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Problem is States like Arkansas, Ohio and Minnesota are saying exactly that. I’m fine with younger kids working as long as the jobs are suited to younger workers and they’re safe. I don’t consider any of the jobs mentioned below to be safe for 13 to 17 year olds.
If employers in those States/Industries can’t find enough workers, they need to figure out how to do so without endangering kids.
From the OP:
"Last month, the Gov. of Arkansas, eliminated a requirement for 14 and 15YO's to have a state permit to get a job. The move is part of a broader push to loosen child labor laws by conservative state legislatures. The Iowa legislature is considering a bill that would allow 14YO's to work in industrial freezers and meat coolers, and allow 15YO's to work on assembly lines moving items that weigh up to 50 lbs. In Ohio, there's a push to allow 14 and 15YO's to work until 9pm during the school year, in violation of Federal laws, while the MN legislature is debating letting the construction industry recruit 16 and 17YO's."
There's no details in the above that we can even judge. Working until 9? Moving items? What type of construction, maybe clean up like I did when I was younger?
I'm just not afraid of teenagers working. We're not forcing them to work. It can be a huge positive.
Will some abuse the system and violate the law? Will there be bad parents and bad companies? Of course, in every type of situation. But let's not over regulate everything.
By itself as an isolated thing, it is not massively alarming. Many of us had part time and summer jobs as teens. There are benefits to that, as most of us know.
Taken, however, in the big picture of various things being pushed by the right? Yeah, I do see problems. Attacks on the public education system, and a push to empower and boost private education and homeschooling, you bring that in and what you get is that families with enough wealth can afford to educate their kids, and poorer families won't have that luxury. An uneducated populace will be much easier to control, and cheap exploitative labor will proliferate.
One problem I see in America is that some folks want to act as though slavery as the institution it was here, was in the dim and long ago past. It was, what, about 200 years ago? That isn't really THAT long. It's near enough that there would have been ideological groups continuously looking for ways to replace it with cheap labor. Looking at the Amendment itself, we first had the whole "except as punishment for a crime" so prison labor in most places has been a quiet loophole...you make it so that society sees ~some people~ (poor people mainly) as "criminal" and lets wealthy ones off the hook, and you can continue to have that cheap labor. Private prisons. "Punishable by a fine means legal for a price." I really woke up to that when living in Colorado we had a ballot measure to end slavery in the state and I was like...wait, what? Yeah, it was forced prison labor.
But we already had the move to get women into the workplace change the economic landscape to where most lower and middle class families feel a need to have two full time incomes. Those saying that child labor can just be a freedom and a choice and a preference...well, what happens when it becomes an economic necessity?
There is a movement to squeeze as much value out of each citizen while giving as little back in terms of quality of life as possible. All of the deregulation and the gobbling up of real property to be leased back to people and the increases in the costs of everything all the time coupled with the stagnation of real wages, tearing apart publicly funded institutions, privatization, loosening labor protections... It all points at the same outcome. All value vacuumed up to the few, leaving the many with barely enough to live, dying in debt and owning nothing. As long as you can point the finger at those who are suffering and say that they earned it, you can turn a blind eye.
I know what kind of society I want to live in, and it's not one with a very small percentage of rich living in walled off compounds surrounded by shack cities of poverty and disease and despair.
Also, unrelated to child labor but related to the overall "tear apart everything related to the representative government or protections for the people, and replace it with private and for-profit power"... A recent John Oliver episode had me chuckling because I know people who would say that any government, local to federal, will never do anything as well as private enterprise will. And I wish to say, "so if a community can outsource the responsibilities of the municipality to a private business entity, that's the right way to go?" I mean, obviously one can point at Disney with a raised eyebrow, but more ubiquitous entirely...I want to ask, "so how do you feel about HOAs?"
The notion that we can just trust businesses to do things the right way for employees and consumers is ridiculous. I wish people would study history and look at the horrific labor conditions of 100 years ago and more, I cannot imagine why anyone thinks we should go back to any of that.
