Australian cafe hires 11-year-old kids, sparks controversy
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New South Wales: A local coffee shop in Australia has landed in controversy for hiring 11-year-old children to wash dishes, make jams, and serve customers.
As per the laws in New South Wales, there is no minimum working age but a person needs to be 11 to receive a tax file number. There has been a push for a national minimum age for child workers and the government is reportedly considering a recommendation to make the minimum age 15. Children of the age 13 may do light work and those under 13 will have some exemptions.
Long Track Pantry is a cafe in a small town named Jugiong. Owners Huw and Juliet Robb found themselves amid controversy after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that most of the 100 workers are school-age children.
The entrepreneurs said that the town only has a population of 200 and staffing the factory kitchen was a challenge. They told ABC that they decided to build a team from the ground up because they realise they were unlikely to attract skills and talent out of the city into a regional place like Jugiong.
The story went viral and many accused the cafe of "child labour." Some netizens said the arrangement is normal because the children are paid award wages.
Some called the business model "exploitative" and said children should be just allowed to be children. Another argued that The Long Track Pantry is a fantastic enterprise and it is good to see kids becoming part of it. One user said that while there is nothing wrong with children having part-time jobs, it is problematic that the owners invested in a commercial kitchen knowing that there was insufficient local labour to utilise staff capacity. "Kids were always the plan."