Pros and Cons - Debbie Newman, Ben Woolgar 2014

Child labour can be justified
Section D. Economics

Child labour is often a taboo; in the words of the International Labour Organization (ILO), what it does to victims is ’deprive them of the chance to be children’. However, it has also been exceptionally common throughout history; until the twentieth century, even in Western Europe, most children worked, albeit part-time. This debate has two strands; first, whether even at its best, child labour could be justified; and second, whether given the said reality that many children who ’labour’ are in fact slaves, measures ought to be taken against it. It can be an analysis debate about whether child labour is right, an individual choice debate about buying goods produced with child labour, or a policy debate about legalisation. For the most part, the focus is on the developing world.

Pros

[1] There is no principled barrier to children going out to work; the ages of 16 or 18 are arbitrary limits, and many children are ready for work before this. The refusal to use child labour is based on an overly sentimental idea of childhood, rather than on a realisation that the culturally accepted age of adulthood varies hugely by country; if anything, preventing children from working is cultural imperialism.

[2] In many developing countries, education systems are minimal, and are certainly not free or affordable for most people. Here, the alternative to child labour is not education; rather, it is an empty, pointless existence, which would be made better if children could start getting good work habits and skills.

[3] In many cases, child labour is the only route out of poverty for families. Where there is a lack of state benefits, if the primary bread-winner becomes ill or dies, then children may need to go out to work to support their families. Alternatively, when wages are simply too low, it may take more than parents working to support a large family. Children may also be needed to help their families with agricultural work.

[4] The legalisation of child labour would bring it out of the criminal underworld in which it presently operates, and improve it. It is inevitable that desperate children and families will want to engage in child labour, and so it is better to stop it being a black-market activity in which children are used in dangerous mining activities, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Cons

[1] We are all entitled to a period of life where we are free from the stresses and strains of ’real’ life, and have the chance to grow and personally develop. Children do not have the strength or stamina to do full-time work; these are objective facts, and not cross-cultural variations.

[2] It is a caricature to paint developing countries as lacking education systems; most do, and progress is rapid. Between 2000 and 2008, the enrolment rate in primary education globally rose from 80 per cent to 89 per cent, and this is the one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that has been broadly successful. If child labour is encouraged, more parents will take their children out of school to work, undermining this progress.

[3] Child labour is not a viable or helpful route out of poverty. First, because it pays very poorly, it rarely offers much to families anyway. Second, it hurts children’s long-term financial prospects, because educated children will earn more. Third, it may act as a smokescreen for a failure to provide adequate foreign aid to alleviate this poverty.

[4] Child labour is very hard to regulate, and child workers are easy to use, because they cannot speak out. This means that child labour will always be closely associated with slavery, abuse and the use of children for dangerous work. Legalisation would not have stopped recent labour abuses, but does increase the group of children who can be abused.

Possible motions

This House would buy goods made with child labour.

This House believes child labour is morally acceptable.

This House supports child labour.

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