Child Labor in America: A Persistent Issue
This op-ed was first published here in the Washington Post on May 8, 2023.
Recent headlines about the widespread exploitation of children in America’s workplaces shocked me, as it did many in our country. It was all the worse that the exploitation targeted undocumented migrant children who had recently entered the United States, seemingly abetted by a Health and Human Services Department determined to clear unaccompanied children from detention.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise. As a documentary photographer of nearly five decades’ experience, I witnessed similarly cruel treatment firsthand in the late 1970s when photographing migrant workers in the agricultural fields throughout the United States for my first book, “With These Hands.” This news story drew me to pull up film contact sheets from the work I did all those decades ago.
Historical Context: Lewis Hine and the Fight Against Child Labor
Even then, what I was seeing in the fields had much older echoes. I found inspiration in the work of one of our country’s most famous social documentary photographers, Lewis Hine, who in 1908 became the photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). Over the next decade, Hine documented child labor to aid the NCLC’s lobbying efforts to end the practice, photographing in coal mines, meatpacking houses, textile mills, canneries and many other workplaces.
Hine’s photos played a significant role in exposing the harsh realities of child labor in the United States during the early 20th century. He wanted to show both what had to be corrected and what had to be appreciated — namely, that our market full of goods depended on hard labor by some of the country’s smallest inhabitants. His photographs helped to pass the first federal child labor laws in the nineteen-teens. In 1938, finally, the Fair Labor Standards Act set new standards for the hours and conditions under which children could work.
Child Labor Persists: A Photographer’s Perspective
When I started to photograph agriculture workers in 1979 and found children as young as 5 working in the fields, I was stunned. I had thought that Hine and his fellow social advocates had effectively eradicated child labor. But now it was my turn to travel across America to document this phenomenon.
I got up early in the morning to see children working in the fields. Entire families were picking together because there were few child-care facilities and the family needed the extra income to eat. Often the children were swaddled in blankets half asleep as their parents began work, then slowly joined in, picking onions or tomatoes or strawberries or blueberries or other crops. These children were exposed to pesticides and savage conditions — heat, lack of water and toilets, constant bending — that are so much a part of agriculture
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators in the Article
1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?
- SDG 4: Quality Education
- SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
- SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
- SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?
- SDG 4.4: By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
- SDG 8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor.
- SDG 10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.
- SDG 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children.
3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?
- Number of youth and adults with relevant skills for employment (SDG 4.4)
- Number of cases of forced labor, modern slavery, and child labor (SDG 8.7)
- Number of children exposed to hazardous working conditions (SDG 8.7)
- Number of children affected by abuse, exploitation, and violence (SDG 16.2)
Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| SDG 4: Quality Education | 4.4: By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship. | Number of youth and adults with relevant skills for employment |
| SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth | 8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor. | Number of cases of forced labor, modern slavery, and child labor Number of children exposed to hazardous working conditions |
| SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities | 10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies. | N/A |
| SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions | 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children. | Number of children affected by abuse, exploitation, and violence |
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Source: news.berkeley.edu
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