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Child Labor And Sweatshops In The United States

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In the United States, child labor and sweatshops are illegal, and society frowns upon any business that exploits children in the production of goods. Though most would say that they would not support a company that uses child labor to produce its goods, almost everyone has, in fact, knowingly or unknowingly, supported these businesses in one way or another. Children are involved in the production of many of the everyday goods we import from overseas, including the manufacturing of clothes, shoes, toys, and sporting equipment, the farming of cocoa, cotton, sugarcane, and bananas, and the mining of coal, diamonds, and gold (The U.S. Dept. of Labor). Often, we are blinded to this fact.
Child Labor is defined by the International Labor …show more content…

Dept. of Labor).
To target child labor and other abusive labor relationships, the Office of Child Labor, Forced Labor, and Human Trafficking (OCFT) was created in 1993, as part of the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB). Its initial focuses primarily were to gather information and increase knowledge of child labor, forced labor, and human trafficking practices worldwide and to promote international cooperation to eliminate the “worst forms of child labor”, defined as slavery (or practices similar to slavery), the sale or trafficking of children, debt bondage or serfdom, the forcible recruitment of children for armed conflict, the commercial sexual exploitation of children, the involvement of children in drug trafficking, and the involvement of children in work that is likely to harm their health, safety, or morals (The U.S. Dept. of Labor).
As international and domestic concern over child labor grew, the efforts and the activities of the OCFT also expanded, with increasing emphasis on child labor issues. The OCFT currently conducts research to identify specific goods from specific countries

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