A sad balance sheet: According to the data compiled by the Health and Safety Labour Watch * from the events it has access to, at least 42 child workers lost their lives in the first seven months of 2024. It is known that at least nine of the dead children were working within the scope of the MESEM program. ** Amendments to the Vocational Education Law in 2016 and 2021 paved the way for children to be used as cheap labor with a one-day "training" a week that remains on paper. Workerized children die while working and live a life without workers' rights, subjected to intense violence and physically and mentally injured. We discussed the issue with Ezgi Koman, who has been working in the field of child rights for years and is part of a program focusing on MESEMs at the FISA (Fikir ve Sanat Atölyesi) Child Rights Center.
Previously, those who fought against child labor concentrated on the informal sector, fighting against a form of illegality. MESEMs not only legalized child labor, but legitimized it, normalized it in line with the interests of capital. How do you, those working in the field of children, deal with this situation, where do you build your new field of struggle?
It is very difficult to say that we are coping at a time when almost every day a child dies in a workplace homicide. But yes, we have been revising our axis of struggle against child labor for a while. As FISA Child Rights Center, we have been conducting a program called “Rethinking Child Labor” for three years. The basic approach of this program is that if child labor cannot be dealt with independently from the current economic structure of Turkey and the world, if it cannot be considered separately from the economic, social and trade union rights of adults, what are we going to do? Are we going to wait for this to change to end child labor? What if children continue to work under increasingly harsh conditions, to be subjected to violence while working, and even to lose their lives in occupational homicides? We ask these questions and want to find answers with children. One of the answers we have found is the organization of child workers. We conducted a research on this issue. Children think that if they are organized, they will overcome many problems and become stronger. Therefore, we also think in this way for the children attending MESEMs, and there are movements in this direction independently of our thinking. For example, in Antep, a group of MESEM children and youth want to organize in trade unions. We are also trying to support them.
I said that children used to work in unregistered sectors, but in fact this practice propagated by the Ministry of National Education includes areas that cannot be registered in practice. What kind of irregularities do the children you interviewed express the most in terms of working conditions?
We interviewed children in an ongoing monitoring study. No matter how much the Ministry says they are, MESEMs are definitely not an education and training environment for children, and this is something that is known by everyone. One of the most important points we realized is that some sectors and lines of work are strictly prohibited for children in Turkey and in international conventions. Of course, we know that this prohibition is not obeyed and that children work in these sectors in an unsupervised and unregistered manner. Thanks to MESEMs, this situation is no longer unregistered. Because, for example, children, on the grounds that they are studying, are employed "legally" in a field where their employment is strictly prohibited, such as metal work. Another irregularity we frequently encounter is working hours. Children work even more than adults in MESEMs. It is very common to work up to 12-16 hours. There is absolutely no system of overtime payment. Many children work somewhere other than the workplace where they are registered at MESEM. They only appear to be attending MESEM on paper. Another situation is that most of these children have previous work experience. In addition, some children have already been referred by their bosses/employers. The child wants to work, goes to the employer. The employer says, “I will hire you if you register with MESEM.” As you know, these children's salaries are deducted according to their grade and paid by the state. Another irregularity causes children to lose their lives in occupational homicides that have recently put MESEMs on the public agenda; even simple occupational safety procedures are not applied. Children are not examined upon entry to work. For example, a girl with asthma can work in a hairdresser. When they encounter work accidents, there is no treatment, accident analysis, etc. We also talked to the children about work accidents or physical injuries. We asked questions such as are precautions taken, were you trained at school, etc. Very interestingly, many children made the same statement: “There is a medical bag.” You can understand the approach to worker health and safety from this. Or, for example, only a band-aid is used against an injury. These are not even recorded. Yet again, we know that the process leading to occupational homicides starts with such unpreventable injuries.
This program is marketed as vocational training. But it is more like teaching cheap labor than vocational training, as if the value of the labor of those who start here will always be lower, even if they become skilled workers. Have you followed any of the children who have become workers through MESEM?
