Background to the Research

• While there is now growing evidence that the majority of British children have some experience of the labour market prior to leaving school, interest in child employment has only recently been extended to NI and there appear to have been no previous attempts to document the extent and nature of child employment in the province.
• While the survey reported here replicates the findings of other studies carried out in Britain, the author felt that a fuller unpacking of the nature of certain types of child employment was necessary. Of particular interest was the work of children who deliver newspapers, which was found to be the most common type of child employment in Belfast, as in other UK studies. Among other things, this article explores the portrayal of this work as ideally suitable for young teenagers.
  

Research Approach

• Questionnaires were distributed to 14-15 year old pupils in 12 schools in Belfast, yielding 545 usable questionnaires. Additionally, the author held discussions with 38 girls and 56 boys and focus group interviews with groups of working children.
  

Main Findings

• Of those surveyed, 22% had a current term-time job and 32.3% had had a term-time job. Thus, 47.1% of the sample can be said to have had experience of the labour market. The children employed at the time of the survey worked in a diverse range of occupations including shop work, hotel and catering work, office work and manual work.
• Rather than being restricted to a few light tasks, children were found to work in a range of occupations commonly associated with the adult labour market.
• For those currently employed, 30 children (25%) had a paper round - the most common type of term-time employment. For those who had previously worked, 53 children (42.3%) had a paper round, also the most common type of previous employment.
• There were considerable differences in the number of hours worked. On average, children with a current newspaper round spent 5-6 hours per week delivering newspapers, which is consistent with previous studies and is described as unlikely to impact negatively on children's social and educational lives. Only 3 children spent over 10 hours delivering newspapers, doing so also on Sundays.
• A higher proportion of those who had previously worked as newspaper deliverers had worked over 10 hours per week (9 children or 17%).
• The amount of time spent delivering newspapers was found to fluctuate, with several children complaining about supplements in the newspapers adding to the weight of their bag and slowing them down.
• There was considerable variation in the wages earned by newspaper deliverers and 75% of those delivering newspapers were paid under the legal minimum hourly wage rate (National Minimum Wage). At the extreme end of the scale, some children were earning three times the hourly rate of other children for carrying out the exact same job.
• The most frequent approach to obtaining a newspaper delivery job was replying to an advertisement in the newspaper (10 children, 33.3%). Some children approached local shopkeepers and newsagents directly, while others used personal contacts such as friends and siblings to gain their job. Given these diverse methods of recruitment and the dispersed nature of the workforce, some children earned different wages while working for the same employer. Wage rates also varied among children who had previously worked at delivering newspapers and 24.5% had given up their job because of low wages.
• Overall, 317 boys (56%) and 228 girls (42%) took part in the study; 86 boys, 27% of the overall sample and 34 girls, 14.9% of the overall sample, currently held a term-time job. However, three-quarters of girls in the overall sample carried out babysitting regularly for money compared to just under half of the boys - when babysitting is included, girls' participation outweighed boys.
• Gender differences were apparent in all the other forms of term-time employment considered. In relation to newspaper deliveries, 23 males (26.7% of the working pupils' sample) and 7 females (20.6%) had a paper round. While there was little variation in the number of hours worked per week and tasks associated with delivering newspapers, there was a tendency for girls to be paid less than boys for delivering newspapers, as has been found in previous studies.
• While one in four children with paid work stated that they had experienced an accident at work, this figure increased to one in two children with a current paper round. Complaints included the side effects of carrying heavy newspaper bags, the work being perceived as dangerous, most often due to confronting dogs, receiving cuts and bruises while delivering newspapers, and feeling unsafe working on winter mornings when it is dark.
• The children's primary motivation for working was to earn money, which was seen as a further step towards independence and was considered favourably by parents. However, 24% of the overall sample stated that they gave some proportion of their earnings to their parents, which is noted to be the highest such percentage known by the author to be found in any study into child employment in the UK.

Conclusions

• Delivery work remains the most common type of child employment.
• While it is one of the most attractive forms of employment for schoolchildren and is portrayed as a harmless, useful experience whereby children can learn the value of hard work and gain some measure of independence, delivering newspapers is fraught with internal variations in working conditions and wages paid to young delivery workers.
• If properly regulated and monitored, newspaper delivery work could provide a worthwhile form of employment for young teenage workers, although issues concerning wages and hours worked need attention.
• Legislation on child employment needs to move beyond a narrow focus of recommending suitable types of occupations for children and setting out the number of hours they can work, to promoting the rights of children in employment. By establishing legal guarantees in terms of wages and health and safety standards, newspaper delivery work could provide young teenage children with skills that would benefit them when they become adults. However, adults also need to reassess their evaluations of occupations commonly performed by children and to be more sensitive of potential contradictions between adult and child perceptions of skills.
• The new found interest in child agency, with its emphasis on children as meaningful participants in the work they do, needs to be coupled with an awareness that children continue to be influenced by adult definitions of the work that they perform and the associated skills involved.