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Comment by haltingproblem | Hacker News Reader

Can you explain this more. If it takes them 3 years to scale up, does it now mean all the vendors are locked in for that period. If a vendor starts failing quality checks will they still take 3 years to disintegrate them? If not then why would violation of their own labor standards take 3 years to remove them?

FWIW, except forced labor, I am against child labor standards since it usurps the wisdom of the parents without providing for that child. No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them. The alternative to working in a apple supplier factory might be working in a more hazardous factory or construction site.

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> does it now mean all the vendors are locked in for that period?

Probably contractually, yes. For large scale manufacturing there are agreements and purchases that look ahead years in advance. Parts and labor are allocated. If you have quality control issues at any point (which is common), you fix them.

> No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them. As anyone who has grown up in a country where child labor was normal will tell you, this is patently false. If it is the norm in the country in question, everyone does it and it is expected. Children who do not work and their families are in many cases ostracized. Then of course there are jobs and jobs, and a certain type of parent might vie for a job for their child that is less backbreaking than the average. But not working at all is frowned upon. Source: lived experience in Soviet Union.

> No parent no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them.

Okay, I was a child when my father (who could very much afford to feed our family) set up my first paid (cash, completely under-the-table) computer-related gigs. I would say parents often would want children to work if the work was something that would aid the child’s development and future prospects, even if not necessary for immediate support.

What that looks like for a middle class family in a first world information economy and what it looks like for a poorer family in a less developed country is likely to be very different.

But its worth noting that child labor standards are historically adopted to force up wages for adult laborers, so that child labor is not necessary for employed parents to be able to feed their children. So while I don’t agree that “no parent, no matter how poor wants their child to work unless they cannot afford to feed them” is true, I do think there are dead-end, body-ruining factory jobs for which that is true, and those are exactly the jobs into which that horrible choice is forced on parents by the economic conditions created by the absence of child labor standards.

Clearly I was not talking about gigs in the local supermarket or computer related gigs in the first world. My father also put me to work and we were upper middle class. This was purely for character building and experience and life skills. Those are not the gigs which land a 14 year old working in an iPhone factory in China.

I think you are agreeing and disagreeing at the same time ;)

Outside of the other concerns people have raised, it is important to remember even if all parents are making the right choice for their kids, it isn't always (and in many cases, isn't) the parent making this decision. For example, another case where Apple has gotten outed, they were actively aware of the forced child labor by the schools: https://www.channelnews.com.au/apple-admits-to-using-child-l...

And if you believe the children, they also weren't really being paid and had no choice to participate in these "internships".

I had a forced labor exception in my statement.

The concerns people have raised are fairly pedantic namely working in developed or semi-developed economies. That is the not the topic under discussion - 8-12 hour shift in iPhone factories is the topic under discussion.

My dad who grew up in a fairly prosperous family of humble origin in the third world worked through from age 10 to age 18 in the family concern. It is what everyone did.

Parents make plenty of awful decisions for their kids. They beat them, rape them, and more. Why is there an assumption that they’re doing the “better alternative” by putting them to work?

If American companies condone child labor, then they’re encouraging it.

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