Fair Trade Certified products are served at many national cafes and restaurants:

Ben & Jerry's Scoop Shops - Ask for Vanilla, Chocolate, Coffee or Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream.
Bruegger's - Ask for their daily Fair Trade Certified brewed coffee.
Caribou Coffee - Ask for the Fair Trade Blend.
Dunkin' Donuts - Order any hot or iced espresso drink.
Einstein Bagels - Ask for their Global Village Fair Trade Blend.
Indigo Coffee - Ask for their Global Village Fair Trade Blend.
Noah's Bagels - Ask for their daily Fair Trade Certified brewed coffee.
Peet's Coffee and Tea - Ask for the Fair Trade Blend.
Seattle's Best Coffee - Ask for the Fair Trade Certified Organic French Roast.
Starbucks Coffee - Ask for Cafe Estima.
Tully's Coffee - Order any hot or iced espresso drink.

Fair Trade Certified products are available at manyretailers:

Costco - Look for Kirkland Signature FTC Coffee
Fred Meyer - Look for FTC coffee, chocolate, tea
Giant - Look for FTC flowers, coffee, tea, chocolate
Kroger - Look for FTC coffee, chocolate, tea
Organic Bouquet - Look for FTC flowers
Safeway - Look for FTC coffee, tea, sugar
Sam's Club - Look for Member’s Mark® coffee, Neu Direction FTC wine, Peterson Farms FTC Sweetened Dried Triple Cherry & Cherry Berry Blend, FTC bananas, & online FTC flowers
Target - Look for Wandering Grape FTC wines, Archer Farms FTC coffee
Trader Joe's - Look for FTC coffee
Wal-Mart - Look for Sam's Choice FTC coffee, Peterson Farms FTC Chocolate Covered Dried Cherries
Wegman's - Look for FTC coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar
Whole Foods Market - Look for FTC coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, sugar, energy bars, body care products, flowers, rice

The Human Right Project

Here at the Human Right Project, we are all about getting the awareness out. We are trying to distribute the information so that you can make the right choices in helping stop this horrible problem. With your help, we can all join together to make a difference in this world. Lets do this the right way. The Human Right Way.

The Human Right Project

What is Child Labor?

Child labor is work that harms children or keeps them from attending school. Around the world and in the U. S., growing gaps between rich and poor in recent decades have forced millions of young children out of school and into work. The International Labor Organization estimates that 246 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 currently work under conditions that are considered illegal, hazardous, or extremely exploitative. Underage children work at all sorts of jobs around the world, usually because they and their families are extremely poor. Large numbers of children work in commercial agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, mining, and domestic service. Some children work in illicit activities like the drug trade and prostitution or other traumatic activities such as serving as soldiers.

Child labor involves at least one of the following characteristics:

• Violates a nation’s minimum age laws
• Threatens children’s physical, mental, or emotional well-being
• Involves intolerable abuse, such as child slavery, child trafficking, debt bondage, forced labor, or illicit activities
• Prevents children from going to school
• Uses children to undermine labor standards

Where does most child labor occur?

Child labor can be found in nearly every industry

Agriculture

Nearly 70% of child labor occurs in agriculture, fishing, hunting, and forestry. Children have been found harvesting:

• bananas in Ecuador
• cotton in Egypt and Benin
• cut flowers in Colombia
• oranges in Brazil
• cocoa in the Ivory Coast
• tea in Argentina and Bangladesh
• fruits and vegetables in the U.S.

Children in commercial agriculture can face long hours in extreme temperatures, health risks from pesticides, little or no pay, and inadequate food, water, and sanitation.

Manufacturing

Electroplate Worker

Photo: David Parker

About 15 million children are estimated to be directly involved in manufacturing goods for export, including:

• Carpets from India, Pakistan, Egypt
• Clothing sewn in Bangladesh; footwear made in India and the Philippines
• Soccer balls sewn in Pakistan
• Glass and bricks made in India
• Fireworks made in China, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, India, and Peru
• Surgical instruments made in Pakistan

Mining and Quarrying

Photo: David Parker

Child laborers suffer extremely high illness and injury rates in underground mines, opencast mines, and quarries. Children as young as 6 or 7 years old break up rocks, and wash, sieve, and carry ore. Nine-year-olds work underground setting explosives and carrying loads. Children work in a range of mining operations, including:

• Gold in Colombia
• Charcoal in Brazil and El Salvador
• Chrome in Zimbabwe
• Diamonds in Cote d’Ivoire
• Emeralds in Colombia
• Coal in Mongolia

Domestic Service

Many children, especially girls, work in domestic service, sometimes starting as young as 5 or 6. This type of child labor is linked to child trafficking. Domestic child laborers can be victims of physical, emotional, and sometimes sexual abuse.

