Child Labor Coalition

  • Promoting health, safety, education, and well-being for working minors.

  • Pursuing an end to child labor exploitation.

Mission:

The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) exists to serve as a national network for the exchange of information about child labor; provide a forum and a unified voice on protecting working minors and ending child labor exploitation; and develop informational and educational outreach to the public and private sectors to combat child labor abuses and promote progressive initiatives and legislation.

Objectives:

  • To influence public policy on child labor issues through an increased understanding of the impact of work on children's health, the quality of their lives, and their ability to produce effectively in jobs as adults, as well as increase recognition of how child labor exploitation reinforces and promotes poverty, adult unemployment, poor living standards, low literacy rates, and lax enforcement of labor regulations;
  • To work for strengthened protections, guarding youth from excessive, inappropriate, and hazardous labor;
  • To advocate for better enforcement of child labor laws and regulations, including devising and encouraging innovative ways to ensure employer compliance;
  • To educate the public, business, and governments to broaden awareness and understanding about the nature of child labor exploitation in the United States and other countries, and how it differs from legitimate and positive youth employment; and
  • To urge the Congress of the United States to act quickly to ratify and enforce all the International Labor Organization and United Nations Conventions that affect child labor.

 

Activities:

  • testifying before state and federal legislatures and agencies on child labor
  • presenting comments in response to regulatory initiatives
  • hosting conferences, forums, and briefings
  • creating and distributing educational and public awareness materials
  • initiating research
  • conducting campaigns and media events

 

Background:

The Child Labor Coalition formed in November 1989, as concerned groups mobilized following the Capitol Hill Forum, "Exploitation of Children in the Workplace."

The coalition believes that no child, regardless of race, sex, nationality, religion, economic status, place of residence, or occupation, should be exploited. Exploitative child labor is defined as employment (whether in the formal or informal sector; whether paid or unpaid) that is coerced, forced, bonded, slave, or otherwise known to be unfair in wages, injurious to the health and safety of children, and/or obstructs a child's access to education or impairs educational attainment.

Friends of the CLC:

Organizational Members (Advocacy):

Organizational Members (Non-Advocacy)

Child Labor Coalition Co-Chairs:

  • Antonia Cortese, Executive Vice-President, American Federation of Teachers
  • Sally Greenberg, Executive Director, National Consumers League

Child Labor Coalition Coordinator: Darlene Adkins

Coordinating organization: The mission of the National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. The National Consumers League is a private, nonprofit advocacy group representing consumers on marketplace and workplace issues. NCL is the nation's oldest consumer organization.

NCL provides government, businesses, and other organizations with the consumer's perspective on concerns including child labor, privacy, food safety, and medication information.