Progress of Training and Development in an Industrial Environment

Progress of training and development in an industrial environment

Kimberly Fortune 65130

Oakland City University

Intro to Human Resources HRM 301

INTRODUCTION

Throughout the years many laws have been developed to help improve conditions of employment for individuals.  The laws were developed after hardships and struggles with unfair and unsafe working practices and conditions for employees were unearthed. The implementation of these laws and rights has not been an easy road to travel; people are often very defensive to change.  As these laws were put into place, companies struggled with how to embrace the new laws as well as implement them to their employees, while maintaining a profit for their business.     Training and development has evolved over the years through the oppression of individuals and companies.  By using the difficulties of employees and their work environment laws have been formed for the rights and safety of individuals. This paper will review some of the laws which were developed to aid employees and companies throughout history and how these laws aided in the development of our industrial culture today.  

BODY

Child Labor

According to (Light) the Department of Labor was developed due to immense accidents, loss of life, property and business damage.  Unsafe working conditions, low wages and hostile work environments are just a few of the reasons for the need of the Department of Labor to be developed in 1913.  People lacked skills and the training provided for the jobs they were performing were simply learn-as-you-go, on-the-job or passed from generation to generation.  The fluctuation of employment did not provide a good way for the knowledge to be passed on from peer to peer.  

        Child labor has been a common occurrence throughout American history.  Farmers used their children to help tend crops and animals, but as the industrial revolution developed factory owners often preferred to employ children.  “There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers. The object of employing children is not to train them, but to get high profits from their work.” (Hines, 1908).  The business owners saw children as a way to maximize their profits.  A child working in a factory would sometimes work up to eighteen hours a day six days a week and only earn one dollar for that week of work.  Children, as young as the age of seven would work in dark, dirty and damp conditions with milling machines and in underground coal mines.  The businesses preferred using children because they felt they were easily trained, more manageable, provided cheaper labor and were less likely to strike against the company. Around 2,000,000 school age children worked up to 70 hour weeks in the early eighteenth century.  Parents of these children were very poor and could not support the children on their own which is the reason for having the children go to work in the factories and mines.  Many factories which were originally located in the northern section of American transferred south due to the growing disapproval of using children in the labor force in the North.    As stated in “Child Labor in History”, by 1900, states varied considerably in whether they had child labor standards and in their content and degree of enforcement. By then, American children worked in large numbers in mines, glass factories, textiles, agriculture, canneries, home industries, and as newsboys, messengers, bootblacks, and peddlers.

        Children in the United States labor force crested in the early twentieth century.  Improved labor standards along with investigations and enforcement of laws by the Department of Labor caused a downturn of children in the workplace.  The National Child Labor Committee created in 1904 was formed to end child labor and helped to provide education for children and then assisted in the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. This development improved the quality of life for not only the children being exploited in the workforce, but also for the individuals seeking work to provide for their families.  By reducing the amount of children in the factories the jobs were able to be filled by adult men and women. In the current work environment Department of Labor has provisions to protect the educational opportunities for children and it prevents employers from giving minors jobs that are unsafe and unhealthy. Minors under the age of 18 are prohibited from working in any job deemed hazardous. (www.dol.gov, 2006) These hazardous jobs include mining, excavation, the manufacturing of explosives, logging and sawmilling, power-driven wood-working machines or exposure to radioactive substances and to ionizing radiations just to name a few.