Large companies have increasingly hired third-party auditors to perform daytime checks on their facilities to minimize risk associated with a host of potential violations – including violations of child labor laws.
Social compliance audits are not enforceable and typically don’t catch many violations during the brief daytime hours auditors are given limited access to those factories.
Most child labor happens on the night shift to avoid detection by auditors and inspectors, multiple independent and academic studies have found.
The horrors these children and adult employees often face in manufacturing and agricultural plants were detailed in a December 2023 article by the New York Times.
The story sent shockwaves across the companies and industries named in the article.
The New York Times article even won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting, and the reporter who wrote the piece won a $15,000 prize.
But the auditor who went on the record to bring these truths to light – the …
