The news comes amid a push for a national minimum age for child labour.
There has been an uproar after it was reported that children as young as 11 were being employed at a regional cafe in New South Wales, Australia. Guardian informed of. In particular, children are paid remunerative wages for washing dishes, making and flavoring jams, and serving them to customers. In New South Wales, there is no minimum age to work, but a person must be 11 years old before they can receive a tax file number.
The news comes amid a push for a national minimum age for child labour. According to reports, the government is considering a recommendation to raise the minimum working age to 15 or 13 for ‘light work’, with some exemptions for those under 13.
especially, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) recently did a story on a cafe where most of the 100 employees are school-age children. Huw and Juliette Robb, owners of Long Track Pantry in the small Australian town of Juggyong, said they opened the cafe a few years ago and faced a staff shortage. The town has a population of just 200, so staffing the factory kitchen presents a challenge for them.
“We realized we were unlikely to attract the skills and talent from the city into a regional location like Jugyeong, so we needed to build our team from the ground up,” Robb said. ABC News.
After the story went viral, many on social media criticized the establishment and accused the cafe of ‘child labour’, while some supported the move, saying the children were paid remunerative wages. Notably, various states and territories across the country have provisions and laws to prevent child labor, some of them do not set a minimum age.
A user wrote, “Different states and territories across the country have provisions and laws to prevent child labour, but some of them do not set a minimum age.” Another wrote, “Yay?? In fact? Getting your first job at 9 is really sad. It’s absorbent, and there’s no other way to spin it. Children should be allowed to be children and not part of a business model that relies on child labour.
A third user supported the move, writing, “Yay! It’s common sense challenging political correctness: We need more of it. I got my first job when I was 9, and it was a great learning experience. Long Track Pantry is a wonderful venture: it’s great to see these kids being a part of it.”
A fourth also defended the cafe and wrote, “There is nothing wrong with children working part time. The problem is majority child workers, and they are proud of it. He invested in a commercial kitchen knowing that local labor was insufficient to fully utilize its 200-employee capacity. Kids were always the plan. ,
As of last year, around 214,500 children aged 15 and under were legally working in Australia. Guardian Citing an employment and workplace relations survey.