Child Labor: Child’s Play is not for Children

Apologies Accepted

Hi everyone! It's a two week vacation while Juliette travels and Theo moves and we're rereleasing one of our classic episodes about child labor!

It's an open secret that children work for next to nothing and don't complain a lot. That's why they make great workers, only it's kind of illegal in a lot of countries to employ children. But don't worry because corporations have found the wonder of willful ignorance and plausible deniability, two factors that mean they can hire companies that in turn hire other companies that hire subcontractors who hire kids (and sometimes buy them) to work in factories, fields, and mines.

Tang Mingfang, a factory worker in China, noticed that FoxConn, his employer, had hired a lot of kids. He was told the kids were having fun working as interns and learning all about how to make Amazon's popular Alexa, Echo Dot, and Kindle devices. He was also told to shut his mouth and get back to work. Tang decided to report the child labor violations and was sent to jail for two years. He was beaten and imprisoned for reporting a crime against children. He's out of jail now and has asked Amazon for an apology.

Jeff Bezos personally apologized from space and we are here to thank him for being such a hero. OK, that didn't happen. Plausible deniability means that one of the richest men on the planet also has to pretend he's one of the dumbest.

But it's not all evil billionaires and child workers, there are some real heroes of note in this episode!