Olympic Product License Lost Over Child Labor
he Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) terminated the Olympic product license of a stationery company because the company employed child labor.
BOCOG responded to child labor allegations by PlayFair 2008, a global alliance of trade unions and labor organizations, and found that Lekit Stationery Company Ltd in China's Guangdong Province used child labor, though not for products related to the Olympics.
The company was ordered to stop manufacturing and selling products immediately.
Three other companies were investigated but found to NOT be using child labor.
Lekit Stationery Co. hired eight students, on vacation
from school, to package products.
Gosh, when I was a pre-teenager, our neighbor hired my brother and me to help out with packaging in his fledgling meat business. Frankly, we were happy to make the pocket money. The company is now a multi-million dollar company and a major meat supplier for an MLB team.
Can't give kids a job, I guess.
Maybe it’s not that kids can’t have jobs but the conditions in which they are allowed to work. I can’t even pretend I know what the deal is in this particular case but prior to the child labor laws that were implemented in the US children were a form of cheap labor, worked to the bone sometimes in very dangerous environments. It doesn’t sound at all like this is what Lekit Stationary did though…
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