Oh yeah, sure, if a job isn't safe, then it should be made safe for any worker, not just child workers. OK. Except that it's the same political forces trying to empower businesses to neglect safety for profits and get away with it.
It is not just the one thing happening in isolation. It's all the things. If it were only this, and not all the rest, I might agree that it's a good thing to make it easier for teens to work, sure. Maybe not in dangerous jobs or late at night (except during summers, though I prefer the idea of school being year round personally.) But yeah sure, I see good in teens having jobs to save up for a car or to get a start as young adults. Certainly. It's all the rest that concerns me. It's when you put it all on the table, together.
Reproductive rights is another one. Powerful Republicans don't give a hot damn about your religious take on abortion. These are not people acting on morals and principle, are you kidding me? They want more calves born to the herd, that's all. More cannon fodder and labor units to squeeze for value and productivity.
There's no details in the above that we can even judge. Working until 9? Moving items? What type of construction, maybe clean up like I did when I was younger?
I'm just not afraid of teenagers working. We're not forcing them to work. It can be a huge positive.
Will some abuse the system and violate the law? Will there be bad parents and bad companies? Of course, in every type of situation. But let's not over regulate everything.
Here are some details from one bill. If you think this is about anything other than business getting cheap labor, you’re fooling yourself. I guess in GOP run States you can cry to the legislature about the horrors of having to pay a livable wage and they’re willing to serve up kids as a solution. So not only will kids be allowed to work in mines, roof houses and work in meat plants, they’ll get paid less for their efforts. Disgusting.
Lawmakers in Nebraska introduced legislation that would allow children to be paid less, a minimum wage of $9 for 14-to-17-year olds compared to the state’s minimum wage of $10.50 for 2023. That bill would also set a minimum training wage for employees between 18 and 20 at $9.25 per hour through 2023, and 75% of the regular minimum wage from 2027 onward.
Oh, and this too from the folks who want the retirement age raised to 70. (But, of course, only for those who are not flush with loads of wealth...the wealthy will always be able to do whatever they want, it's the rest of us who have to toil away until we fall over.)
By itself as an isolated thing, it is not massively alarming. Many of us had part time and summer jobs as teens. There are benefits to that, as most of us know.
Taken, however, in the big picture of various things being pushed by the right? Yeah, I do see problems. Attacks on the public education system, and a push to empower and boost private education and homeschooling, you bring that in and what you get is that families with enough wealth can afford to educate their kids, and poorer families won't have that luxury. An uneducated populace will be much easier to control, and cheap exploitative labor will proliferate.
One problem I see in America is that some folks want to act as though slavery as the institution it was here, was in the dim and long ago past. It was, what, about 200 years ago? That isn't really THAT long. It's near enough that there would have been ideological groups continuously looking for ways to replace it with cheap labor. Looking at the Amendment itself, we first had the whole "except as punishment for a crime" so prison labor in most places has been a quiet loophole...you make it so that society sees ~some people~ (poor people mainly) as "criminal" and lets wealthy ones off the hook, and you can continue to have that cheap labor. Private prisons. "Punishable by a fine means legal for a price." I really woke up to that when living in Colorado we had a ballot measure to end slavery in the state and I was like...wait, what? Yeah, it was forced prison labor.
But we already had the move to get women into the workplace change the economic landscape to where most lower and middle class families feel a need to have two full time incomes. Those saying that child labor can just be a freedom and a choice and a preference...well, what happens when it becomes an economic necessity?
There is a movement to squeeze as much value out of each citizen while giving as little back in terms of quality of life as possible. All of the deregulation and the gobbling up of real property to be leased back to people and the increases in the costs of everything all the time coupled with the stagnation of real wages, tearing apart publicly funded institutions, privatization, loosening labor protections... It all points at the same outcome. All value vacuumed up to the few, leaving the many with barely enough to live, dying in debt and owning nothing. As long as you can point the finger at those who are suffering and say that they earned it, you can turn a blind eye.
I know what kind of society I want to live in, and it's not one with a very small percentage of rich living in walled off compounds surrounded by shack cities of poverty and disease and despair.
