Akif Shareef Liam

ID: 181 1819 030

PHI401 Section: 6

Producing toys – child’s play?

Answer 1:

After reading the case and putting myself in the shoes of the product manager I
feel sorry for the children and think it is very unfair for them to work at such a
young age. Using child labor is clearly unethical.
They are aged around 5 to 14 and have to work from early morning to 8 pm in
the evening which must be hard for them physically and very stressful mentally.
Children so young should be receiving education and shouldn’t have to worry
about earning money for the family. My initial reaction is that this action is
immoral and unethical.
However, on the other hand, the children do seem very cheerful. If they enjoy the
work and if the extra income earned allows them to enjoy a better living
standard than it might be all right and should probably not be considered
unethical.
Perhaps the family wouldn’t be able to buy the basic necessities of life if the
children didn’t work and working helps the children and the families survive.

Answer 2:

I do not think in an ideal world the children should work. If their parents can’t
afford to take care of them the government should step in. Businesses should
also pay their employees fair wages to ensure parents can look after their family.
However sometimes the governments cannot support all its citizens and
businesses in order to survive cannot pay their employees a fair wage as doing
so might put them out of business and hence prevent them from having
employees at all. So children might have to work in order to enjoy a better life
and more importantly in order to survive.
However, I believe if a government can’t support its people, foreign countries
should step in to help the government in order to ensure children everywhere in
the world can lead a better life. Customers should also be willing to pay a firm
enough for them to use ethical methods of production and not being forced to
pay low wages.
Government should also enforce minimum wage laws to ensure parents can
support their children.
However if children have to work and there is no other way I think they should
only work for a few hours and it should be ensured that they enjoy their work.