 Children for Hire
November 1998 IBEW Journal
Part II
"More than fifty-nine years after Congress outlawed child
labor in its most onerous forms, underage children still toil in
fields and factories scattered across America. The poorest and most
vulnerable among them start working before other children start
kindergarten. Many earn wages below the legal minimum, often in
exhausting, or even hazardous, jobs," reports Associated Press
writers David Foster and Farrell Kramer. "These children live
in a world apart from most Americans, hidden from consumers and
even the companies that buy the products of their labor. Yet those
products [are] sometimes as close as the local mall or the corner
grocery..."
The Children’s Voices
The AP described such children as Angel Oliveras, 4, who stumbled
between chili pepper plants as tall as his chin, in New Mexico’s
fall harvest; and Bruce Lawrence, at 8, already a three-year veteran
of Florida’s bean fields. Can you imagine a situation where
your child(ren) are victims of abusive child labor? Suppose
you are not a union member and are at the mercy of manufacturers
and farmers? Suppose you have to rise at 5:00 a.m. Sleepily, you
stretch your tired muscles before stepping onto a cold, concrete
or dirt floor. You are still exhausted from the day before, but
must wake up your five-year-old son to prepare him for the day ahead.
You must be in the fields by 6:00 a.m. He’s tired, too, having
worked until 7:00 p.m. the day before--as you did. His little fingers
are bruised from picking beans and cucumbers. Education is not an
option, because both must work to survive. Your heart is broken
as you think, "If only I had a regular job paying decent wages,
my son could go to school." You help him dress, and give him
whatever you have available to eat, and head out for a grueling
day. He may earn $1.00 for the day, and you may earn $2.50. This
is the grim reality for child laborers. Unthinkable, isn’t
it? However, for some children, the nightmare is ongoing--unfortunately,
in America and in foreign countries. Many of America’s working
children are not the ones clearly visible in such places as Burger
King, McDonalds or bagging groceries at the nonunion Food Lion,
although they are governed by the same laws that bars children under
16 from working while school is in session. Outside school hours,
anyone 14 or 15 may work in farm jobs that the U.S. Labor Department
deems safe.
The children’s statements, taken from an AP report, underscore
the deficiencies in their young lives--the crux of which is abject
poverty and survival.
Alejandra Renteria, age 6--pulling the visor on his cap down
over his eyes, "I keep my
cap this way...keeps the sun off my eyes. Adult rubber
gloves dwarf the small hands inside that snap cucumbers from their
vines in the soil of a vast Ohio fleld.
Six hundred miles away, a 15-year-old girl, who dreams of being
a fashion designer fingers a cheap jacket in a Manhattan sweatshop,
where rats scurry across dirty floors. Amid noisy machines and the
hubbub of women stitching, Li-qing Ni laments: "I like New
York, but not this place. It smells."
Ervin Smith once had free time to play baseball, but no more. "I
know there is another world out there," the Amish boy says,
"but I have to work." He has been a construction
worker in Ohio since eighth grade. He is 14.
Listen to Mercy Gandarilla, 10, kneeling in a cold New Mexico field
since 6:00 a.m. Dew has soaked her shirt and a deep cough comes
from her chest--"Cutting the chili," she rasps,
"I like it in the sun." When Jose Madrid picks
chilies in New Mexico’s blistering heat, he dreams of Colorado
mountains covered with vanilla ice cream. But he is pragmatic beyond
his 11 years. "I’m not good at math, but I’m good
at money."
Omar Cruz Gonzales, 15, who rises at 2:30 a.m. to pick mushrooms
for 12 hours in a windowless Pennsylvania shed. He sees no sun until
mid-afternoon. "I have to work. The dollars are here. "
When he was 12, Jaime Guerrero Jr., heard his arm break as a conveyor
caught his sleeve. Now 15, Jaime, who loads crates of cabbage six
days a week in Delaware says, "I’ll do something else
someday." These children are sometimes punished financially
for small mistakes. Omar’s employers, for example, occasionally
withhold his pay if he drops or dirties mushrooms.
Near Homestead, Florida, sisters Lakesha Brooks, 11, and Marie,
10, are already training the family’s next breadwinner--their
sister, Angelica, just 20 months old. "She can pick the
beans one by one," LaKesha says.
Perils Children Face
Every five days in America, a child is killed on the job. Many
are poisoned with pesticides. On one Saturday morning in mid-1997,
on a construction site in Port Arthur, Texas, 14-year-old Alexis
James bent over to move hydraulic lines for the pile-driving crane
he worked beneath. The crane’s 5,000-pound hammer broke loose
and fell on him, killing him instantly.
