Child labor in the United States
Mort, Jo-Ann
In April the federal Department of Labor (DOL) announced it had undercounted the number of violations of the child labor law found in a three-day sweep conducted the month before. The...
...Other times, mothers working on a piece-rate system need assistance from their children to make enough money to support their families...
...The Mexicans were mostly from the state of Pueblo, a rural state far from the Mexican border...
...We followed the signs to a building on Thirty-seventh Street between 8th and 9th Avenues where we found a shop with no visible entrance, trash piled in the outer hallway, and a terrible stench coming from the bathroom, its stalls visible since there was no door...
...Of course we can...
...The department revised the number of violations, from 7,000 to 11,000, with fines close to $3 million...
...On another floor in the same building we got off the elevator to step over bags of trash...
...to 4:30 P.M.—punched time cards that revealed a different reality: working hours from 7:00 A.M...
...The women were earning below the minimum wage...
...He had no idea how much he would be paid, or when or how...
...Children are also working on family-owned farms, using heavy equipment and putting in long hours that may cut into schoolwork...
...Yet, according to Hugh McDaid, the director of the state's task force that polices abuses in the clothing industry, the "new phenomenon" in child labor is "children without parents, primarily Mexican" immigrants...
...I wondered if the workers he was inspecting would ever have the kind of chance his mother and her family had...
...Department of Health and Human Services to work with the DOL to issue a joint annual report on the state of child labor in our country...
...One inspector explained that if they're shut down, the shops reopen with a different name, a new location, and new workers...
...When asked, each suspect young woman contradicted herself in offering her age and the year of her birth...
...As we walked through the garment district, the inspectors told me that they could pretty much pick and choose among the shops—sweatshops with child labor could be found in any building...
...His 294 • DISSENT Comments and Opinions mother, recently retired, had worked for Bonds Stores as a fabric finisher...
...The shops employed between ten and forty people...
...and require the U.S...
...The growth of sweatshops has also led to child-labor violations...
...emblem...
...Federal proposals for strict high school attendance and other regulations don't do much for these workers, who are the underbelly of capitalism in George Bush's America...
...Penny's bag and other dresses with label names and the "Made in U.S.A...
...Representative Tom Lantos recently held congressional hearings, revealing that youngsters were getting seriously injured and even killed delivering pizzas for "Domino's" pizza, which guarantees quick delivery...
...exposed wires hung from the ceiling...
...require the establishment of a mandatory nationwide reporting system for injuries and illness to child workers with stricter penalties for violations...
...Passing a baby seat, we walked into a room with about twenty-five Asian and Latin workers...
...New York has been more vigorous than the federal government or any other state in fighting child labor...
...to 6:30 P.M...
...Most of the violations found by federal investigators are in retail trade, especially restaurants...
...There was no fire escape in either room...
...One of the states with the toughest regulations is New York, where pending legislation recommends changes in the labor law to compensate for children's school hours, tighten enforcement, and strengthen penalties...
...Yielding to congressional pressure, the DOL listed the names of violators, congressional committees held hearings, and the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report with some horrifying statistics...
...All were from Pueblo...
...It was in this building that I noticed fabric tied in a J.C...
...He said he still won't allow his wife to buy anything but clothes made in the United States...
...No workers on our visits were aware of the minimum wage or that it had just been raised...
...These numbers are only for detected child labor...
...According to the new GAO study, the number of illegally employed children was almost 22,500 in 1989, up from 9,200 in 1983 and way above 1970s levels...
...Although California ranks first, between 1983 and 1989, the GAO identified in Ohio approximately 2,400 violations of work hour restrictions, over 400 violations of the minimum-age restrictions, and at least 1,000 instances where children under 18 worked in hazardous occupations...
...fabric was stacked everywhere...
...Sweatshops are not only in the garment industry...
...The Asians were mostly Korean and Chinese, with one Thai owner...
...There is a proliferation of child labor among migrant farm workers, who are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which regulates wages, hours, and work conditions...
...This time we got in and found four possible violations...
...These statistics include all types of childlabor violations: in hours, federal minimum-age standard, and hazardous order restrictions...
...The state attorney general has been SUMMER • 1990 • 293 Comments and Opinions, intimately involved, as has the New York City Fire Department...
...They were sewing short cotton skirts with tags reading "Talbot's" selling for $42...
...He said she was proud of her salary upon retirement—more than three times what these workers were earning...
...In California, assembly member Tom Hayden has introduced legislation with the support of the ILGWU that would hold the garment firms and retailers accountable for conditions in these "contract" sewing shops...
...He had told the workers we were from the Immigration and Naturalization Service so that they would be afraid to talk to us...
...Nine- and ten-year olds sometimes sew next to their mothers...
...In the America of the 1990s, can we be returning to conditions of early industrial America...
...Toward the back a young woman (not a minor) was sewing, with a baby in her arms...
...The inspectors guessed his real age was several years younger...
