Defense of child labor

According to Friedman's theory, before the Industrial Revolution virtually all children worked in agriculture. During the Industrial Revolution many of these children moved from farm work to factory work. Over time, as real wages rose, parents became able to afford to send their children to school instead of work and as a result child labor declined, both before and after legislation. Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard also defended child labor, stating that British and American children of the pre- and post-Industrial Revolution lived and suffered in infinitely worse conditions where jobs were not available for them and went "voluntarily and gladly" to work in factories.

However, the British historian and socialist E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class draws a qualitative distinction between child domestic work and participation in the wider (waged) labor market. Further, the usefulness of the experience of the industrial revolution in making predictions about current trends has been disputed. Economic historian Hugh Cunningham, author of Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500, notes that:

"Fifty years ago it might have been assumed that, just as child labor had declined in the developed world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so it would also, in a trickle-down fashion, in the rest of the world. Its failure to do that, and its re-emergence in the developed world, raise questions about its role in any economy, whether national or global." Child laborers on a farm in Maine, October 1940 Big Bill Haywood, a leading labor organizer and leader of the Western Federation of Miners and a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World famously claimed "the worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children!"

According to Friedman's theory, before the Industrial Revolution virtually all children worked in agriculture. During the Industrial Revolution many of these children moved from farm work to factory work. Over time, as real wages rose, parents became able to afford to send their children to school instead of work and as a result child labor declined, both before and after legislation. Austrian school economist Murray Rothbard also defended child labor, stating that British and American children of the pre- and post-Industrial Revolution lived and suffered in infinitely worse conditions where jobs were not available for them and went "voluntarily and gladly" to work in factories.

However, the British historian and socialist E.P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class draws a qualitative distinction between child domestic work and participation in the wider (waged) labor market. Further, the usefulness of the experience of the industrial revolution in making predictions about current trends has been disputed. Economic historian Hugh Cunningham, author of Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500, notes that:

"Fifty years ago it might have been assumed that, just as child labor had declined in the developed world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so it would also, in a trickle-down fashion, in the rest of the world. Its failure to do that, and its re-emergence in the developed world, raise questions about its role in any economy, whether national or global." Child laborers on a farm in Maine, October 1940 Big Bill Haywood, a leading labor organizer and leader of the Western Federation of Miners and a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World famously claimed "the worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children!"

Recent child labor incidents

After the news of child labourers working in embroidery industry was uncovered in the Sunday Observer on 28 October 2007, BBA activists swung into action. The GAP Inc. in a statement accepted that the child labourers were working in production of GAP Kids blouses and has already made a statement to pull the products from the shelf. In spite of the documentation of the child labourers working in the high-street fashion and admission by all concerned parties, only the SDM could not recognise these children as working under conditions of slavery and bondage. Distraught and desperate that these collusions by the custodians of justice, founder of BBA Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson of Global March Against Child Labour appealed to the Honourable Chief Justice of Delhi High Court through a letter at 11.00 pm.

This order by the Honourable Chief Justice comes when the government is taking an extremely retrogressive stance on the issue of child labour in sweatshops in India and threatening 'retaliatory measures' against child rights organisations. In a parallel development, Global March Against Child Labour and BBA are in dialogue with the GAP Inc. and other stakeholders to work out a positive strategy to prevent the entry of child labour in to sweatshops and device a mechanism of monitoring and remedial action. GAP Inc. Senior Vice President, Dan Henkle in a statement said: "We have been making steady progress, and the children are now under the care of the local government. As our policy requires, the vendor with which our order was originally placed will be required to provide the children with access to schooling and job training, pay them an ongoing wage and guarantee them jobs as soon as they reach the legal working age. We will now work with the local government and with Global March to ensure that our vendor fulfils these obligations."

Wage labour

Wage labour is the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour under a contract (employment), and the employer buys it, often in a labour market.Need quotation on talk to verifyIt is the effort that people devote to a task for which they are paid The products of labour become the employer's property. A wage labourer is a person whose primary means of income is to sell labour in this way.Wage labour has existed in one form or another for thousands of years in many different kinds of societies, though it is most prevalent in capitalist systems.

The phrase is also sometimes used to mean the labor done for an employer in exchange for a wage.

The most common form of wage labour currently is a contract in which a "free" worker sells his labour for a predetermined time (e.g. a few months or a year), in return for a money-wage or salary. However, wage labour takes many other forms, and many different kinds of contracts and forms of remuneration are possible. Economic history shows a great variety of ways in which labour is traded and exchanged. The differences show up in the form of:The worker could be employed also as an apprentice. a worker could be assigned by the political authorities to a task, he could be a semi-slave or a serf bound to the land who is hired out part of the time. So the labour might be performed on a more or less voluntary basis, or on a more or less involuntary basis, in which there are many gradations.

