Child Labour In Canada

Child labour usually means work done by children under the age of fifteen, which limits or damages their physical, mental, social or psychological development. Some work does not harm children and may in fact be beneficial for them. Most people agree that when we talk about child labour, we refer to something in tolerable - young children denied school and play working simply to live, in dangerous conditions. Some of the worst child labour abuses involve mostly four and five year olds.
About 250 million children work in dangerous and unsafe conditions. The International Labour Organization estimates that at least one-quarter of all children in Africa work and in some countries it is closer to half Getting exact figures is difficult in countries,
Of course, it is also widespread in the free trade zone, where foreign companies go to avoid union and labour laws. Child labour results from a system, which creates poverty on a massive scale. We can not look at child labour just at the level of the individual family - we need to understand the class and cultural politics behind it. Child labour is also part of the economic structure in many countries, just like it used to be in Canada. Entire industries now depend on labour of children and families also depend on their children to work - some pledge their children's work in return for a loan or to pay back a debt. Children rarely earn a living wage; in fact they are hired because they can be paid so little. Parents of child labourers are often unemployed or underemployed and so employers need to hire adults, so that their children do not need to work. Employers use children because kids are cheap to hire and often uneducated. Children are not likely to organize trade unions and they have little power to demand better health and safety, fair wages or decent treatment. All over North America, children are employed in sweatshops, pizza delivery, car washes, agriculture and fast food restaurants. In town
Anything that causes or sustains poverty encourages child labour. For years, governments in developing countries have been restricting their economies to suit the needs of their creditors. International Monetary Fund and the World Bank demand that countries with big debts follow Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP). SAP's force governments to increase their exports, privatize schools and health care and deregulate industry. Countries re-route their economies toward export by encouraging foreign manufacturers to set up shop. They promise cheap labour, no unions and weak labour laws. SAP's have a devastating effect on poor families, especially children. The poorest and most vulnerable children have paid the debt of the Third World at the expense of their normal development, their health and their opportunity for education. Many parts of industry are increasingly contracting out parts of their production processes. This saves large companies high labour costs, factory overhead and makes it difficult to organize workers into unions. Local firms compete fiercely for contracts and look for the cheapest labour in order to win them and this most often involves the use of children. New manufacturing techniques also increased the demand for child workers and between 80-90% of employers in free trade zones are young women