When I was a boy of 11, I swept out a machanic’s shop for money after school.  I also delivered baked goods from a local bakery. The Bakery gave me day-old pastery, and let me collect tips,  no salary, The mechanic shop made me get a social security card, paid me minimum ($1.65 an hour in those days) and paid for a uniform.

Today my social security reflects the work I did for the mechanic, but not the harder work for the bakery.

Would that the world had enough employment at decent wages for all, unfortunately they do not.  Indian children as young as 6 work in rug factories in India. we buy their rugs. the children often get respitory aliments from the rug dust.

BUT

without this work, many children would starve.

There is “what’s right” and “reality” usually they don’t match.

I hate Walmart

As for this being bad or not, I would like you to remember that many children in Mexico earn a living begging on the streets, in the supermarkets youngsters are safe and supervised while earning
some pocket money, it is not unusual that such a position is the entry point to a proper job.

That’s bullshit! I lived in Mexico City for many years, and lived two blocks from the “Super WalMart” at Insurgentes and Eje Uno Norte.  I also shopped on and off at WalMart owned SuperRama stores, as well as the mom and pops and the mercado.  These kids are not the street kids who beg.  These are the kids who—if there wasn’t a foreign chain pushing the smaller vendors out of business would be working in the FAMILY business… you know, the people who own their shops, invest in their own neighborhoods, watch out for each other and install middle-class values in their children. 

WalMart is a safe environment?  Uh… what interest do they have in what happens a meter off their property… they (unlike small shop owners) don’t live there, and the glue sniffers and junkies all hung out at the edge of the WalMart lot. 

And… despite recent conservative administrations, Mexico is still a labor state and wrote the first modern labor code… child labor is illegal, and unpaid child labor very much so.

I post here an email I sent to Cory Doctorow, of Boing-Boing fame:

“
Hi,

The link posted in Boing-Boing regarding youngsters packaging in
Mexican supermarkets as volunteers lacks context:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/02/walmart_pays_mexican.html

The writeup makes it appear like if the evil Wal-Mart was the only
supermarket doing this, in reality this practice is widespread.

As for this being bad or not, I would like you to remember that
many children in Mexico earn a living begging on the streets, in
the supermarkets youngsters are safe and supervised while earning
some pocket money, it is not unusual that such a position is the
entry point to a proper job.

The children are really volunteers, they normally come and go as
they please, the supermarkets just have formalized a situation that
would occur anyway (children would wait outside supermarkets to
help people carry their purchases, this happens in street markets
as well, where children are far more exposed to all kind of
dangers).

Those youngsters earn some money doing something positive, if we
had strict regulation like in the US or Europe we would lose that.
When I have to face feral teenagers in the UK I am in no doubts
about which system is better for society.

I should know about this, I earned my first money showing up after
school in the supermarket around the corner in my beloved Mexico
City, many moons ago.

On occasions people in developed countries go completely overboard
about certain issues, this I believe is one of those instances.
”