CHILD
LABOR IDENTIFICATION
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CHILD
LABOR IDENTIFICATION
Auditors ’ Stance Towards Child Labor
Under the assumption that the auditors ’ awareness on child labor could be associated with their effective identification and / or handling of child labor cases , we looked at why they think child labor should be prohibited . It is interesting to see that the top two reasons for preventing child labor are from a child rights perspective : “ it deprives children of the right to education ” and “ the workplace activities can be dangerous and
harmful to children ”. Combining these two options with “ it pushed children and their family to a downward spiral of poverty ”, we created a new variable called “ child rights awareness ”, and found that it had a significant correlation with the number of child labor cases auditors encountered and confirmed . Based on the available data , we obviously cannot establish a causal relationship that the auditors with higher
• 37 % auditors think child labor should be prohibited because it is against their principles
child rights awareness are more prone to discovering child labor cases or vice versa . However , this is still an interesting connection and worth considering in future trainings for auditors .
Significantly more auditors from China than other countries ( 42 % vs . 25 %) regarded child labor as being against their principles and , thus , should be prohibited . However , we haven ’ t found a strong enough
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• 84 % auditors from China believe a worker under the age 16 ( but over 15 ) is not acceptable under any circumstances
association between their personal position on child labor and the number of child labor cases they discovered . If it were against their principles , only the auditors outside of China tended to discover more suspected child labor cases . However , this result was not the same for confirmed cases . The minimum legal working age in China is 16 . Even though the vast majority of auditors have zero tolerance for child labor even when the child is older than 15 , they have conflicted feelings about the impact on children if they are merely removed from work .
“ If the child laborer is from poor family and the family is desperately in need of his / her income , suggestions of removing the child from factory and sending them home will only worsen their family ’ s economic situation and drive the child to less regulated factories with worse working conditions ” - An auditor from China .
It is not surprising that this is the view held by many auditors we interviewed in China . We tried to understand the ethical dilemma the auditors face by asking them if they believe their discovery of child labor might have a positive or negative impact on the children ’ s lives . Out of the 30 auditors we interviewed , only seven or 23 % believed their work would bring positive impact on the child ’ s life . 13 % stated quite pessimistically that their discovery of child labor would mostly affect children in a negative way , and 64 % thought it could be both positive and negative depending on the situation .
Best Response : Auditors ’ Insights on Child Labor in Asia 10