Ethical Fashion

Roughly 160 million children were subjected to child labour at the beginning of 2020, with 9 million additional children at risk due to the impact of COVID-19. This accounts for nearly 1 in 10 children worldwide. Almost half of them are in hazardous work that directly endangers their health and development.

14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.

Packers Sanitation Services paid a $1.5 million fine for employing 102 children to work in dangerous meatpacking facility jobs across eight states. Last summer, Reuters revealed that children as young as 12 — many of whom were migrants — were hired to work in a metal shop owned by Hyundai.

The media campaign to legitimize sweatshop economics & child labor

In Bangladesh, poor children under the age of 14 work as child laborers an average of 64 hours a week.

Children as young as 6 work up to 110 hours a week.

On average the children earn less than $2 a day. Some less than $1 a day.

How To Tell If A Child Made Your Clothes

Dangerous Jobs: Kids Under 18 Cannot Do This Work: Meat Processing and Slicing, Power-Driven Woodworking Machinery, Mining, Logging, Forestry and Sawmilling

US Dept. of Labor confirms Iowa’s new child labor law violates federal law:

Amputations, fractured fingers, second-degree burns and head trauma are just some of the serious injuries suffered by US meat plant workers every week,

Around a quarter of U.S. domestic produce is picked by an army of child workers who numbered an estimated 500,000 in 2021.

In Iowa, a new law allows children as young as fourteen to work in industrial laundries, and, with approval from a state agency, allows sixteen-year-olds to work in roofing, excavation, demolition, the operation of power-driven machinery, and other dangerous occupations. Jennifer Sherer, a co-author of the E.P.I. report, said, “Iowa’s new law contains multiple provisions that conflict with federal prohibitions on ‘oppressive child labor.’ ” It also limits employer liability for the injury, illness, or death of a child on the job. Adolescents are almost twice as likely as adults to be injured at work.

Packers Sanitation Services allegedly used child labor at three meatpacking plants in two states, according to the Labor Department.

The DOL asked a federal court to issue a statewide injunction and restraining order against the company for its alleged crimes at plants in Grand Island, Nebraska, Worthington, Minnesota and Marshall, Minnesota.