The Kids on the Night Shift
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This article tells the sad story of a 14 year old boy and his community of mostly immigrant families in Virginia. The 15 year old boy is Marcus Cux, who came to the US from his village in Guatemala. Like many such young immigrants, his family sent him alone, knowing that under US law, unaccompanied children who cross the border illegally are generally allowed to remain in the US while their status is reviewed.
Like many other unaccompanied children Marcus settled with other immigrants, and found work in a Purdue chicken slaughterhouse as part of a night time cleaning crew. Such work is illegal but everyone in the area understands that children like Marcus desperately need work in order to send funds back to their families.
Cleaning crews use dangerous chemicals and clean dangerous equipment. For Marcus one evening this ended up meaning he was badly maimed after getting his arm caught in a machine.
More generally the article describes the dilemmas facing children like Marcus who have been sent alone to the US to earn and send back money, and the dilemmas facing communities and employers. Immigrant communities understand the need of children to work despite the law and demands for schooling. Employers are often willing to 'use a blind eye' when employing such children, partly because workers are in short supply, but also because they too understand the need of immigrants to earn money.
Other points made:
Over 160 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor, with 79 million doing hazardous work that endangers health and safety.
Jobs like mining, deep sea fishing, garbage picking, and pesticide spraying expose children to toxic chemicals, injury, abuse.
Causes include poverty, limited access to education, social norms, inadequate labor protections. Driven by demand for cheap goods/services.
Hazardous work can cause chemical exposures that stunt development and cause chronic illness. Physical strain also impedes growth.
Psychological impact includes anxiety, depression, trauma. Social development affected. Education and future prospects hampered.
Efforts to curb child labor face challenges like poverty, limited workplace monitoring/enforcement, corruption, industry lobbying.
Initiatives focus on prosecuting employers, rescuing workers, providing family support, increasing access to schooling. But issue persists.
Experts argue eradicating child labor requires systemic change - addressing root causes like poverty and ensuring protections. Access to education also key.
Consumers have a role too in demanding ethical practices. Businesses must ensure supply chains are not tainted by child labor.
Urgent action needed to eliminate hazardous child labor to protect children's health, safety, development and future. Problem persists despite past efforts.
some movement??
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/23/us/tyson-perdue-child-labor.html
Thanks Nuzhat. Certainly hope this indicates some movement. However, with so many states rolling back their child labour laws, the flow may be in the wrong direction.
ReplyDelete30 years ago, the biggest supermarket in Malawi was selling frozen chicken drumsticks from the USA, at cut throat prices, undermining the local chicken industry. I can only speculate that these cheap prices were made possible also by Mexican children working in US slaughterhouses. More damage is done, in Mexico, the US and Malawi by unethical business and practices, than any combined UN aid can make good. The UN should wake up and start putting their fingers unto such unscrupulous dependencies that continue to separate the ‘developed’ from the ‘developing’.
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