Also, unrelated to child labor but related to the overall "tear apart everything related to the representative government or protections for the people, and replace it with private and for-profit power"... A recent John Oliver episode had me chuckling because I know people who would say that any government, local to federal, will never do anything as well as private enterprise will. And I wish to say, "so if a community can outsource the responsibilities of the municipality to a private business entity, that's the right way to go?" I mean, obviously one can point at Disney with a raised eyebrow, but more ubiquitous entirely...I want to ask, "so how do you feel about HOAs?"
The notion that we can just trust businesses to do things the right way for employees and consumers is ridiculous. I wish people would study history and look at the horrific labor conditions of 100 years ago and more, I cannot imagine why anyone thinks we should go back to any of that.
Oh yeah, sure, if a job isn't safe, then it should be made safe for any worker, not just child workers. OK. Except that it's the same political forces trying to empower businesses to neglect safety for profits and get away with it.
It is not just the one thing happening in isolation. It's all the things. If it were only this, and not all the rest, I might agree that it's a good thing to make it easier for teens to work, sure. Maybe not in dangerous jobs or late at night (except during summers, though I prefer the idea of school being year round personally.) But yeah sure, I see good in teens having jobs to save up for a car or to get a start as young adults. Certainly. It's all the rest that concerns me. It's when you put it all on the table, together.
Reproductive rights is another one. Powerful Republicans don't give a hot damn about your religious take on abortion. These are not people acting on morals and principle, are you kidding me? They want more calves born to the herd, that's all. More cannon fodder and labor units to squeeze for value and productivity.
So bummed that I cannot rep this post, it hits all the points spot on. Probably one of your top 10 posts, and that says a lot.
Yeah, this is nothing but testing the waters to find cheap labor. Also, if/when companies are found in violation of labor conditions (including employing underage laborers), something like this could potentially reduce the load of violations since "employing 14- and 15-year-olds" would no longer qualify as an offense.
I'm also wowed by the viewpoint that maybe kids should have to work to put food on the table if the parents aren't making it or else starve. Really? It's almost like there's a joy in imagining it. I admit I'm getting nostalgic for the days when people wanted future generations to do better than they did, this newfound cruel attitude towards young people who apparently deserve to be poor is truly disheartening. Is this the same cohort of people complaining about the lack of patriotism and unity in our country these days?
Interesting that these labor laws may be changed now that industries are finding a whole of lot of exploitable children due to the influx of migrant children crossing into the country without their parents. This definitely is NOT a coincidence. There are no coincidences at this level of play.
Now that migrant children are available in quantity the greedsters are working overtime to make it legal to put them to work, of course at low wages, no benefits, and no protections from all sorts of abuses. Whatever happened to Reagan's 'shining city on a hill.'
- "Over the past two years, more than 250,000 migrant children have come alone to the United States. Thousands of children have ended up in punishing jobs across the country — working overnight in slaughterhouses, replacing roofs, operating machinery in factories — all in violation of child labor laws,..."
- After the article’s publication in February (see below), the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children. (This is closing the barn door after the horse runs off.)
- Again and again, veteran government staffers and outside contractors told the Health and Human Services Department, including in reports that reached Secretary Xavier Becerra, that children appeared to be at risk. The Labor Department put out news releases noting an increase in child labor. Senior White House aides were shown evidence of exploitation, such as clusters of migrant children who had been found working with industrial equipment or caustic chemicals. (But not much got done. Little if anything would've been done without the Times ripping off the scab to show the stink.)
- H.H.S. officials said the department vetted sponsors sufficiently but could not control what happened to children after they were released. Monitoring workplaces, they said, was the job of the Department of Labor. (I've seen this before in my 30 years of working for DoD, the old "not my job" story or the "we don't have jurisdiction here" excuse --- and no one will take the lead and no one up in the administration will make them coordinate and cooperate across agency lines which they won't do unless they're made to.)