We didn't follow anyone in this way. But 19-year-olds who had left MESEM were continuing in the same line of work.
First of all, industrial work comes to mind, but aren't the sectors diverse? For example, where do girls work in the service sector, and where do adults visibly come into contact with the labor of these child workers?
Although the number of boys attending MESEM is higher, girls are also enrolled in these centers. There are also girls working in the industry, in departments such as engines and machinery. But they are mostly employed in workplaces such as hairdressers and beauty centers. And then there are hotels. In addition to the many problems they face because they are children, girls can be subjected to sexual violence and harassment by customers, adult workers and employers. It is something that happens more often than we think. In one interview, we asked the question “How do you feel when you commute?” She said that she felt uneasy at times. Let's not forget that workplaces are a kind of “closed institution” for children. They are under pressure from their employers and parents and are mostly here out of necessity. This makes them vulnerable to all kinds of violence. Naturally, girls feel this pressure and violence - in its various forms - more intensely.
MESEMs provide one day a week of education on paper, but in reality they are prolonging a finished educational life. There have always been children who had to work, your research shows that some of the children enrolled in MESEMs already started working before they reached high school age. How does the economic crisis, deepening and widespread poverty affect child labor?
Child labor is a matter of poverty, or rather impoverishment. Someone must always be poor so that they can be exploited as cheap labor. While in some parts of the world robotization is rampant, in many more parts of the world children, women and migrants continue to be used as cheap labor. Therefore, as long as impoverishment, discrimination and inequality in access to rights and freedoms continue, child labor unfortunately increases. In addition to the numerical increase in child labor, this increases violence at work, children's inability to receive their wages and, worst of all, workplace murders. Children's already difficult lifes become even more difficult.
There is talk of lowering the age of enrollment in MESEM to 12; what could this lead to?
While we are persistently trying to explain how MESEMs affect children, how children are exploited and even lose their lives here, the discussion on the age of 12 is really incomprehensible. Let me make it clear that this is a violation of children's rights. Turkey signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990. According to this convention, the state is responsible for protecting children's right to life and protecting children from maltreatment, violence and abuse. Preventing their employment is also like this. There are other conventions like this. For example ILO conventions. Their obligations arising from this convention require this. At a very young age of 12, their inclusion in a system where even adults are forced and exploited will lead to many violations of rights. It is really very worrying. Today we are talking about children aged 15-16 who attend MESEMs. They cannot cope with heavy working conditions and long working hours. We know that the children who lost their lives in occupational homicides were children who directly attended MESEM. The age of 12 poses much greater risks. Such a regulation is extremely dangerous and a clear violation of rights. Child labor does not only exploit children in terms of labor. It has an incredibly negative impact on children's physical development, psychological development and self-development in a place where even adults have a very difficult time. According to existing laws and international conventions in Turkey, children as young as 12 cannot work. But if you change the legislation on education in this way, it legitimizes the laborization of 12-year-old children. It will be said, “He doesn't work, he goes to school”. All mechanisms are really a way of legitimizing child labor.
* Health and Safety Labour Watch-Turkey is a network organization carried out by workers and their families from various industries, lines of work, and professions (industrial/service/agriculture, metal workers, seasonal agricultural workers, bank workers, health workers, construction workers, doctors, engineers, academics, occupational safety specialists, etc.), fighting for a healthy and safe life and working conditions. HESA Labour Watch was initiated in 2001 in Istanbul, followed by subsequent activities in the provinces of Kocaeli and Ankara. It aims to spread the struggle for labour safety across a wider range of centres, especially in the industrial provinces.
** Vocational Education Center, (Mesleki Eğitim Merkezi, in short: MESEM), formerly known as Apprenticeship Training Center, was included in the scope of formal and compulsory education on 09.12.2016. It provides education under the Ministry of National Education, General Directorate of Vocational and Technical Education. Students who have graduated from at least secondary school can enroll and the duration of education is 4 years. Those who finish this school receive both a High School Diploma and a Certificate of Mastery.
