Short Story and Essay

Here's a small story with an essay below. Enjoy!


At Wendy's


I’m sitting in the car with my parents and brother driving back from Guelph. It’s past three o’clock and we’re still an hour’s drive from Ottawa, so we stop for lunch at Wendy’s along Highway 401. It’s a beautiful day; sunny and warm, crystal clear, and smack in the middle of August.

The service station is packed with people like us who are returning from their holidays. We spend about ten minutes in line and buy our burgers from a young employee called Taylor. Taylor looks about ten years old. He’s very short, pale, and slightly overweight. We’re obviously surprised to find such a young looking boy working in a fast-food chain, so my father discretely asks an older man giving us our burgers about Taylor’s situation. His answer: Taylor is twelve, he is employed as a “runner” and has been working since nine in the morning.

We eat our burgers half-heartedly, a little bit ashamed of having purchased the product of a twelve year old’s work. My food feels dirty. It’s like a pair of jeans sewn by little girls in a Bangladeshi sweat shop. I think of all of the things that Taylor could be doing on such a beautiful August afternoon. He could be playing outside with friends, reading at the library, even watching the television. It’s all better than working behind a dark counter at Wendy’s. Besides, does he even get to keep the money? Do his parents take a share?

I glance towards the counter as we leave the restaurant. There are other children working and they don’ t look any older than Taylor. My father calls the Ontario Ministry of Labour after we arrive home in Ottawa to tell them about the situation at Wendy’s. The woman at the other end of the line promises to look into the situation and call him back. She never calls back.


Essay


I have sympathy for children who want to work. When I was eleven or twelve, I started many small businesses and I kept being frustrated by all the legal hurdles that I had to overcome. I wasn’t allowed sign cheques and I wasn’t allowed take a job from anyone other than my family. I couldn’t even take the bus on my own so I had to get my parents to drive me around town to buy supplies. At the time, I dreamt of a world where children had the same employment rights as adults and I frankly didn’t understand why this wasn’t already the case. I understand better today. Unfortunately, for every child like me who dreams of signing paycheques from his personal corporate headquarters, there is another child who is forced to work for an income by his parents in need of funds.

The minimum age of employment varies between provinces. Nova-Scotia, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island allow children to work at any age in industries that are not deemed harmful to their health or physical development. British-Columbia lets children work from the age of twelve, with the possibility of starting earlier if the Director of Employment Standards offers his consent. In Alberta, a twelve year old may work as a cashier or an office clerk for a maximum of two hours on school days and eight hours on weekends. Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick set fourteen as the minimum age for most jobs. Manitoba stands alone with a legal working age of sixteen.

Whatever the law says, unfortunately, is totally irrelevant unless it’s enforced. It’s supposed to be illegal to employ youths under fourteen in Ontario. This didn’t stop Wendy’s from having a group of small children, one of whom was apparently twelve, working in one of its restaurants on the 401. These children were in full public view, taking orders in a fast-food along North-America’s busiest highway. They will have been seen by literally thousands of people, including undoubtedly many police officers, so officials should have been aware –and probably were aware- of the situation before my father called.

There’s no reason to believe that Ontario officials are any worse at enforcing the law that their provincial counterparts. If five out of ten provinces allow twelve year olds to work and Ontario does so unofficially, why would the remaining four members of Confederation be any different?

Canada seems to be generally out of sync with other world democracies in its attitude towards child labour. Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the Netherlands have all set a minimum working age of fifteen. France has set a minimum working age of sixteen. The only country whose labour laws compare to Canada’s is the United-States, where children –often illegal immigrants- can be legally employed in the agricultural sector from the age of ten. Outside the agricultural sector, the United-States is still far ahead of Canada. Children may not work before their fourteenth birthday and usually need a special permit until they turn sixteen.

Canada has actually made its passive acceptance of child labour official by refusing to ratify the Minimum Age Convention in 1973. This resolution was put forward by the International Labour Organisation, a United-Nations agency, “to ensure the effective abolition of child labour and to raise progressively the minimum age for admission to employment (…).” Most member-states signed, but Canada refused along with the United-States.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with working before turning eighteen. It’s simply necessary to distinguish between children and adolescents. I know many teenagers who enrolled in paid apprenticeship programmes to get a head start on their career. I also have friends who had unpleasant introductions to real life workplaces after taking jobs in call-centres, fast-foods and office buildings. But they are all sixteen and seventeen. They can drive, they can come home late, some of them are even finishing high-school. A twelve year old is finishing elementary school and isn’t allowed to watch a James Bond movie at the cinema without an adult. Should children deemed too young to watch a man firing a gun really be working for money?

The answer in Canada is no.