Think Before You Buy: Child Labor Still Exists
Written by Katelynn Mosher, Former Student on Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Hershey's Chocolate is one of the most favorite candies that high schoolers enjoy. Our society today sees something pretty and immediately wants it, only for the look or function. So what do we do? Buy them of course! But, did you even stop to think of where those products you just purchased were made? Or how? Most of us don’t; those things don’t seem that important.
What is important is the estimated 22,000 lives lost a year to make those products you just can’t live without. Then you find out that that those lives belonged to children, children whose ages varied from five to seventeen. When we, as Americans, purchase items that were made by children in other countries, we are giving them the okay. The money we give them allow those children another chance to get hurt even worse or die on the job.
Take a moment and think about your Apple product. Do you know where it comes from? It is made in China, inside a factory called Foxconn Shenzhen, and is constructed by minors who receive seventy cents an hour for a sixteen hour work day. 11.20 dollars is what the children earn a day at that factory. Not to mention the horrid work conditions they face. Due to this, there is a history of worker suicides as well as threats of mass-suicide from the workers in protest to the working conditions. All of this, just to give you the most recent technology.
H&M, a clothing retail store, recently escaped the spot light. H&M purchases their cotton from Uzbekistan, a country that just recently put a ban on child labor.
In the 1900's, America used child labor as a cheap way to get work done. Because of that, we are not in a position to scold a country that is attempting to thrive. However, we are able to advise and assist.
When we purchase products that come from the hard working children of other countries, we are telling them to continue using and abusing children who should be in school like us. The only way to insure that children around the world receive the treatment they are entitled to is for us to research the products we purchase and think about the real cost.