...Across the hall was another sweatshop, where there was a fire escape but the door opened up to an alleyway and led straight into a brick wall...
...Teenage drivers with pit crews are continually competing in the `Domino's 900' race, where they usually have less than 900 seconds to sometimes make multiple deliveries," he found...
...Proposed federal legislation, introduced into Congress by Representatives Pease and Schumer, would strengthen data-gathering mechanisms...
...Tacked on every lamppost along Eighth Avenue are "Help Wanted" signs in Spanish...
...Another factor in the apparel industry is the increase of industrial homework, largely as a result of the Reagan-Bush deregulation of homework...
...The boy said he was living with a cousin but gave a suspect address on the Upper East Side...
...Children working for extra spending money may still be exposed to dangerous and unlawful conditions, but there are also kids from poor families working to help put food on the table or, in some cases, as the primary providers...
...With child labor—Burger King was one of the large offenders cited by the United States government—large corporations are cutting corners...
...SUMMER • 1990 • 295...
...By keeping workers at a part-time level, employers avoid paying benefits...
...she was an Amalgamated member...
...And he knew we were in the building because the doorman had slipped into the back elevator as soon as he saw us walk in...
...In Manhattan's garment district, in Chinatown, and all over New York City, children work side by side with adults, sewing pockets and collars just as an earlier generation of immigrant children did...
...I didn't ask, but her working probably helped with his college education...
...they can also be found in the restaurant and meat processing industries...
...We visited contract shops from Thirty-seventh to Thirty-ninth Streets, between Seventh and Ninth Avenues, in the center of the ladies' garment district...
...And we are...
...They said they worked from Monday to Friday, but when asked when they were paid, they said "Saturday...
...Often, the places exploiting children are out of the reach of regulation...
...The owner of this shop greeted the inspection team with a friendly smile, though he already owed $20,000 in back fines...
...One Mexican boy from Pueblo, who said he had just turned eighteen, told us he had come to New York via Los Angeles just two months before and had only been working in the shop for a week...
...Currently, garment manufacturers and retailers aren't responsible for labor law violations in sweatshops they hire to sew their piece goods...
...Behind her machine were two baby cribs...
...Similar efforts in California were virtually gutted during the Deukmejian administration...
...Yet, as we near the end of the twentieth century, children are wasting away— even dying—in "modern" sweatshops, fast-food joints, and backroom workplaces...
...As if the United States should be proud to produce goods in conditions emulating the worst of the Third World...
...No one has ever died of starvation waiting for a pizza," Lantos observed...
...One shop consisted of two tiny rooms with false walls to subdivide the floor with another contractor...
...Why child labor...
...The DOL cites a tight labor market, but union leaders in the low-wage industries where violations are pervasive say that there are plenty of eligible workers...
...It is the latter two groups that the federal government is less likely to pursue with vigor...
...And, in many cases, the loss of hundreds of thousands of unionized apparel jobs has resulted in the return to child labor...
...Workers who told us they were working eighthour days—from 8:30 A.M...
...They provide road maps for the inspectors...
...On a weekday morning in early April, I accompanied several investigators from the New York State Department of Labor's Apparel Task Force on raids in New York City's garment district...
...Workers in the shops were evenly divided between Mexicans and Asians...
...require states to rewrite rules regarding work permits so that copies are filed with the state's department of health, education, or labor...
...Except for one shop that had brought itself up to code, each place we visited was a grab bag of violations: faulty wiring, blocked staircases, no fire escapes, bundles of cut fabric piled near the door ready for someone to take home, workers paid off the books and unaware of the minimum wage, several unaware of what their salary would be or when or how they would be paid...
...One can only guess at the number of children working illegally in Los Angeles, especially since the apparel industry there is largely nonunion and made up of new immigrants from Latin America...
...When one of the state labor department inspectors heard I work for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, he told me he thought the "Amalgamated was one of the best unions...
...They're likely to keep shuffling from sweatshop to sweatshop, with periodic visits back home...
...These workers—especially the unaccompanied children—are so far from the mainstream of this country that it's difficult to imagine how they will ever make their way into society...
...Lacking affordable child care, mothers bring their kids to the shops, where employers put them to work...
...If a minor gets dismissed from one shop, he or she moves on to another, though the contractor is still liable for the violation...
...These children are illegal workers for whom stricter regulation will make little or no difference...
...He had an innocent, charming smile, though he was visibly frightened...
...Almost all said they were paid in cash when paid...
...There are two categories of child laborers...
...See Dissent, Spring 1988, "Return of the Sweatshop...
...The inspectors had visited this shop a few weeks earlier with a television crew, but the owner had refused to unlock the heavy steel doors for them...
...At a New York State Assembly hearing, Joe Tierno, a United Food and Commercial Workers representative, testified that "there are literally thousands of UFCW members who would be more than happy to have additional hours tacked onto their part-time schedules...
Vol. 37 • July 1990 • No. 3
