Swiss to vote on compensation for former child laborers

[inanna]

Source: Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — Swiss voters will decide whether thousands of former child laborers and others who were taken away from their families and subject to cruel treatment should receive compensation from the government.

Sending children from poor families, especially with single mothers, away to work on farms was common practice in Switzerland well into the 20th century.

Many of the "contract children" experienced emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of those who were meant to care for them, while rarely receiving any payment for their labor.

The government said Tuesday that campaigners have collected the required 100,000 signatures to force a referendum on a plan for a compensation fund for survivors.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/swiss-vote-compensation-former-child-laborers-171527819.html

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>>should receive compensation<<

Should?!

[pnwmom]

1. After his father died, one of my husband's relatives was sent to the US at the age of 12

to work on a cousin's ranch in Nevada. He was made to live with the ranch hands, not with the relatives. Orphans and half-orphans were treated horribly in decades past. Children, especially other people's children, were viewed as an unwanted burden and treated as such.