ABSTRACT

Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of The Rights of Children precludes employment of children before a certain age. Both in our country and the world, the method and principles of the employement of the children, and adolescents, their working hours, periods of rest, and their wages have been mandated by relevant legal acts, and regulations.

In this study our aim is to evaluate compliance between working hours, and corresponding wages of working children who were attending state controlled apprenticeship school with legal regulations in effect in our country, and discuss whether tedious working hours impose an economic abuse on children.

In the 2006-2007 academic year in Ankara, 580 (546 male, 34 female) randomly chosen students of apprenticeship schools have been subject to a survey which questioned the duration of their working shifts and their wages.

The average daily shift was found to be 12 (11.089 ± 2.24) hours, while 57.8% of the children were working over 8 hours a day. Any difference was not found between male, and female children of different age groups regarding their working hours. No important difference was found between children who are employed in different sectors, concerning their working hours. Indeed, 3.6% of the study participants were working more than 16 hours a day (median: 12.00, mean: 6-18 ± 0.11 hrs).While 3.6% of the study participants were earning less than the minimum wage mandated by relevant regulations.

While the employement of children is already a problematic issue by itself, it is a great risk to employ children for long working hours which should be viewed as a means of child exploitation. The wages that seem to be in compliance with the relevant regulations are usually fairly inadequate, when tedious working hours are taken into consideration.

We think that during the inspection of workplaces where the employement of children is allowed, auditing working hours of children will protect the children from harmful effects of economic abuse