A report on PRI’s Marketplace today focused on child unions in the developing world. American trade unions, longtime leaders in organizing anti-sweatshop boycotts, regards such unions as repugnant, and would like to see them done away with. This despite the fact that children like Aima, a union member NPR reporters spoke with, say that such efforts only drive child labor underground, to the detriment of the children themselves. So why this surfeit of unwanted compassion from the developed world’s trade unions? A more cynical observer might suggest that it’s because union bosses want lower wage competition out of the way, even if it means damning hordes of impoverished pre-teens to the plow or the bordello. Oh, wait, I am a more cynical observer…