- But the White House declined to comment on why the administration did not previously react to repeated signs that migrant children were being widely exploited. (Beyond agency "who's in charge" jurisdictional issues, this in-action is partly because the mantra of small government has reduced the level of staffing needed to vigorously go after the guilty. Welcome to the world of Grover Norquist's "shrink government to where I can drown it in a bathtub.")
- "These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.
- Companies ignore the young faces in their back rooms and on their factory floors. Schools often decline to report apparent labor violations, believing it will hurt children more than help. And H.H.S. behaves as if the migrant children who melt unseen into the country are doing just fine.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 04-17-2023 at 12:21 PM..
"Children worked for at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia in recent years, Reuters found. Staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working. State and federal authorities are investigating. ... At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state."
"Children worked for at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia in recent years, Reuters found. Staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working. State and federal authorities are investigating. ... At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state."
Also worth adding because they don't really explain until wayyyy down in the article, that the plants, the companies that owned them, or Hyundai or Kia did not hire the children. They came from "staffing agencies." But those staffing agencies are a bunch of ever shifting and wily shell company type things, like similar business names and offices that open and close and elusive leadership. Basically this is human trafficking, an entity is getting a hold of these kids and smuggling them into the US and the "owner" of the "staffing company" gets them jobs paying off debt bondage to the smugglers and provides them sometimes with ramshackle housing and transportation to work at the plant and back every day. Occasionally the kids just disappear.
It is easy for the plant owners and the car company to disavow any knowledge that the staffing agencies were sending kids to work at their facilities, but there have been reports that their inspectors showed up and witnessed it, so that may not be true.
Yeah seriously, any talk about loosening child labor laws should absolutely NOT be thought of as boys on bikes delivering newspapers or 16 year olds working part time shifts at Dairy Queen to save up for a car. In other words, be careful not to frame such matters through an affluent suburban lens. Look at how it will effect those who are the poorest and most vulnerable. If the intent behind the law is the affluent suburban version, then they really should word it as such and incorporate protections for the vulnerable kids in the population, and if they don't, then assume the intent is exploitative. It probably is anyways.
Last edited by Mike from back east; 04-17-2023 at 04:11 PM..
"Children worked for at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia in recent years, Reuters found. Staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working. State and federal authorities are investigating. ... At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state."
Gotta love the old confederate states, they can't make slaves out of blacks anymore, so now any underage non-whites will do just fine if they can just get that pesky government off their backs. In the referenced NY Times story it showed a 15-year-old girl who worked in a plant that packaged Cheerios, yes Cheerios, one of the iconic brands on our shelves for generations that most people assume are a pillar of our business community. I can only imagine how much sexual abuse she gets as an unprotected underage female with no legal standing or guardians. Most people are not aware that much of the work in America is contracted out to jobbers who do the dirty work. The household names we all know act squeaky clean and avoid whatever regulatory legal action that will now fall on the jobbers. If the jobber get clobbered by the law the big names just hire another jobber while the big names snicker behind the usual lie of how they were not aware and are shocked by the news, etc.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 04-17-2023 at 04:20 PM..
Gotta love the old confederate states, they can't make slaves out of black kids anymore, so now any non-whites will do just fine. In the referenced NY Times story it showed a 15-year-old girl who worked in a plant that packaged Cheerios, yes Cheerios, one of the iconic brands on our shelves for generations that most people assume are a pillar of our business community. I can only imagine how much sexual abuse she gets as an unprotected underage female with no legal standing. Most people are not aware that much of the work in America is contracted out to jobbers who do the dirty work while the household names we all know avoid legal action that now falls on the jobbers while they act squeaky clean. If the jobber get clobbered by the law the big names just hire another jobber and snicker behind their lies of how they were not aware, etc.
And if the jobber gets in the crosshairs of the law, they just fold up shop, bankrupt the LLC or shell company, turn off the lights and lock the door, go lease another little office space somewhere and start over with a slightly different business name. Just like tons of businesses that thumb their noses at the law all over this country, usually run or backed by very rich entities that can easily hide behind layers of "arms length" limited liability structures. Said interests may not even be American citizens, anyways, so good luck to the law in trying to clobber them appropriately if they are even so inclined.
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