Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work

9. The Politics of International Intervention

are able to keep for themselves the surplus value generated during a part of the working day. This use of the term is widely accepted in social studies, although the boundary is not always clear between acceptable returns on investments (without which capitalists will not invest) and exploitation of powerless workers . In the case of adult workers, combating the exploitation of labor means ensuring they are properly rewarded and working under tolerable conditions, not normally forcing them to stop working. This may be seen in the efforts of both organized and unorganized labor to achieve better wages, reduce the hours of work, and improve working conditions. With respect to children, however, “exploitation” is often used to refer more broadly to harmful work,14 or sometimes to any work below a certain age, changing the meaning of the term from its use in adult contexts. Some people assume that any child who undertakes productive work outside the family must inevitably be exploited (e.g., Schlemmer, 2000, 12).15 The definition of “exploitation ” is thus stretched (we believe incorrectly) to apply to any situation in which children enter the labor market. “Exploitation”—like many other terms discussed in this chapter—is a relative term, and as such is easy to recognize in its extreme forms (such as slavery and forced labor) but difficult to pin down in other contexts. What is a fair wage for a child when adult wages are unfair? Underpaid work of children is often part RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF CHILDREN’S WORK 176 TABLE 8.2 Potential benefits and harm in children’s work (continued) Potential benefits Potential harm Relations Broadening of relationships Independence and loss of with adults and peers adult guidance Relief from tension at home Harmful relations in the or school workplace Shared experience with Disrupted relations when working parents away from home Improved relations in the Social isolation home Tensions in the home Self-esteem Sense of achievement, Denigration, work not status appreciated Status Status in family and with Loss of freedom, dignity peers Gender discrimination, Empowerment sexual harassment Improved status for girls Recreation Escape from a dreary home Loss of leisure of a general situation of inequality, in which rich and powerful nations, social classes, firms, or individuals increase their profits or standard of living by paying minimally for the resources and labor of members of poorer communities. In this perspective, the work-free childhoods of wealthier people are linked to the exploitation of children in poorer communities, and the exploitation of children is seen as part of a wider exploitative situation (Nieuwenhuys, 2005; Bey, 2003). Protection from exploitation requires that children are properly rewarded for their work. But what is proper? Even with respect to adult labor, what is acceptable—and what can realistically be achieved in collective bargaining and labor struggles—depends on local economic and political conditions, on available technology, and on local expectations. When children are paid on a piecework basis at the same rates as adults are paid, they are not being exploited as children, although they may experience the problem of the general exploitation of labor. If children are paid lower wages than adults for the same work, does that automatically constitute age-based exploitation? With respect to time-based wages, children often receive lower wages than adults, and this is sometimes established in minimum-wage regulations. In the Netherlands, the minimum wage is scaled according to age: there is no minimum wage for workers below the age of fifteen (although various kinds of paid employment are permitted from age thirteen), and a fifteen-year-old is entitled to only a third of the full adult minimum wage, gradually increasing to the full adult minimum wage at the age of twenty-three.16 Similarly in Britain, the National Minimum Wage Act (1998, chapter 39, 1, 2, c) does not apply to those below the age of compulsory schooling (sixteen): in 2009, the hourly minimum wage was £5.73 for an adult, £4.77 for those under twenty-two, and £3.53 for those under eighteen.17 In these countries, therefore, age-based discrimination in wages is sanctioned and regulated. Paid employment is not the only context in which children may be exploited. Unpaid work in the home can be even more exploitative than factory work (Nieuwenhuys, 2000). We have pointed out that children can become effectively full-time but unpaid domestic servants within their extended families, and that children’s work is sometimes part of an exploitative...