By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition Coordinator, and Lauren Perez, NCL Communications Intern

Next in our five-part series of worst teen jobs is traveling youth crews who sell items—often magazine subscriptions— door-to-door.

When young workers leave the safety of home, family, and friends and hit the open road bad things can happen. Add into the mix selling door-to-door to strangers in unknown neighborhoods and the job can become quite dangerous.

In February 21, 2007 New York Times article about the industry told the story of one young recent high school graduate, Jonathan Pope, who spent six months with a magazine sales crew working 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week. His pay was often withheld and he was forced to get by on a meager $10-a-day food stipend much of the time. He witnessed co-workers being beaten by his managers and, when he asked to leave, his manager left him at a train station 1,000 miles from home with $17 cash.

According to Dan Smith, a representative of the National Field Selling Association quoted in the article, at any given time about 2,500 young people aged 18-to-24 years old are selling magazines door-to-door in these traveling crews.

The National Consumers League recently received a call from one stranded young seller. Ricky, 24, said he’d been traveling with crews since he was 18. He’d recently been let go because a crew leader became angry with him. With no money, Ricky was trying to hitch hike 1,000 miles home.

Although it’s not an everyday occurrence, Ricky said he has also witnessed sellers get beaten because crew leaders were unhappy with their performance. “When you’re not getting your sales and not making your quota, the managers get really mad at you,” he said. I’ve seen someone “get jumped straight up and get beat down,” he said, noting that he has been threatened himself.

Ricky agrees with NCL’s advice that young workers should stay away from traveling sales crews. In his years on the road, he’s worked with sales crew members as young as 17 and he thinks that’s “way too young…to be traveling from state to state.”

Traveling youth sales crews are exposed to many hazards. Robbery and assaults, sexual exploitation, and exposure to the elements are all dangers of life on the road. According to Ricky, many of the young sellers engage in a “party lifestyle.” Drug and alcohol abuse are part of the scene, he noted.

One of the greatest dangers is all the driving in vehicles—often older vans that aren’t in the best shape—required by door-to-door sales. In 1999, 7 crew members of a traveling sales crew died in a car crash in Janesville, Wisconsin; five other passengers in the van were seriously injured.  One of the dead was 18-year-old Malinda Turvey from Wisconsin. Since that tragedy, Turvey’s father, Phil Ellenbecker, has crusaded tirelessly to improve safety for young door-to-door sales people and curb the industry’s worst excesses. On his Web site, he has documented 86 deaths and 300 felony cases involving traveling door-to-door magazine crews.

Ellenbecker’s efforts helped bring about Malinda’s Act, which was signed into law by Wisconsin’s Governor Jim Doyle in March 2009. The law requires at least semi-monthly payment of wages and safety certification of the vehicles used to transport workers. It prohibits an employer from leaving employees stranded or taking away a worker’s money, ID, phone or any other personal property during the course of employment. It also prevents employers from restricting communication between the worker and family or friends and requires criminal background checks of crew members.

Wisconsin’s law is unique, and workers in most states enjoy few protections because they are often classified as independent contractors.

Consumers answering doors should also be careful. In May 2009, The Better Business Bureau said that in the previous 12 months it had received 1,100 complaints of deceptive sales practices from traveling crews working for 50 different companies.  Employees are often not licensed for sales work and can be misleading in their pitches.  The most common complaint was that the customer never received the magazine subscriptions they had purchased.

The National Consumers League offers tips for youth considering joining a sales crew, including questions to ask and warning signs.  Youth considering a traveling crew can also find a list of companies that have had complaints filed against them through the BBB’s Web site.

Next, we will be covering landscaping, grounds keeping and lawn service jobs.

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Consumer advocates are known for leveling biting criticisms against corporations for their various bad acts. But when a company does something truly admirable, such actions also deserve our praise. The first admirable event came this week when Toys “R” Us announced that it would allow parents to trade in used cribs, car seats, and other baby products for discounts on new items in these categories. For each used item consumers bring to Babies “R” Us or Toys “R” Us, they’ll receive a 20 percent discount on a new product from select manufacturers. The list of products includes bassinets, strollers, travel systems, play yards, and high chairs.

Why is Toys “R” Us offering these discounts? For a very important consumer protection reason: CEO Jerry Storch told the Wall Street Journal, “We felt these were categories that were somewhat suspect, either because of the nature of the category or because there have been a large number of recalls in the category….We feel it’s critical to get these older products out of the chain of commerce.” Storch is exactly right; once a children’s product is in the market, the chance of getting it recalled and out of the nursery is extremely low, probably under 10 percent. The safety issue is all the more critical with products that children use every day. By offering this discount, Toys “R” Us is helping to cycle the use of older baby products out of the marketplace and bring in the newer, safer designs. Fewer children will be facing product hazards that can injure and even kill them because of the company’s actions.

