Who's making it worse?

There are a ton of different factors that contribute to making child labour worse in Brazil. This can range from a whole country to even just companies. Some of the bigger things like the countries have such huge populations and aren’t fully aware that they are hurting these kids, on the other hand these massive billion dollar companies know exactly what they’re doing and can actually be okay with it! Crazy, right? Well there are two countries and one company that I want to go over and find out how they are hurting these children America, Samsung, and China.   

Let’s start off with America, in 2013 America bought 27.6 billion dollars’ worth of mineral fuel, iron and steel, machinery, and raw sugar from Brazil. There is no way that all of that material came from perfectly paid and treated workers. So I wouldn’t be surprised that a lot of the materials were made using child labour. A lot of the consumers in America that buy these things don’t do it because it’s essential but because they want it but don’t need it. Yet they still don’t care enough to do a quick search on the companies they are buying from to make sure they make it legally. So, there are NGOs that do that little extra step for you such as fair trade. Fair trade finds the best companies and leaves their seal on their products so that you know that no child labour was used when they were making it. Now all that is left is for the consumers to just spend that extra little bit of money and stop buying the cheapest things because those are usually the ones that have child labour. After all, you can’t put a price on a human life.

Secondly, were going to talk about Samsung. Samsung has a net worth of over a billion dollars yet these CEOs still want more and more so they find anyway that they can to cut down on prices. One of the ways they found was moving their factorises to developing countries where they could get away with paying their workers horrible wages, no benefits, and in extreme cases child labour. Well in 2012 a group in Brazil filed a lawsuit against Samsung because of their unfair work conditions and child labour in their factories. At the start they asked for 108 million dollars in damages but after winning the lawsuit they only ended up with $200,000. This inspired many people all over the world to notice what Samsung is doing and fight for their rights. So right now Samsung is facing accusations of child labour from china and South Korea and are most likely going to have to pay compensation to the people they hurt.

Lastly we are going to find out how China is making things worse. China is Brazil’s top exporter bringing in a total of, 41.3 billion dollars in 2013! Just like America they buy lots of raw materials, such as fossil fuel, soybeans, raw sugar, and iron & steel. Unlike America where the problem is with the consumers in China the problem is more with the producers. China manufactures millions of different products. There is a terrible cycle that china and Brazil go through china buys raw materials from Brazil which have been harvested using child labour and then goes on and turns it into whatever they need also using child labour. So if you ever buy those cheap Chinese products just know that not only are you hurting Chinese children but also majority of China’s importers including Brazilin kids.