Sweat Shops
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Many advocates for children argue that efforts such as Kielburgers are desperately needed because most child laborers work under abusive and horrific conditions. These workers often toil for twelve to eighteen hours a day in congested, dusty, dangerous environments that severely impair their health, activists contend. Some child laborers, advocates point out, face verbal, physical, and even sexual abuse from their bosses. Since most of them do not obtain an education, child workers cannot attain higher paying jobs as adults and stay trapped in poverty all of their lives, activists maintain. According to the International Labor Organization, a workers rights alliance, there are at least 250 million workers between the ages of five and fourteen in third world countries. This number may be as high as 500 million–half of the children in the developing world–if undeclared workers and domestic workers are included. For these reasons, asserts Kielburger, “we . . . have to push for education, protection, and the rights of the child.”
Other activists have taken a different route by implementing labeling programs that ensure that a specific product has been made without the use of child labor. Child advocate Kailash Satyarthi, for example, established Rugmark, a nonprofit foundation that allows consumers to identify hand-knotted rugs made only by adult labor. Rugmark inspects factories that wish to be certified as child-labor free and attaches special Rugmark labels to carpets that meet their requirements. Through these kinds of actions, many human rights activists hope to stop the abuse and exploitation of child laborers. “To do less with the knowledge that we have today on the extent of this problem is to be a coexploiter of children,” insists California state representative George Miller.
Taiwan has long been famed for its transformation from a developing country to an industrial colossus, however, in recent years labor