They're Paid Billions to Root Out Child Labor in the U.S. Why Do They Fail?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But I wasn’t remotely convinced that this industry is paid billions to root out child labor in the US. Was there evidence provided that indicates this?
Then, in 2012, they "reorganized" and became a for-profit organization. In 2022, they reorganized again. Their century-old reputation is now toast.
- They tell them weeks in advance they will be making an inspection
- The inspectors only work banker hours.
- Inspectors are low paid government workers making them susceptible to bribes and various other pay to play manipulation.
- No one really cares about the violations, its just about checking off lists to say it was done.
- Status quo is what matters.
- Even when inspectors find something they often ignore it unless its truly egregious because it will cause more work for the inspector then ignoring it.
- Inspectors,even true believers in the cause are eventually worn down by the bureaucracy and push back from powerful people to keep status quo.
- https://www.propublica.org/article/child-welfare-search-seiz... - https://www.propublica.org/article/dcfs-illinois-investigati... - https://www.propublica.org/article/some-constitutional-right...
Thats it’s own mess, not relevant to parents point or anything having to do with corrupt private “auditors” turning a blind eye to migrant child labor.
Child protective services (CPS) is mostly a joke all over the world. It all stems from the same problem. You have to spent 24x7 for 18 years raising the child if you take it from the parents. There simply are far more abuse cases happening then there are people willing to raise other peoples children. Making a child takes moments. The resources of raising for 18 years is an imbalance that cannot be reconciled.
The answer must lie in strengthening the Labor department, but that's a whole another problem I imagine.
> the suppliers ... arrange and pay for the audits.
> After Mr. Callington failed three Walgreens suppliers ... the chain complained
> the supplier objected to his finding 21 violations when the previous audit had found none.
Who's paying for what.
Big vendor wants a shiny "responsibly sourced" badge.
Supplier wants a rubber stamp.
The real question is why bother with the actual audits?
It does not benefit you or I, plebes, but the holy few that are chasing profits at all costs while crushing everyone else.
The US has a history of doing highly illegal stuff for profits and the unwashed masses be damned.
This is just a lame attempt at saying that there's a problem and it's being addressed. It's like if you know your neighbor is very hungry and instead of inviting them for diner or giving them a nice meal, you give them a crinkled dollar.
ICE officials raided a few facilities a few years ago, and actually found about 900 undocumented workers.
Many of them gave evidence to officials, including written instructions from the company that advised them how to fill out employment, banking, taxation paperwork if they "didn't have documentation", i.e. Tyson didn't just know this was the case, they were actively enabling it.
And in press conferences, when journalists asked about any plans to investigate/punish Tyson, ICE "had no plans to do so".
What it actually ended up looking like, with some other safety issues raised around that time is that Tyson perhaps decided their undocumented workers were getting a little too angry about poor safety standards, and making waves. It would be entirely unsurprising if Tyson made a sweetheart deal with ICE that said "Hey, if you come to these plants, you'll get to make this big stink about undocumented workers" (and remember, this was during the Trump administration), "but in return, can you leave us out of it?".
"Won't someone rid me of these meddlesome workers?"
- migrant children show up and work and just lie about their age or supply forged documentation, which is impossible to verify for the company or any US agency.
- not enough government inspectors, and not enough latitude during inspections for private inspectors; e.g., having to request permission to show up on second shift.
(2) is easy to solve with money, but I have no idea what anyone could be expected to do about (1), unless you decide to aggressively prosecute companies relying on migrant workers, which is politically untenable for both parties.
Except it is possible, obviously, as the Department of Labor ultimately discovered the child labor. Auditing isn't simply looking over some spreadsheets, I've had to audit inventory before back in the day and we had to go to the warehouse and verify actual inventory. These auditors aren't doing their due diligence because these auditors aren't hired to find any issues, they're hired to provide a passed audit. The solution is that these audits shouldn't be privatized, or significantly heftier fines need to be levied to align incentives.
This is actually a very hard problem to solve. Even some American citizens don't have any government paperwork documenting their age, but fortunately the number is very low and they typically belong to groups that would not be applying to work in factories anyway.
> Except it is possible, obviously, as the Department of Labor ultimately discovered the child labor.
The article sadly did not go into detail about how they did it - presumably they discovered some blatant or documented discrepancies. It says only that they were "severe."
"People" will know because they often don't keep it a secret (examples cited in article), and obviously the families know, but auditors and government agencies don't have a way to actually prove it in many cases, unless it's egregious or there's contradictory documentation.
Are you also sure that some of those child laborers are not eager to work?
For some of the older ones going through the hassle of migration only to depend on state handouts may not be good enough and the probably need to send some earnings to their families.
The children yearn for the mines
Edit: those downvoting me, please consider that this is not necessarily the opinion I hold, I am not from the US and I might not have enough background information to even judge this. What I wrore above is what a 5 minutes on research on that phrase brought up.
1) https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/magazine/child-labor-dang... 2) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/us/roofing-ch...
If its use is causing emotions in you, then what a good starting point in a journey of self discovery? Why do you think it makes you feel so inflamed?
But you didn't answer my question, so I'll pass on answering yours (especially because it misstates what I said). Good day, strange stranger!
So many unanswered questions. You have a fascinating mind gnicholas.
https://old.reddit.com/r/BrandNewSentence/comments/xskbuh/th...
It's a difficult problem to solve, because people aren't very motivated to improve the economic situation in foreign countries.
I’m pretty sure the perception of a better quality of life is the main reason for migrant workers. I’ve never heard an H-1B say the reason they migrated is to drive down wages.
That’s not to say that employers don’t enjoy depressing the workers’ share of profits, but since migration to the USA is currently voluntary the desires of employers cannot be the main reason.
It isn't that Nike (or whoever) wants to employ children, what they really want is to not get caught employing children. And they also don't want to pay higher wages, and they don't want to pay supply chain auditors. So if they can get away with paying a rubber-stamp auditor, they can claim they did their due diligence and wash their hands of it.
Rather than regulatory body “random” selection for audit, private sector actually gets say in who is picked for their own audit, and if those auditors “find things” those auditors are no longer picked, and thus lose their jobs.
I don’t know if child labour auditing is specifically impacted by this issue, but most definitely other forms of audit and bargaining are.