Chicago, IL
For more than a century, America's unions have sought to provide dignity and justice for all workers, and to protect the most vulnerable members of society.
Still today, estimates indicate that as many as 800,000 children are working in the United States in hazardous agricultural jobs -- many in migrant or seasonal work -- and untold numbers continue to work in sweatshops, with few legal protections and often without access to basic schooling.
Throughout the world, an estimated 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work. Many of these children labor in dangerous conditions -- mines and fields, brothels and basements. Far too many are enslaved, sold into prostitution, forced into debt bondage and pressed into combat. Children are chained to machines and exposed to toxic chemicals and drugged so that they can work longer and faster. Bent, cowed and crippled, working children are dying from accidents, overwork, and abuse.
A growing world consensus has achieved its first concrete success. Just a few weeks ago, new standards to prohibit and eliminate the most abusive forms of child labor were unanimously adopted by workers, employers, and governments in the form of International Labor Organization (ILO) Convention No. 182.
President Clinton has pledged to send the Convention to the U.S. Senate for ratification, and to ask all other countries to ratify it. We applaud the President for this commitment. Ratification is the first critical step, but that alone will not be enough.
To ensure U.S. ratification of Convention 182, the AFL-CIO will launch a new campaign. This campaign will also press for effective implementation and enforcement. Working families and their unions, schools and congregations will renew their efforts to reveal and eliminate the poverty and hopelessness that leads to abusive child labor. We will work to ensure that exploited children everywhere are removed from danger and rehabilitated, that all children have access to schools and that their parents have jobs that pay a liveable wage, with full respect for fundamental human and worker rights.
Therefore, the AFL-CIO urges all affiliated unions, state federations, central labor councils and allied organizations to actively participate in this important campaign to eliminate the worst forms of exploitative child labor. Together we can offer all children a better future.