Children who work need the same level of protection as adult workers doing similar tasks, says the Catholic social justice agency Caritas Aotearoa New Zealand. Caritas research and advocacy officer Lisa Beech says that for many working children it was not happening.
The agency has published a report – Delivering the Goods – detailing the findings of a survey on children delivering circulars and newspapers to household letterboxes. It included in-depth interviews with 30 children aged 10 to 16 doing delivery work, as a follow-up to a wider 2003 survey of child workers.
"While many children have good working experiences and value much of their working lives, the survey showed many areas of concern," Ms Beech said, "Particularly when comparing children's experience with adult postal workers delivering to the same letterboxes."
Caritas wanted to see a code of best practice for the employment of children in delivery work.
"We believe the single most important step to improve children's working experiences would be to require that their employment status is that of employees rather than contractors," Ms Beech said. "There was a very marked difference between children employed directly as employees and those who had the status of self-employed contractors." She said child employees were considerably better off. "They received holiday and sick pay, age-appropriate relief workers, clothing and bike allowances, the most effective information and oversight of health and safety conditions, and the most direct contact with employers. In contracting situations, these employment rights were mostly absent," Ms Beech said.
Other concerns highlighted by the report include:
- Little attention paid to health and safety concerns such as visibility and loads, particularly compared to adult postal workers.
- Contracts sighted generally showed an unbalanced power relationship between employers and workers.
- Although some companies had an informal age of entry to the workforce of between 10 and 12 years, this was not communicated formally on material supplied to workers. Children were sometimes asked to find their own substitute workers for illness or absence and in many cases children paid siblings as young as six to do the work for them.
- Pay rates were very low, with an effective hourly rate among children in the survey of between $1.67 and $6.25.
Caritas said a code of best practice needed to be developed by employers, unions and appropriate government agencies – working together with the children employed in the industry and their parents.
"New Zealand government reports have frequently stated that working children are adequately protected by our existing legislation," said Ms Beech. "Caritas believes this position is based on very little information about children's actual working experiences, as there appears to be little oversight by the Department of Labour, or involvement by unions or other community organisations."
Ms Beech said any industry based on child labour, no matter how willing the participants, had a very high level of moral responsibility to ensure that they were well treated.
