Ethical Issues In Child Labor

Ethical Issues in Child Labor

What is Child Labor?

Child labor is work that children should not be doing, work that may harm their health and keeps them without education. While working children have no time for attending schools and get education that is the most important thing for their future life and success. But not all work done by children should be accepted as child labor. In other words, if a work doesn’t harm child’s health or personal development (educational issues), it is generally accepted as something positive and useful. Such activities develop children’s skills, provide experience and formulate them to be part of society. The term “Child Labor” is when children do work that damages their health or hamper mental or physical

115 million of them are estimated to work in the worst forms of child labor, 53 million of them work in hazardous conditions. Most of them work in Asia, Africa and Latin America. 60 % of them work in Asia. About 2.5 million children work in much more developed economies. Child labor exists even though laws eliminate it. There are many reasons that cause child labor:

Poverty and unemployment levels are high – As you see, the most of employed children work in less developed countries by economy. In such countries poor families and children may rely upon child labor in order to improve their chances of attaining basic necessities. According to U.N statistics more than one-fourth of the people around the world live in poverty that is caused by the high unemployment levels.

Free education is limited – U.N estimated that approximately 75 million children were not attending school. The education for the whole world’s children costs 10-30 Billion dollars that is 0.7% - 2% of the annual cost of global military spending.

Laws or codes of conduct are

Consequentialist theory followers.

Consequentialist theory followers focus mostly on the consequences of the decision and the action. The most famous consequentialist theory is Utilitarianism. This theory follows the principle of utility which assumes that the decision is ethical if it maximizes benefits to the society and minimizes harms. Here you look on the difference between benefits and harms for the society and if the benefits are greater than the decision or an action is considered as ethical, if lower – unethical. Here it is important to identify the stakeholders and an effects on them from actions or decisions of a company.

“You can think of a stakeholder as a person or organization that can affect or be affected by your organization. Stakeholders can come from inside or outside of the organization. Examples of stakeholders of a business include customers, employees, stockholders, suppliers, non-profit community organizations, government, and the local community among many others.” Shawn