Here Are Over One Hundred Products Made From Child Or Slave Labor (GRAPHIC)

It's hard to believe, but true: Still today, many everyday products from around the globe are the result of child and slave labor, according to a 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Labor.

Now thanks to an infographic from the National Post, we can more clearly see the effects: All together, the infographic counts 130 product-types from 71 countries -- each the result of forced labor, child labor or some combination of the two.

Indeed, slave labor still exists within economic powerhouses like India, China and Brazil, for example. It's not just these two forms of labor that have come under fire lately. China has faced more wide-ranging criticism over its labor practices, especially after reports of poor working conditions and labor law violations at Foxconn, a factory that manufactures electronics for companies such as Apple and Microsoft.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this graphic incorrectly categorized some forms of child labor as forced labor. National Post has updated the graphic.

 
See the National Post's infographic below to find out which countries are making products by exploiting slave labor:  READ MORE

WHAT WENT WRONG? -- The betrayal of the American Dream

As Apple grew, American workers left behind

Photo by Bobby Yip, Reuters--  Many of Foxconn's
factories, like this one in Longhua in southern China,
installed nets to discourage workers from jumping to
their deaths last year. Foxconn manufactures many
Apple products. June 2, 2010 file photo.

 By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele

This story is being co-published with The Philadelphia Inquirer, which will host a live chat at 1 p.m. Monday. 

The death of Steve Jobs was followed by an avalanche of superlatives — brilliant, genius and visionary among the more common. He was likened to Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison.
But in the case of Edison, there was one significant difference that went unmentioned. For more than a century, just one of Edison’s inventions alone — the incandescent light bulb —was manufactured at numerous locations in the United States, providing employment for millions of Americans across family generations.

The Apple home computer not at all. After only one generation, all the Apple manufacturing jobs in America disappeared, as the work of building and assembling the machines was turned over to laborers in sweatshops in China and other countries. Jobs that should have provided employment for Americans for decades to come were terminated.

For Apple, the corporation, the system functioned beautifully. This year the company had more cash in its bank accounts than the U.S. Treasury. And for one day, Monday, Sept. 19, the company was the most valuable corporation on the planet, its stock worth $382 billion. It was a sum that exceeded even the worth of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest international oil and gas company.

Needless to say, Apple proved a disaster for its onetime production workers. It turned out to be a classic bait-and-switch con for working folks. One day they held jobs that allowed them to do all the things people had come to expect from their employment. The next day the jobs were gone.
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