Hotels, Restaurants, and Retail

Photo: David Parker

Some of the work of young people in this sector is considered legitimate, but there are indications of considerable abuse. Low pay is the norm, and in some tourist areas, children’s work in hotels and restaurants is linked to prostitution. In at least one example, child hotel workers received such low pay that they had to take out loans from their employers; the terms of the interest and repayment often led to debt bondage.

“Unconditional Worst Forms” of Child Labor

Child Prostitute

Photo: David Parker

8.4 million children are involved in work that, under any circumstance, is considered unacceptable for children, including the sale and trafficking of children into debt bondage, serfdom, and forced labor. It includes the forced recruitment of children for armed conflict, commercial sexual exploitation, and illicit activities, such as producing and trafficking drugs.

Child Labor in U.S. History

Breaker Boys

Hughestown Borough Pa. Coal Co.

Pittston, Pa.

Photo: Lewis Hine

Forms of child labor, including indentured servitude and child slavery, have existed throughout American history. As industrialization moved workers from farms and home workshops into urban areas and factory work, children were often preferred, because factory owners viewed them as more manageable, cheaper, and less likely to strike. Growing opposition to child labor in the North caused many factories to move to the South. By 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

Spinning Room

Cornell Mill

Fall River, Mass.

Photo: Lewis Hine

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the numbers of child laborers in the U.S. peaked. Child labor began to decline as the labor and reform movements grew and labor standards in general began improving, increasing the political power of working people and other social reformers to demand legislation regulating child labor. Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined, and common initiatives were conducted by organizations led by working women and middle class consumers, such as state Consumers’ Leagues and Working Women’s Societies. These organizations generated the National Consumers’ League in 1899 and the National Child Labor Committee in 1904, which shared goals of challenging child labor, including through anti-sweatshop campaigns and labeling programs. The National Child Labor Committee’s work to end child labor was combined with efforts to provide free, compulsory education for all children, and culminated in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, which set federal standards for child labor.

Child Labor Reform and the U.S. Labor Movement

1832 New England unions condemn child labor

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and Other Workingmen resolve that “Children should not be allowed to labor in the factories from morning till night, without any time for healthy recreation and mental culture,” for it “endangers their . . . well-being and health”

Women’s Trade Union League of New York

1836 Early trade unions propose state minimum age laws

Union members at the National Trades’ Union Convention make the first formal, public proposal recommending that states establish minimum ages for factory work

1836 First state child labor law

Massachusetts requires children under 15 working in factories to attend school at least 3 months/year

1842 States begin limiting children’s work days

Massachusetts limits children’s work days to 10 hours; other states soon pass similar laws—but most of these laws are not consistently enforced

1876 Labor movement urges minimum age law

Working Men’s Party proposes banning the employment of children under the age of 14

1881 Newly formed AFL supports state minimum age laws

The first national convention of the American Federation of Labor passes a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment

1883 New York unions win state reform

Led by Samuel Gompers, the New York labor movement successfully sponsors legislation prohibiting cigar making in tenements, where thousands of young children work in the trade

1892 Democrats adopt union recommendations

Democratic Party adopts platform plank based on union recommendations to ban factory employment for children under 15

National Child Labor Committee

1904 National Child Labor Committee forms

Aggressive national campaign for federal child labor law reform begins

1916 New federal law sanctions state violators

First federal child labor law prohibits movement of goods across state lines if minimum age laws are violated (law in effect only until 1918, when it’s declared unconstitutional, then revised, passed, and declared unconstitutional again)

1924 First attempt to gain federal regulation fails

Congress passes a constitutional amendment giving the federal government authority to regulate child labor, but too few states ratify it and it never takes effect

1936 Federal purchasing law passes

Walsh-Healey Act states U.S. government will not purchase goods made by underage children

1937 Second attempt to gain federal regulation fails

Second attempt to ratify constitutional amendment giving federal government authority to regulate child labor falls just short of getting necessary votes

1937 New federal law sanctions growers

Sugar Act makes sugar beet growers ineligible for benefit payments if they violate state minimum age and hours of work standards

1938 Federal regulation of child labor achieved in Fair Labor Standards Act

For the first time, minimum ages of employment and hours of work for children are regulated by federal law

Child Labour

© UNICEF/ HQ98-0464/ Balaguer

A girl working in the reconstruction effort carries a tile on her head in the city of Choluteca, Honduras.

