traveling away from parental supervision; Extensive driving or being driven; Driving forklifts, tractors, and other potentially dangerous vehicles; The use of dangerous machinery; The use of chemicals; Working in grain storage facilities; and Work on ladders or work that involves heights where there is a risk of falling. Know the legal limits To protect young workers like you, state and federal laws limit the hours you can work and the kinds of work you can do. For state and federal child labor laws, visit Youth Rules. Play it safe Always follow safety training. Working safely and carefully may slow you down, but ignoring safe work procedures is a fast track to injury. There are hazards in every workplace and recognizing and dealing with them correctly may save your life. Ask questions Ask for workplace training—like how to deal with irate customers or how to perform a new task or use a new machine. Tell your supervisor, parent, […]

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

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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 […]

10 Stats about Women and Girls on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2021

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Of the 152 million children trapped in child labor, 64 million are girls [source]. 73 million children are trapped in hazardous child labor—27.8 million are girls. 29 million women and girls are in modern slavery—71 percent of the overall total of enslaved individuals [source]. Women represent 99.4 percent of the victims of forced labor in the commercial sex industry [source]. Women and girls represent 84 percent of the victims of forced marriages, now categorized as a form of modern slavery [source]. There are an estimated 15 million individuals in forced marriages. Worldwide, there are an estimated 67 million domestic workers—3/4 are women [source]. 132 million girls were out of school in 2016 [source]. 9 in 10 girls complete their primary education, but only 3 in 4 complete their lower secondary education [source]. In low-income countries, less than 2/3 of girls complete their primary education [source]. 42 million people have fled their homes because of armed conflicts; 50 percent are women; 10 million are estimated to be girls and young women. [source] In 2017, there were an estimated 68.5 million forcibly displaced people, including 25.4 million refugees—half are women and girls. [source]

New CLC Press Release: Chocolate Companies Must Do More to Reduce Widespread Child Labor Confirmed by New Report on the West African Cocoa Sector; Due Diligence Legislation is Needed to Fix Supply Chains

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Chocolate Companies Must Do More to Reduce Widespread Child Labor Confirmed by New Report on the West African Cocoa Sector; Due Diligence Legislation is Needed to Fix Supply Chains   For immediate release: October 21, 2020 Contact: Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org    Washington, DC – A new report out this week confirms that the chocolate industry’s deep dependence on child labor to produce cocoa, a main ingredient of chocolate, continues unabated in West Africa despite nearly two decades of interventions and manufacturers’ promises to end the worst forms of child labor. The  report confirms what advocates at the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which consists of 38 child rights groups, consumer groups, and worker rights organizations (including several of America’s largest unions), have been saying for years. According to the new study by the research group NORC at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of child labor in agricultural households in cocoa-producing areas in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two primary sources of cocoa in the world, increased from 31 percent to 45 percent in the decade leading up to 2019.   The $3.5 million study, funded by U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), released earlier this week, confirms that rampant child labor still exists on Ivorian and Ghanaian cocoa farms. Researchers also concluded that the vast majority of […]

It’s Time for U.S. Tobacco Companies to Protect All Child Tobacco Workers with a Complete Ban on Children in Tobacco Fields

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By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition In 2014, under pressure from advocacy groups like the Child Labor Coalition and Human Rights Watch (HRW) concerned about hazardous child labor on tobacco farms, several tobacco companies operating in the U.S. announced they would only buy tobacco from growers who agree not to hire children under 16 to work in contact with tobacco plants. Child rights and human rights groups had been pushing for a ban on all children – aged 17 and below – from harvesting tobacco because of health problems related to nicotine exposure. These negative health impacts were well-documented in Tobacco’s Hidden Children, a report from HRW published in May 2014. “Children interviewed by Human Rights Watch in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia frequently described feeling seriously, acutely sick, while working in tobacco farming,” noted HRW.  Carla P., 16, who worked for hire on tobacco farms in Kentucky with her parents and her younger sister told Human Rights Watch she got sick while pulling the tops off tobacco plants: “I didn’t feel well, but I still kept working. I started throwing up. I was throwing up for like 10 minutes, just what I ate. I took a break for a few hours, and then I went back to work.’ Another child worker interviewed by HRW, Emilio R., a 16-year-old […]

The Death of Zohra Shah is a Call to Action: Child Domestic Servants Must Be Protected

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By Reid Maki Sometimes words fail. This is the case when I read the story, “Couple torture and murder 8-year-old maid for letting parrots free, Pakistan police say”—about the death of Zohra Shah, a servant in the city of Rawalpindi in Punjab. Her employers beat the little girl into unconsciousness because she had accidently let a caged bird, or birds, go free—a startling metaphor for her situation, working as a child slave entrapped in the family’s house. The police found many marks and bruises on the little girl’s body—some of them not new, including some that suggested to them that she may have been sexually assaulted as well. It isn’t hard to surmise that this Zohra’s life was a living hell. Not all child servants around the world are abused, but it is fair to say that because they work in people’s homes—often invisibly to the public—they are extremely vulnerable to abuse. The International Labour Organizations estimates that around the world 7.5 million children under 15 work as domestic servants. According to the report in the online newspaper The Independent, the girl’s uncle had hired her out. ‘“The couple had promised her uncle that they would provide her education and pay a salary of R[upee]s 3000 per month (£16). But they neither gave her education nor paid salary,” a spokesperson […]

COVID-19: How Do We Deal with the “Ticking Time Bomb” in Agriculture?

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It’s been referred to as a “ticking time bomb” – the Corona virus and its potential impact on farmworkers– the incredibly hard-working men, women, and children who our fruits and vegetables and provide other vital agricultural work. Farmworkers perform dirty back-breaking work and are notoriously underpaid for it and at great risk from COVID-19. Farmworker advocacy groups that NCL works with or supports like Farmworker Justice, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and a national cadre of legal aid attorneys have spent weeks strategizing about ways to protect the community which they know is especially vulnerable to the virus. Advocates have reached out to administration officials and Congress for desperately needed resources to support impoverished farmworker with little to show for it. Despite their essential contributions to the economy, farmworkers have been cut out of the emergency relief packages.  The Trump administration has even revealed plans to lower pay for agricultural guest workers who sacrifice home and family to come to the U.S. to perform arduous farm labor. Advocates fear that decreasing guest worker wages would drive down low wages for farmworkers already living and working in the U.S. Farmworkers are poor, with extremely limited access to healthcare. Their poverty often means they work through their illnesses. The workers often […]

COVID-19 and Child Labor

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COVID-19 and Child Labor by Verité, an organization that improves working conditions worldwide through a network of over 120 employees, consultants, and partners. As is the case in most crises, the most vulnerable in society will feel the worst impacts of COVID-19. Children, especially those from poor communities, are at particular risk of exploitation as parents fall deeper into poverty during the ensuing economic crisis and face appalling choices about how to sustain their families. Some may feel forced to send their children into the labor market while others seeking employment risk being trafficked for forced labor. COVID-19 may increase the risk of child labor in the following ways: Schools are closing for indefinite periods of time Children lacking access to the internet and technology, especially those from impoverished and rural communities, will be unable to participate in remote self-guided learning during school closures. In addition to the immediate loss of learning, some students may decide to drop out of school permanently. Experience shows that children and youth not enrolled in school are at a much higher risk of child labor. When schools reopen, parents without jobs may not have the money to pay for school fees, supplies, and uniforms. Freedom of movement is increasingly restricted This makes it more difficult for community leaders, social workers, and civil society organizations to monitor and […]