Morality Of Child Labor

In today’s day and age, there is a growing debate over the status and morals of child labor. Many people and organizations across the world trying to decide whether or not big companies that hire young children should be supported. Although it could be said that there are higher quality control standards in many factories where children work today, there are many other reasons why people shouldn’t support companies that employ minors. These reasons include the safety issues that come with kids working and the extremely insufficient pay that these young workers are receiving. Due to the extreme conditions and low wages, our modern society shouldn’t purchase products manufactured using child labor.
To begin, safety is a major problem when it

Many workers across the world are being paid below minimum wage, and even below the minimum to live adequately. There are thousands of workers that work to stitch soccer balls for a company, Saga, and most of them have worked there for their entire lives. “For Sialkot's 45,000 stitchers, who earn less than $100 a month on average, soccer balls are a way of life.”, “By severing its contract with Saga, Nike is likely to score moral points with its customers in the West. But it's also likely, observers agree, to sink Saga, a corporate giant that makes about 6 million of Pakistan's annual production of 40-million soccer balls. Saga estimates that as many as 20,000 families could be affected, since 70 percent of the local market relies on them for work” (Is Doing the Right Thing Wrong, Montero). The children that work at factories such as Nike shoe factories are making so little, which makes it difficult to support their families and themselves. Not only does this make the lives of the children difficult, but it is also illegal in the U.S. Companies should pay workers the same amount in factories all around the world. Poor wages are bad enough for adults, but even worse for children that are in terrible

“At overseas factories that produce Nike shoes, the company said, it would tighten air-quality controls to insure that the air breathed by workers meets the same standards enforced by the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration at home” (Cushman Jr.). However, factories still have very poor conditions besides the air quality. For years, Nike wouldn’t have child and human labor groups audit the conditions of their factories overseas, which is very suspicious. The only reason why Nike shouldn’t allow this would be that they were hiding something, such as substandard working conditions. Working conditions are important to the life of workers, and if they are unsatisfactory, it isn’t safe.
In summary, people should not support or buy products from companies that employ children as laborers. Since harsh work environments and low wages make working difficult for young children, these jobs are too risky for kids to sustain. Today, heavier security is needed to make sure that underaged employees aren’t woking in factories. “Some say that Nike could have done more. Adidas maintains its own internal monitoring cell in Sialkot; Nike does not, observers say” (Montero). Regardless, child labor is still an issue, whether everyone chooses to see it as that or not, and a solution is yet to