A union of kids?

• Author: Feldman, Megan
• Position: Brief Article

SERGIO MARQUEZ introduces himself as president of the local shoe shiners' union, holding in one grimy hand a large member's card with his name, photograph, and the mayor's signature. But unlike most workers demanding higher wages and better treatment, Sergio is ten years old.

Along with some fifty other boys in the lush, lowland town of Chisec in Guatemala's Alta Verapaz Province, Sergio shines shoes in the plaza and outside the church. His earnings have doubled since October, when the Peace Corps and a local youth group launched the union in the predominantly Maya Kekchi area. Approved by the local government to keep children out of trouble, the union requires that all shiners double their fees and prohibits fighting, drug use, or gang activity. The efforts seem to have paid off.

"Gangs? No, we don't get into that stuff because we're in the union," says Mynor Gonzalez, a thirteen-year-old who says he pays for his clothing by shining shoes. Some of the boys' parents deposit the earnings in the bank and plan to send the youngsters to school.

But while many see such unions as potential models for the rest of the country, some experts are not convinced. While a growing grass-roots movement for underaged shoe shiners, maids, and vendors is touted as promoting youth leadership and better working conditions, critics say it merely institutionalizes child labor.

Studies by UNICEF and Save the Children found that nearly two million children work in Guatemala, 800,000 of them in the informal sector. Of the four million school-aged children in the country, only half are registered for school and of those, 30 percent do not pass the first grade.

Hector Dionicio, a lawyer for the Latin American branch of Covenant House, a children's rights organization, said labor organizing...