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Americans thought child labor was a travesty ‘over there.’ That myth has been shattered.
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Americans thought child labor was a travesty ‘over there.’ That myth has been shattered.

ByEyes on Trafficking News

Child labor in palm oil industry in Southeast Asia tied to Girl Scout cookies In India, I have squatted with kids on towering heaps of smelly trash, helping as they picked through rubbish for the tiny items they think they can sell or use. In Congo, I have knelt at the 2-foot openings of unstable…

Child Labor Is on the Rise as Republicans See an Answer to Labor Shortages
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Child Labor Is on the Rise as Republicans See an Answer to Labor Shortages

ByEyes on Trafficking News

A grim truth underlies U.S. industry: the appalling practice of child labor, widely perceived as an anachronism, is far from a thing of the sooty industrial past. U.S. consumers may have a hazy sense that children labor somewhere in foreign sweatshops to manufacture their goods — but such faraway tragedies are too easily forgotten at…

URI professor discusses worsening child labor in the United States
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URI professor discusses worsening child labor in the United States

ByEyes on Trafficking News

KINGSTON, R.I. – March 13, 2023 -In recent weeks, the issue of child labor in the United States – particularly among migrant children – has come under new scrutiny. In mid-February, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a release detailing a $1.5 million penalty paid by Packers Sanitation Services Inc., one of the largest food…

Exploiting Prison Workers for Cheap Sheets
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Exploiting Prison Workers for Cheap Sheets

ByEyes on Trafficking News

It took Johnny Perez over four years of making hundreds of bedsheets every day at a factory to reach the top pay tier: about 32 cents an hour, nearly double his starting wage. He was one of the highest-paid workers at Coxsackie Correctional Facility—a textile manufacturer run by the New York State prison system. When…

CNN op-ed: Five reasons I’m optimistic despite grim new statistics on forced labor
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CNN op-ed: Five reasons I’m optimistic despite grim new statistics on forced labor

ByEyes on Trafficking News

Editor’s note: there are multiple videos on the original post’s page here. Terry FitzPatrick is director of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking, a coalition of US-based organizations working to prevent and combat forced labor and human trafficking in more than 100 countries. He is writing in his personal capacity as an expert with…

Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers
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Why unions can’t ignore incarcerated workers

ByEyes on Trafficking News

An estimated two thirds of the more than one million prisoners in the United States today are incarcerated workers. With many prisoners earning less than a dollar an hour, and those who refuse to work often facing vicious retaliation in the form of punitive solitary confinement, labor exploitation is an important part of what makes…