Employment status

Employment status: a worker could be employed full-time, part-time, or on a casual basis. He could be employed for example temporarily for a specific project only, or on a permanent basis. Part-time wage labour could combine with part-time self-employment. The worker could be employed also as an apprentice. civil (legal) status: the worker could for example be a free citizen, an indentured labourer, the subject of forced labour (including some prison or army labour); a worker could be assigned by the political authorities to a task, he could be a semi-slave or a serf bound to the land who is hired out part of the time. So the labour might be performed on a more or less voluntary basis, or on a more or less involuntary basis, in which there are many gradations. method of payment (remuneration or compensation). The work done could be paid "in cash" (a money-wage) or "in kind" (through receiving goods and/or services), or in the form of "piece rates" where the wage is directly dependent on how much the worker produces. In some cases, the worker might be paid in the form of credit used to buy goods and services, or in the form of stock options or shares in an enterprise.method of hiring: the worker might engage in a labour-contract on his own initiative, or he might hire out his labour as part of a group. But he may also hire out his labour via an intermediary (such as an employment agency) to a third party. In this case, he is paid by the intermediary, but works for a third party which pays the intermediary. In some cases, labour is subcontracted several times, with several intermediaries. Another possibility is that the worker is assigned or posted to a job by a political authority, or that an agency hires out a worker to an enterprise together with means of production.

Critique of wage labor

The first point of criticism is on the freedom of the worker. The capitalist societies emerged from removing the alternative means of self-sustainment used previously by peasants. Historical records shows that every time people had their own land to cultivate for themselves, as was the case for most population in pre-industrial England, or in colonial Australia, they didn't commit to work for an employer. In such cases, laws had been promulgated to expel peasants from their lands, and to make the price of the land artificially high, so that a common person would have to work an entire lifetime to buy it.

The second point of criticism, is that after people have been compelled to no feasible alternative than that of wage labour, exploitation occurs. The worker is kept in a condition of mere survival, while the wealth produced by its work goes to the employer. And also the technological progress which increases productivity, is not used to reduce the work time and improve the quality of life of the worker, instead, it is used entirely to increase the profit of the employer. The employer who buys this labour power as it was a mere commodity, owns the labour process and can sell the products to make profit. On the other hand, the worker sells their creative energy and their liberty for a given period, and are alienated from their own labour, as well as its products.

Wage labour is often criticized as "wage slavery" by socialists and most anarchists.[citation needed] They see wage labour as a major, if not defining, aspect of hierarchical industrial systems. In Marxist terminology, wage labour is defined as "the mode of production where the worker sells their labour power as a commodity",[3] (and a wage labourer is one who sells their labour power.)

Opponents of capitalism compare wage labour to slavery (see wage slavery). For example, Karl Marx said "The slave, together with his labour-power, was sold to his owner once for all... The [wage] labourer, on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions... He [belongs] to the capitalist class; and it is for him... to find a buyer in this capitalist class."

Child labor

Child labor, or child labor, refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries. Child labour was utilized to varying extents through most of history, but entered public dispute with the beginning of universal schooling, with changes in working conditions during industrialization, and with the emergence of the concepts of workers' and children's rights.

Child labour is common in some parts of the world, and can be factory work, mining, prostitution, quarrying, agriculture, helping in the parents' business, having one's own small business (for example selling food), or doing odd jobs. Some children work as guides for tourists, sometimes combined with bringing in business for shops and restaurants (where they may also work as waiters). Other children are forced to do tedious and repetitive jobs such as: assembling boxes, polishing shoes, stocking a store's products, or cleaning. However, rather than in factories and sweatshops, most child labour occurs in the informal sector, "selling many things on the streets, at work in agriculture or hidden away in houses—far from the reach of official labour inspectors and from media scrutiny." And all the work that they did was done in all types of weather; and was also done for minimal pay.

According to UNICEF, there are an estimated 158 million children aged 5 to 14 in child labour worldwide, excluding child domestic labour.The United Nations and the International Labor Organization consider child labour exploitative, with the UN stipulating, in article 32 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child that: ...States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

Poor families

The first general laws against child labour, the Factory Acts, were passed in Britain in the first half of the 19th century. Children younger than nine were not allowed to work and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. In many developed countries, it is considered inappropriate or exploitative if a child below a certain age works, excluding household chores or schoolwork. An employer is often not allowed to hire a child below a certain age. This minimum age depends on the country; child labor laws in the United States set the minimum age to work in an establishment without parents' consent and restrictions at age 16.

During the Industrial Revolution, children as young as four were employed in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions. Based on this understanding of the use of children as labourers, it is now considered by wealthy countries to be a human rights violation, and is outlawed, while some poorer countries may allow or tolerate it.

In the 1990s every country in the world except for Somalia and the United States became a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC. However according to the United Nations Foundation Somalia signed the convention in 2002, the delay of the signing was believed to been due to Somalia not having a government to sign the convention . The CRC provides the strongest,[citation needed] most consistent[ international legal language prohibiting illegal child labour; however it does not make child labour illegal. A boy repairing a tire in Gambia

Poor families often rely on the labours of their children for survival, and sometimes it is their only source of income. This type of work is often hidden away because it is not always in the industrial sector. Child labour is employed in subsistence agriculture and in the urban informal sector; child domestic work is also important. In order to benefit children, child labour prohibition has to address the dual challenge of providing them with both short-term income and long-term prospects. Some mai ja bhosdinaloda youth rights groups, however, feel that prohibiting work below a certain age violates human rights, reducing children's options and leaving them subject to the whims of those with money.