The Rights of Filipino Children:
The miserable state of child workers in the Philippines

Basahin ang artikulong ito sa Pilipino

Up to 5.7 million children work to support themselves and their families. Outside this number are the thousands of undocumented migrant child workers. Child workers are aged 17 and younger, work on a full-time basis and perform tasks that stunt or damage their physical, emotional and psychological development.

Most child workers may be found in plantations and haciendas; in households that receive out-jobbing assignments from certain factories; and in sweatshops found all over the Philippines. They also work as domestic help while others are out in the streets eking out a livelihood from hawking and prostitution. Because they lack job security and are often hired illegally, child workers in these areas are far more exploited and suffer so much more. They toil under the most terrible working conditions in exchange for measly wages, if at all.

Even if exploiting children�s labor power is prohibited by law, the reactionary government turns a blind eye to the gross and wanton violations of such laws by capitalists and hacienda owners. In fact, the rabid promotion of �globalization� and competition with other backward semicolonial countries in offering the lowest wages to foreign investors encourages the utilization of child workers who usually receive wages several times lower than the minimum wage. This worsens their already miserable conditions engendered by backward production and a society impoverished by old feudalism and imperialism.

Slave-like status

The price of child workers� labor power is immensely, if not rock-bottom cheap. Because they are in dire need, many of them work in exchange for extremely low wages. Others work to pay off their parents� debts or toil alongside their parents without receiving their own wages. Many are forced to work for more than eight hours a day for food, lodging and some bare necessities.

In the garments industry, children aged 11 to 14 usually work in their own homes or in factories for 11 hours a day. They receive only a third of the stipulated minimum wage. Those who live inside cramped factories have to pay for their lodging. Expenses for items like thread, needles and even machinery repairs are also deducted from their pay.

12 November 1999
English Edition

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	Storm of resistance against globalization
	The expanding empire of Lucio Tan
	Lacson�s appointment as PNP chief: Sharpening the fascist fangs of the US-Estrada regime
	Intensifying fascism of the US-Estrada regime
	The Rights of Filipino Children: On the Rights of the Filipino Children
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	The Rights of Filipino Children: Pertinent Facts
	The Rights of Filipino Children: Memorandum on the Minimum age requirement for NPA fighters
	The Rights of Filipino Children: Organizing children
	The Rights of Filipino Children: The miserable state of child workers in the Philippines
	The Rights of Filipino Children: Counterrevolutionary violence against children in the countryside
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