Talk:Child labor

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The issue of child labour deserves further elaboration relating to strategies tackling it and to initiatives by international organisations, government, private sector and NGOs. Child labor is today tackled by international organisations, mainly the International Labor Organisation (ILO), government, private sector and civil society initiatives. The ILO has drafted convention against the use of child labour (to be mentioned with links) which have been signed and ratiefied by a growing number of countries. It has also agreed on Memorandi of Unerstanding with Employers Association in a number of countries (I can provide info on Bangladesh). Governments have enacted new legislation, directly (prohibiting child labour under a certain age (mostly 15), and restricting the use of child labour in certain hazardous industries (e.g. Government of India), and indirectly (compulsory education) targeting child labour. Private Sector has agreed on Code of Conducts and monitoring agreements to reduce or prohibit the use of child labour (e.g. H&M in garment industry). Civil society initiatives have launched many shaming campaigns on the issue of child labour (e.g. Clean Clothes Campaign, South Asian Coalition Aganist Child Servitude), mainly targeting multinational companies (Nike, Adidas) which operate and produce in in developing countries. Subsequently some of these companies have addressed the issue by agreeing on Code of Conducts and doing social auditing (e.g. SA 8000). Many NGOs are active in prevention of child labour through campaigns, relief to (freed) child labourers and rehabilitation of child labourers. The Global March Against Child Labour has been one of the major initiatives to make the issue more public other initiative include Rugmark (carpet industry, several countries) and CareFair (carpet industry, South Asia, several countries).

Contents 1 Amoral view 2 Economists like Milton Friedman 3 Opening 4 Neutrality: Undue Weight

[edit] Amoral view

Amoral really doesn't mean what KDRGibby keeps insisting that it does. According to my dictionary it means 1. "not admitting of moral distinctions or judgements; outside the sphere of morality; non-moral. 2. Lacking moral judgement or sensibility; unable to distinguish between right or wrong". It would be possible to have an amoral view of the issue, I suppose, but it would be something along the lines of "so what?" Friedman, the main authority cited, admits of moral distinctions and judgements as much as any other social commentator - why else bang on about "freedom", after all? What I think you are aiming at is something more like "morally-neutral" or "detached". However, if we admit that there is a view of this issue that is not bound up with moral judgements, we assert that that view is rational, objective and scientific, in contrast to the purely emotional (and therefore irrational and wrong) view of others. For those reasons, I think that whichever way it is phrased any attempt to divide arguments into moral and not moral is going to fall foul of POV. Mattley ^(Chattley) 19:12, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. It's too weird for the title of a section. RJII 19:18, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Asia is a good continent

[edit] Economists like Milton Friedman

This is sloppy wording. Is this a claim that Friedman himself has made? Or is it a claim made by economists who share some characteristics with Friedman? If so, which? I have thought of a few possibilities:

"Nonagenarian economists like Milton Friedman..."

"Economists of Jewish Hungarian origin like Milton Friedman..."

"Economists who have made controversial visits to South American dictatorships like Milton Friedman..."

But I'm guessing none of these are what the author intended... Seriously, what are we saying here? Is this a common "free market economist" position, or what? Mattley ^(Chattley) 16:44, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Opening

I reworked the opening to this article. “perceived exploitation” is a cop-out, so I removed it, and addressed the term in the second sentence. I also changed “In some poor countries, it is considered inappropriate…” to what I imagine was the original wording of “In many countries, it is considered inappropriate…” and removed the accompanying text “or ethnic minorities doing agricultural-based work.” Irony/sarcasm doesn’t work that well in this medium. I also added a couple references to the United Nations, and the ILO.--Bookandcoffee 22:47, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I restated the opening sentences. The first sentence reflects the definitions from here, and the definition from the UN is moved to the blockquote at the end of the paragraph.--Bookandcoffee 02:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality: Undue Weight

This article gives undue weight to libertarian economic assessments of child labor, and those assessments are too often presented as neutral (I have tried to correct that somewhat), such as the case with Milton Friedman. A libertarian perspective on child labor, while welcome, needs to be presented as a minority opinion, at best. Libertarian economic history runs radically counter to the majority of historical assessments of the reality of child labor, esp. in the 19th century.Wbroun 18:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't wiki about verifiability? If libertarian statements can be verified, then they belong. If you can provide verifiable statements that they are in the minority, then those belong too. No? The Gomm 21:39, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The contributors who tilted the whole article towards a libertarian perspective are misusing wiki, and perverting history. Truly "verifying" a majority or a minority view of child labor history requires more than a quick reference to a scholarly text, if that's what you mean. Try looking at child labor history titles at Amazon. See how many you encounter that pontificate on how child labor was actually just a temporary glitch in the all-wise free market. Still, establishing the verifiability of a minority view requires a comprehensive grasp of a wide range of primary and secondary sources, IMO. But anyone with a modicum of knowledge about 19th century western social history soon encounters a fairly general, widespread perspective which has no axe to grind: that only when legal protections of children were applied to 19th industry did child exploitation begin to dissipate in the west. This is well represented in popular histories such as the Columbia Encyclopedia:(http://www.bartleby.com/65/ch/childlab.html) A fanatic such as Milton Friedman argues that "the free market" would have corrected the problem eventually. That's a nice theory, but it's beside the point. Shoving libertarian view onto 19th century economic history is more about trying to communicate a narrowly observed political dogma than presenting an accurate view of history.Wbroun 00:51, 27 October 2006 (UTC)