Throughout our text, we offer chapter-by-chapter Ethical Dilemmas. What would you do in the case of underage workers at a subcontractor’s plant in Viet Nam? Slave laborers making your Nikes in China? But in a New York Times (Feb, 26, 2023) expose, the headline reads “Brutal Jobs Common for Migrant Kids. Well Known Brands Use Vulnerable Labor Force.”
Except the article is about manufacturers in the U.S. It opens: “The factory in Michigan was full of underage workers who had crossed the southern border by themselves and were now spending late hours bent over hazardous machinery, in violation of child labor laws.” In L.A., children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and help debone chicken for Whole Foods. Middle-schoolers make Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts for Ford and GM. Girls as young as 13 wash hotel sheets in Virginia, 12 year old roofers work in Florida and Tennessee and other underage workers are employed by slaughterhouses in Delaware, Mississippi and N. Carolina.
Migrant child labor benefits both under-the-table operations and global corporations. The workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the U.S. without their parents in record numbers. This shadow workforce flouts child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century.
The number of unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. climbed to 1/4 million in the last 2 years – three times what it was 5 years earlier. Nearly half are coming from Guatemala, where poverty is fueling a wave of migration. Parents know that they would be turned away at the border or quickly deported, so they send their children in hopes that remittances will come back.
But as more and more children have arrived, the White House has ramped up demands to move the children quickly out of shelters and release them to adults who will agree to house them. Caseworkers say they rush through vetting sponsors, and the government lost contact with 1/3 of migrant children. Caseworkers complained that the U.S. regularly ignored obvious signs of labor exploitation.
Classroom discussion questions:
- As a hotel operator, what do you do when you find 13 year-olds working for you?
- What is the solution?