Full Disclosure: Toys “R” Us has supported the National Consumers League’s teenage consumer education program, LifeSmarts, making financial contributions for the past several years, though the company didn’t ask us to write this blog post.

The second positive interaction with a corporate entity happened to me personally. In planning travel to Minneapolis to celebrate my father’s 91^st birthday this weekend, I made the mistake of scheduling a plane trip several hours earlier than one member of my family could make. I was scheduled to arrive from another city, but they were coming from Washington, DC and simply couldn’t leave on the earlier flight. So I called the airlines and talked to an agent. She informed me that taking the later flight would cost $150 per-person change fee and a total of $1,000 to change the reservation for them to fly on the same route only two hours later.

I thanked her and asked to talk to a supervisor. She was perfectly pleasant, as was I, but asked me what she ought to tell the supervisor. “Tell her I would like to discuss my options,” I said. A few minutes later, her boss came on the line and I explained. “I screwed up and made reservations for the wrong time. My mother died this year and my father is celebrating his 91^st birthday on Saturday. It would be a shame if his grandson couldn’t be there for the occasion, but I simply cannot spend an additional $1,000 to change these tickets for a flight 2 hours later.” She told me to hang on, and a few minutes later she was back with this news: “I made the change and confirmed your flights for the later time. There will be no extra charge. Enjoy your father’s birthday and thank you for flying with our airline.”

I thanked her profusely and let out a huge sigh of relief. I had despaired that my 13 year-old-son would have to forfeit his ticket and be unable to celebrate with his cousins and grandfather. But here’s the good news: an employee of a big airline was able to hear my story and out of kindness — and perhaps a sense that the rules are often too rigid — bend the rules a bit. No matter, this customer greatly appreciated that companies and their workers can do the right thing by their customers. Whether it’s Toys “R” Us or a big airline, when they do I believe we consumer advocates should commend them for it.

Earlier this summer, human rights activists marked the World Day Against Child Labor with a commemoration of the 10^th Anniversary of Convention 182 at the International Labour Organization (ILO) annual conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Adopted June 1999 and ratified by 171 countries thus far, Convention 182 calls for immediate action for the abolishment of the worst forms of child labor. Setting an international legal standard to protect children from extreme forms of exploitation, the Convention specifically seeks the elimination of child slavery (including the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage, and the forced recruitment for armed conflict); child prostitution and pornography; the use of children for illicit activities (i.e. drug trafficking); and all other forms of hazardous work likely to harm the health, safety, and morals of a child.

Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) *Antonia Cortese addressed the ILO conference, representing both the AFT and the Child Labor Coalition, which AFT co-chairs with the National Consumers League. In her speech, Cortese called for the eradication of child labor and the enhancement of children’s education. According to a recent four-year Global Child Labor Trends Report by the ILO, approximately 11.3 percent of child laborers left the work force between 2000 and 2004. Yet, despite this victory, reportedly 13.9 percent of children—nearly 218 million—work in harsh conditions that deprive them of basic rights and entitlements, including their rights to have a real childhood and a proper education.

Cortese spoke out specifically against the child labor problems in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry. Every year during the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan, government officials force hundreds of thousands of students and teachers to abandon classrooms for months at a time to harvest cotton which is then exported and sold all over the world. Cortese condemned these policies, urged the Uzbekistan government to immediately cease the practice of forced child labor, and asked Uzbeki teachers to resist the exploitation of their students. “A student’s place is in the classroom learning and an educator’s place is in the classroom teaching—neither one belong toiling in fields, living in squalid conditions and doing dangerous, sometimes fatal, work for the benefit of a state-controlled industry,” she said. “Teachers can not be complicit bystanders and pretend they don’t see what is going on. Nor should they be forced to enlist or oversee children in forced labor situations,” she added. Cortese also called for the Uzbekistan government to allow ILO monitors free and open access to all cotton fields during the next harvest season.

In NCL’s interview with her, Cortese added that as a signatory to Convention No. 182 against the worst forms of child labor, the Uzbekistan government had a special responsibility to do the right thing and stop exploiting its school children.

Cortese felt encouraged by her attendance at the ILO conference. “I was pleased that the ILO set a day aside for the 10th Anniversary—their voice reiterating what they had previously passed will help drive down the number of child labor instances globally.” The attention on the Uzbekistan cotton harvest, coupled with the 10th Anniversary of Convention No. 182 served as a reminder to the global community about the need for a more concerted effort to totally eliminate forced child labor and help the 126 million kids that the ILO believes are still trapped in hazardous child labor.

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.