International News
SOME U.S. INDUSTRIES LOOKING TO HIRE TEENS WILL WEAKEN CHILD LABOR LAWS!
Karma Management has now become Karma Global which was incorporated in the year 2004, having now completed almost 18 years of its existence.
As late as April 2021, Karma Management took a very bold step of venturing into foreign shores in terms of shoving up its business prospects in countries like the US, UK, UAE, Canada, Philippines, and South East Asia.
It has already made its mark in terms of providing excellent services in the areas of payroll, outsourcing, recruitment, talent acquisition, facility management services, and regulatory compliances including immigration, negotiations, and employment contracts in these foreign countries as well.
In fact, the CVO and MD, Pratik Vaidya of Karma Global were selected by SME Forum last year to lead a Select US Summit where he took along a delegation of over hundreds of SME Members for business discussions with the authorities in the States as well as with the entrepreneurs and Innovators of many countries who were present in this forum.
Soon after that, Pratik Vaidya, CVO & MD of Karma Global went on a Europe tour, participating along with Advantage Austria and brainstorming on the ecosystem of Start-ups in Salzburg, Austria
Karma Global thus entails the compliance of international clients in keeping with the global scenario, thereby undertaking a noteworthy mission of guiding clients through a spider’s web of legislation so that clients are able to stay on the right side of the ever-changing laws especially so, it keeps an update on what is happening around the world as far as people, wages, work, benefits, employment contracts, negotiation, and unions are concerned.
Karma Global’s decades of experience in making sure that clients are compliant with all types of changing legislation offers unique support to mitigate risk and grasp technological solutions with a combination of expertise.
Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward
Child labor remains a persistent problem in the world today. The latest global estimates indicate that 160 million children – 63 million girls and 97 million boys – were in child labor globally at the beginning of 2020, accounting for almost 1 in 10 of all children worldwide. Seventy-nine million children – nearly half of all those in child labor – were in hazardous work that directly endangers their health, safety and moral development.
The global picture masks continued progress against child labour in Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean.
In both regions, child labor trended downward over the last four years in percentage and absolute terms. Similar progress in sub-Saharan Africa has proven elusive. This region has seen an increase in both the number and percentage of children in child labour since 2012. There are now more children in child labour in sub-Saharan Africa than in the rest of the world combined.
Other key results from the 2020 global estimates include:
- Involvement in child labor is higher for boys than girls of all ages. Among all boys, 11.2 percent are in child labor compared to 7.8 percent of all girls. In absolute numbers, boys in child labor outnumber girls by 34 million.
- Child labour is much more common in rural areas. There are 122.7 million rural children in child labor compared to 37.3 million urban children. The prevalence of child labor in rural areas (13.9 percent) is close to three times higher than in urban areas (4.7 percent).
- Most child labour – for boys and girls alike – continues to occur in agriculture. Seventy percent of all children in child labor, 112 million children in total, are in agriculture. Many are younger children, underscoring agriculture as an entry point to child labor. Over three-quarters of all children aged 5 to 11 in child labor work in agriculture.
- The largest share of child labour takes place Child labour is frequently associated with children being out of school. A large share of younger children in child labor is excluded from school despite falling within the age range for compulsory education. More than a quarter of children aged 5 to 11 and over a third of children aged 12 to 14 who are in child labor are out of school.
U.S. Republicans pushing reforms to roll back protections for loosening child labor laws.
Last month, in U.S. Iowa, Republican lawmakers proposed a bill to expand the types of work the 14 and 15-year-olds will be permitted to perform. The legislators in Iowa also proposed to extend permissible working hours and reduce the liabilities of the employers.
LET US LOOK AT SOME OF THE DEVELOPMENTS IN THE U.S.!
(1) US employers are recruiting teenage workers to solve their difficulties in hiring and retaining workers, and some Republicans and industry groups are pushing for looser child labor laws to allow those industries to put teens to work for longer hours.
(2) Businesses around the United States that have advertised hiring 14- and 15-year-olds through the pandemic’s “labor shortage” include several restaurants in Pennsylvania, A Pumpkin Patch in Liberty, Missouri, a Burger King in Ohio, and a Mcdonald’s in Oregon. Employers such as Chipotle have expanded recruiting efforts this year to target younger workers.
(3) Other restaurants and employers such as amusement parks and seasonal businesses around the U.S. have touted their reliance on teenage workers under 18 as a labor shortage solution.
