Child Labor In Nicaragua Essay

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Nicaragua being the second poorest country in Central America has been seeing changes in their Labor and Environment for workers over the past 10 to 20 years (“Rural Poverty”, 2005). After Nicaragua’s civil war, the government began to implement more labor laws (Cerrato, 2015 ). The most noticeable labor laws implemented are maternity, child labor. Although there are new child labor laws put into effect there are issues concerning children working with their families in certain industries. Women are entitled to 12 weeks of paid maternity leave, four weeks prior to birth and eight weeks after birth, in a case of twins they are granted 10 weeks after birth. Employers are now prohibited from terminating female employees during maternity leave or while they are pregnant, except with a justified cause stated and approved by the Labor Ministry (Cerrato, 2015). Nicaragua recently made an advancement in efforts to eliminate child labor. The minimum working age in Nicaragua is 14. “The Government passed the country's first Law Against Trafficking in Persons, which raises penalties for the trafficking of children and adolescents to 19 to 20 years of imprisonment.”(“Findings on,” 2016). With support from the World Food …show more content…

This situation worsens during the harvest times for coffee, cotton, or bananas. During these seasons, many children help their family in the fields to increase their income. (“Study of labor”, 2004) When it comes to working on the agricultural side of employment in Nicaragua it can seem as though some of the laws put in place to help the workers are not seen. The majority of sugar cane workers report that they are paid per ton of cane that they cut thereby incentivizing long working days and weeks with them taking little to no breaks so that they can obtain an income that comes somewhat near a living wage for themselves and their families. (“Fair Food”,

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