An estimated 158 million children aged 5-14 are engaged in child labour - one in six children in the world. Millions of children are engaged in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery. They are everywhere but invisible, toiling as domestic servants in homes, labouring behind the walls of workshops, hidden from view in plantations.

• In Sub-Saharan Africa around one in three children are engaged in child labour, representing 69 million children.
• In South Asia, another 44 million are engaged in child labour.
• The latest national estimates for this indicator are reported in Table 9 (Child Protection) of UNICEF's annual publication The State of the World's Children.

Children living in the poorest households and in rural areas are most likely to be engaged in child labour. Those burdened with household chores are overwhelmingly girls. Millions of girls who work as domestic servants are especially vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Labour often interferes with children’s education. Ensuring that all children go to school and that their education is of good quality are keys to
preventing child labour.

National Labor Committee report on Chinese CE factories uncovers deplorable conditions

By Laura June posted Apr 14th 2010 4:01PM

Yesterday, the National Labor Committee produced a report on the working conditions at the KYE Factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong, China. KYE operates (like many factories in China) a live-work facility and generated sales of $400 million in 2008. KYE manufactures outsourced products for HP, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Logitech, and ASUS. Their largest customer, however, is reportedly Microsoft. The report details some of what we've come to expect in stories of labor abuses -- near children, most of them women, working for 16 or 17 hours a day, living in nearly deplorable conditions, for less than a dollar an hour -- all so that the world's ever-growing need for / addiction to consumer electronics can be fed. Now, the gadget industry isn't the only offender by a stretch -- but it's quickly becoming one of the largest (in addition to producing a truly horrific amount of toxic garbage). After the break are some choice facts from the report that our readers might be interested in ingesting, so read on.

• KYE recruits hundreds-even up to 1,000-"work study students" 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week. In 2007 and 2008, dozens of the work study students were reported to be just 14 and 15 years old. A typical shift is from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m.
• Along with the work study students-most of whom stay at the factory three months, though some remain six months or longer-KYE prefers to hire women 18 to 25 years of age, since they are easier to discipline and control.
• Workers are paid 65 cents an hour, which falls to a take-home wage of 52 cents after deductions for factory food.
• Workers are prohibited from talking, listening to music or using the bathroom during working hours. As punishment, workers who make mistakes are made to clean the bathrooms.
• Fourteen workers share each primitive dorm room, sleeping on narrow double-level bunk beds. To "shower," workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket to take a sponge bath. Workers describe factory food as awful.
• Workers can only leave the "compound" during regulated hours.

One worker is quoted as saying they are "like prisoners." The report also says that the disgruntled workers usually blame the factory itself, and don't make the connection between the companies -- whose products they are manufacturing -- and their horrible work conditions. The report says that these young people are clearly unaware of the wealth of the companies, and think only of their direct employers -- who fail to heed even the basic requirements laid out to them by companies like Microsoft.

Microsoft released a statement today saying that it is "committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers" employed by its vendors, and that its begun an investigation into the allegations of the report. It couldn't be clearer, however, from the ever-mounting pile of evidence, that nearly every major company selling us our gadgetry is at least complicit -- if not completely at fault in this situation. Microsoft (and all the other companies accused) outsource production in large part because of the cheapness of the labor provided by lax labor laws in countries like China -- which necessarily leads to conditions such as these.

As Engadget is primarily a source for news and information on consumer electronics, we feel it's our responsibility to help draw attention to this report -- this is our industry, and abuses like the ones detailed above should be dragged into the harsh light of day. We're urging CE-makers to make serious inquiries about the practices in their factories, and start making real changes that will prevent this kind of thing from growing as this industry moves forward. Engadget as a site isn't in the habit of taking sides or making political statements, but when something is so obviously an affront to humanity, it's easy to speak up about it. We urge you to do the same, especially to the companies you're buying your devices from.

THE HUMAN RIGHT