(4) A restaurant in Arkansas, noting it had struggled to hire and retain workers, recently offered to pay its teen workers for one hour to do homework before their shift.
(5) Teenage employment in the US surged to more than 32% in the summer of 2021, the highest level since 2008, and for the first time in history, the unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds fell below the rate for 20- to 24-year-olds.
(6) In a recent op-ed for a local Pennsylvania newspaper, Darcy Leight, a junior in high school, argued the claims of labor shortages and staffing issues in the food service, recreation, and tourism industry had driven teenagers to work more and longer hours past summer employment periods.
(7) “A job I intended to work strictly during the summer has somehow found its way into my fall schedule and has become almost equivalent to academics on my priority list. And I don’t even know how it happened,” she wrote. “The coupling of a job anywhere from five to 35 hours a week along with being a student is extremely stressful.”
(8) The labor shortage concerns have galvanized an effort by some elected officials – mostly Republicans – to scale back some child labor regulations.
(9) Three Republicans and one Democrat in the Ohio state senate have recently introduced a bill to expand the hour’s minors under the age of 16 are permitted to work in the state, from 7 pm to 9 pm during the school year with a parent or guardian’s permission.
(10) In Wisconsin, Republican state senators recently approved a bill SB332, and sent it to the Wisconsin state assembly. The bill would expand permissible work hours for minors under the age of 16.
(11) Supporters of the bill, which include Republican Legislators, the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, and other industry groups, have argued the bill could help small businesses that are experiencing hiring and staff retention issues amid some industries experiencing labor shortages throughout 2021.
(12) The bill would expand those times and dates from 6 am to 9.30 pm on a day preceding a school day and 6 am to 11 pm on a day preceding a non-school day, and expand weekly hours from three hours during a school week to 18 hours.
(13) Wisconsin Republicans have successfully passed several bills in the last decade to weaken child labor laws, including in 2011 eliminating limits on the number of hours and days minors, ages 16 and 17, could work, eliminating work permits for 16 and 17-year-olds, and replacing all uses of the term “child labor” in state employment statutes with the term “employment of minors” in 2017.
IN INDIA – WE HAVE STRICT LABOR LAWS
THE CHILD LABOUR (PROHIBITION AND REGULATION) ACT, 1986 (61 of 1986). An Act to prohibit the engagement of children in certain employments and to regulate the conditions of work of children in certain other employments.
Subsequently, the act was amended in 2016 with the enactment of the Child Labor (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Act 2016 prohibiting the employment of Children below 14 years in all employment and also with the provisions for a prohibition on employment of adolescents (14-18 Years) in the scheduled hazardous.
In consonance with the above approach, a National Policy on Child Labor, formulated in 1987, seeks to adopt a gradual & sequential approach with a focus on the rehabilitation of children and Adolescents. The Action Plan outlined in the Policy for tackling this problem is as follows:
- Legislative Action Plan for strict enforcement of The Child & Adolescent Labor (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986.
- Project-based action plan in areas of high concentration of Child & Adolescent Labor – National Child Labor Project (NCLP) Schemes.
- Focuses on general developmental programs for the benefit of the families of children
Karma Global while dealing with all such issues and cases, always takes the approach to act trust-worthily and to be compliant with the laws of the land.
Karma Global always advises its clients to be on the right side of the law and to abide by the same. In this respect, it offers a plethora of excellent services in terms of documentation compliance and validity of licenses for running the business and also supports establishments and afflicted union workers to take a just stand on issues, in the company’s interest and not on trivial grounds just for the sake of it, to show the level of aggression.
Respect for all fundamental principles and rights at work (FPRW), including freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, is an essential foundation of the ILO and key to successful policy and decision-making. As the world of work is changing at an ever-increasing pace, strong, influential, and inclusive social dialogue is, and will be, a key vehicle to shape the world of work that we want.
Our deep, country-by-country knowledge, expressed through a 250-strong network of local offices, makes light work of the most intricate local and global reporting obligations.
Proprietary blog of Karma Management Global Tech Firm
This blog has been collated and compiled by the internal staff of Karma Management with the knowledge and expertise that they possess, besides adaptation, illustration, derivation, transformation, and collection from various sources, for its monthly newsletter Issue 09 of March 2023 and in case of specific or general information or compliance updates for that matter, kindly reach out to the Marketing Team –Kush@karmamgmt.com / yashika@karmamgmt.com