Working alone at a Tennessee junkyard, a task banned by federal
law, 16-year-old James Ford wanted to show he could winch up an
old Buick by himself. "As soon as I heard the metal twist,"
he says grimly now, "I knew what was happening."
The car’s fall left him paralyzed.
Joshua Henderson, 15, was electrocuted while removing a shorted-out
motor inside a Colorado car wash. The car wash was cited for safety
and child labor law violations. Children suffer fractures, loss
of limbs, sprains, contusions and burns--which didn’t have
to happen. It does not seem to matter that hazardous jobs, including
mining, roofing, sawmill work, most vehicle driving, manufacturing
of explosives, demolition and working near radioactive materials
are illegal for workers under 18. The U.S. Labor Department officials
say policing child labor hazards is a priority, but the "enforcement
staff is small." Violations persist in virtually every prohibited
category. Businesses were cited more than 1,655 times in 1977, Labor
Department figures show. Of 7,700 minors involved, 400 were 13 or
younger. AP writer Martha Mendoza, participating in a five-month
investigation of child labor in America, found that the toughest
labor laws are not enforced. Among the findings noted were:
Farmers, factory owners and garment sweatshops hire underage children
and generally get away with it. Also, the U.S. Department of Labor,
charged with enforcing the nation’s child labor laws, fails
to find the most vulnerable victims of child labor; maintains a
secret fine schedule that undercuts the $10,000-per-violation child-labor
penalty imposed by Congress; fails to bring criminal cases against
repeat offenders; and does not seize goods that are the product
of illegal child labor, as provided by law. Last year (1997), at
least 290,200 minors worked illegally in the United States--this
analysis according the government’s own statistics.
What is Being Done
Now?
To dramatize the plight of working children, present and former
child laborers, the International Labor Organization (ILO) convened
a comprehensive Child Labor Convention to "Propose new international
labor standards on extreme forms of child labor." A number
of trade unions, the AFL-CIO and non-governmental organizations,
have supported national programs of action to involve employers’
and workers’ organizations and other concerned groups. The
ILO is actively engaged in protecting the children of Bangladesh
and a model project, funded by the United States, is removing children
under 14, and placing them in schools. President Clinton has asked
Congress for $89 million to fight child labor abuses, saying "[it]
is the most intolerable labor practice of all." Included in
this amount, is a $30 million commitment to the ILO’s International
Program for for the Elimination of Child Labor, for each of the
next five fiscal years. On the domestic side, the budget proposes
$59 million to reduce child farm labor in the United States. These
funds would be earmarked for a $50 million increase in the Migrant
Education Program; will add 36 new investigators to enforce child
labor laws, collect data and enlist commercial sellers of produce
to encourage child labor compliance by their suppliers.
A comprehensive joint initiative among workers’ organizations,
civil alliance, child and human rights groups, was the Global
March Against Child Labor, officially launched in November 1997.
It began on January 17, 1998, in Manila, Philippines. During January
through June 1998, the march took place in 97 countries in Africa,
Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. The Global March
arrived in Washington, D.C. in May 1998. It’s message was clear--STOP
CHILD LABOR!
The massive teach-in and rally, held in Washington, ended an intensive
20-[US] states’ tour, and will conclude at the International
Labor Organization Conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Union leaders
and government officials, including Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman,
National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling and Senator Tom
Harkin (D.-Ia.), who had seen first hand the exploitive child labor
practices, on his investigative visit to Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, UNITE President Jay Mazur (Union
of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees), AFL-CIO, and
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman spoke of the efforts
being made to eradicate child labor worldwide. Said AFL-CIO President
Sweeney, "Child labor is part of the global market where new
technologies have enabled capital to flow freely from one country
to another. This has contributed to what we call the ‘Nike
Economy’--companies that play countries against one another
while seeking subcontractors with the lowest wages and cheapest
conditions. In the majority of these cases, the tragic victims of
the ‘Nike Economy’ are children..." It was learned
that nearly 60,000 children under 14 years old are working in the
United States--a practice that saves employers $155 million in wages
and benefits. Labor Secretary Herman added, "We need strong
enforcement, solid partnerships and business cooperation to make
sure that we will have an all-out effort to stamp out child labor.
We are going to especially target low wage industries and target
commodities, such as lettuce, strawberries, fruit... The bottom
line is very clear--we don’t want to subsidize the exploitation
of our children."
Many children participating in the Global March rally, spoke of
their experiences.And for all children across the world, it is hoped
that these efforts will make their dream of "living in a better
place," a reality.
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