Child Labor On Tobacco Farms

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According to UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), child labor can be defined as, “work that exceeds a minimum number of hours, depending on the age of a child and on the type of work. Such work is considered harmful to the child and should therefore be eliminated.” (1). Children all around the world are trying to fight poverty by becoming child laborers, however, there are definite disadvantages to becoming a child laborer. One of the many places where child labor occurs is on tobacco farms. The use of child laborers on tobacco farms is a terrifying human rights violation. First, child laborers on tobacco farms is a human rights issue because it has dangerous impacts on their health. Another reason that child laborers …show more content…
These children typically work 50-60 hours in a week, and on average they get paid minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Some of them get a few short breaks during the course of the day, however, many don’t get any time to rest. Thankfully, most children attend school full-time and only work in the farms after school, on weekends, and during the summer months. This is not always the situation, having children who don’t enroll in school (or do enroll but miss several months) due to tobacco farming. Even some of the kids who attend school full-time still miss days due to their families financial problems, or other problems (Tobacco’s Hidden Children, 1). Some children migrate from places, such as Mexico, to be able to work in the tobacco fields and make some money. An example of a child leaving school to work on the fields is a child worker named Calvin R. He left his family behind in Mexico, and went to the United States to join a migrating group that works on tobacco fields. According to Calvin R, “We come to Kentucky every year from other states. We work in Washington in the apples, and in Tennessee there’s a packing plant where we work. We came to Kentucky … at the beginning of August. We usually come here around the same time every year to work in tobacco.” (1). Calvin wishes he could continue studying and getting an education, but instead he travels around the U.S working in the agriculture industry. Many of these parents think that education is not needed to survive, but it is critical that children get a good education while they are still young, because having an education helps their physical and mental health in ways that working endless hours would not be beneficial to. It is obvious that working on the farms provides no educational value other than the knowledge of hard
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