Illegal child labor in Mexico puts food on tables of Americans (300,000 kids U.N. says)

[Omaha Steve]

I almost posted this in the Labor Forum. But I want more people to see this HERE!


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/05/09/20080509childlabor0509.html

by Chris Hawley - May. 9, 2008 12:00 AM
Republic Mexico City Bureau

MEXICO CITY - Ten-year-old Adriana Salgado spends her days in a field in northwestern Mexico, picking the spinach, cabbage and other vegetables that fill American salad bowls. Adriana doesn't know how to read. She attends school for only one hour a day.

Her 15-year-old sister, who works with her, can't read, either. Adriana had an 8-year-old brother, too, until he was crushed to death by a tractor while working in a tomato field last year.


Ivan Garcia, 15 (center), who says he started working in the fields when he was 13, cuts broccoli near Celaya, Mexico. Children under 15 make up 20 percent of Mexico's migrant farmworkers, the Mexican Labor Secretariat says.


About 300,000 youngsters such as Adriana work illegally in Mexico's fields, the U.N. Children's Fund says, making child labor a major link in the chain that increasingly supplies American dinner tables.

In his annual May Day speech last week, Mexican Labor Secretary Javier Lozano pledged to eradicate child labor and impose "the quick application of workplace law." But with thousands of poor families dependent on the money that their children bring in, experts say it is an uphill battle.

"It is the worst form of exploitation," said Nayeli Ramírez, director of Ririki Social Intervention, a Mexican group that campaigns for children's rights.

Mexican law prohibits children 13 and younger from working, and those 14 to 16 can work only in jobs that do not "jeopardize their development." That clause is not defined.

FULL story at link.

And people wonder why immigrants come here?


More on this topic (at link)

Child-labor facts

Migrant farmworkers in Mexico under age 15:

300,000, or 20 percent.

Percentage that attend school full time:

Less than 10 percent.

Typical labor hours:

7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Typical wage:

$6 to $10 a day.

Sources: Mexican Labor Secretariat, UNICEF, Education Secretariat, National Teachers' University.

[Kali]

1. any mention of who owns those farms?

Every time I go down to Casas Grandes I see more huge American style fields - with deep well pivot irrigation in former desert/grasslands.

edit spelling

[Duke Newcombe]

2. I wonder when, if ever...

...Mexico will get serious about eliminating corruption that encourages the "blind eye" to these abuses?

Duke

[otherlander]

3. When the ballots are no longer sent to Veracruz landfills.

[Popol Vuh]

6. I myself wonder when, if ever...

...consumers will get serious about eliminating this type corruption instead of turning a "blind eye" on the products they consume.

My point is: It takes two to tangle.

[Duke Newcombe]

8. Not sure I follow you here...

In you opinion, how exactly do consumers encourage Mexican bureaucracy to turn a blind eye to child labor violations?

Duke

[Indi Guy]

7. NAFTA legitimizes corruption on both sides of the border...

Say no to CAFTA.

[rdenney]

4. Not to put this thread down, but up until the 1960's this was common amongst poor white and black.

children right here is the USA, who had parents that "worked the fields and orchards" for the growers, particularly so in CA, OR, WA and FL, to my own knowledge of the issue.

I agree 100% that young children should be enjoying their childhood's, not working.

[K8-EEE]

5. That's what Republicans want for America too....

they had public education funding poor kids or poor families...it was like that in the US before the New Deal, which the Repukes want to dismantle.