Back to the Future: Republican legislators reintroduce child labor.

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   Credence2posted 9 months ago

   I thought that this was a bygone concept from the time of squalid tenement houses and whale bone corsets.  But let's go into the time machine, back to the late 19th century and revisit the world Republicans want to reintroduce us to.....
   
   I think about, back in the day when a kid can get into trouble "hanging around" because of the truancy officers asking why are you are not in school. Have we devolved or what?
   
   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr … epublicans
   
   A most interesting article that touches on the how and why, have a read and share your thoughts?

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      wildernessposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      You're right - it touches on what could be a very real problem...with no hard facts and lots of exaggerated opinions.
      
      "America seems to be lurching backward to the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when workers – including young children – were treated like cow dung and robber barons ruled the roost."
      
      We have just about decided that kids can't work at all - that they will enter the workforce, expected to provide for their own needs but without the tools or experience to do so.  Our children need to work - they key is to protect them while they learn the work skills they will soon need.  And we are failing to do so.  Comments like "we're regressing to treating children like cow dung" are completely out of line and as false as it is possible to be.

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         Credence2posted 9 months agoin reply to this

         I am glad we can find common agreement that this is a problem.
         
         Nobody says kids can't work. I worked in my teens, but that work was restricted and proscribed as it should have been.
         
         Having kids working instead of being in school is a form of child abuse in my opinion, thus the justification and need for compulsory school attendance. If you are younger than 16, the school requirement is more important than the work. If you can't read, write, or add, how do you function anywhere, work ethic or otherwise?
         
         The Republican legislators are taking this principle of work ethic too far in allowing children to work in industries and in environments where they don't belong. They, in their desire to please their corporate masters have allowed decency and safety factors to be placed at the wayside.
         ---------
         "In the past two years, 10 states have introduced or passed legislation expanding work hours for children, lifting restrictions on hazardous occupations for children, allowing children to work in locations that serve alcohol, and lowering the state minimum wage for minors.
         
         Already in 2023, bills to weaken child labor protections have been introduced in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota. One bill introduced in Minnesota would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites.
         
         Across the country, we’re seeing a coordinated effort by business lobbyists and Republican legislators to roll back federal and state regulations to protect children from abuse – regulations that had been in place for decades."
         
         Tell me, Wilderness, what is sensationalism and exaggerated to you from the information presented here?

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            wildernessposted 9 months agoin reply to this

            We both worked in our teens - I started with a paper route at the ripe old age of 14.  But since then laws have been created that makes doing almost anything nearly impossible.  Certainly riding my bike around town, or knocking on doors to collect payment, without direct supervision would never fly today.  It didn't hurt me; it gave me a good idea of what it means to hold a job.  Something many kids are sorely lacking today.
            
            "Having kids working instead of being in school is a form of child abuse in my opinion, thus the justification and need for compulsory school attendance."
            
            Here you contradict yourself (and so did your link).  How can both be possible?  Seems to me that kids are NOT being taken out of school to work - that that suggestion is pure malarkey.  And that is a part of the reason I don't agree with the link - such statements are not, IMO, possible legally but the insinuation is that conservatives support it and make it possible.  And I wouldn't put it at 16 years; until high school is completed school is more important.
            
            "In the past two years, 10 states have introduced or passed legislation expanding work hours for children, lifting restrictions on hazardous occupations for children"
            
            Specifics would be nice here.  Expanded hours from what and to what?  From 2 hours per week to 5?  I don't think so, but without specifics I can neither agree nor disagree.
            
            "lifting restrictions on hazardous occupations for children"
            
            As in what?  The coal mines or in an OSHA job building a new store?  One is reasonable, one is not.  Nor do I have a problem with older kids serving alcohol - most of them live with parents that drink so booze is not a shock to them.
            
            "Tell me, Wilderness, what is sensationalism and exaggerated to you from the information presented here"
            
            As you present no information the only conclusion is that it is nearly ALL sensationalism and/or exaggeration.  Yes, laws are being relaxed - IMO some of them should be.  Yes, much of what you complain about is no more than griping about conservatives (again) without providing any hard facts.
            
            While I agree that kids should be protected that doesn't mean that they need wrapped in cotton and prevented from leaving the house.  I also feel (as you seem to) that it is important to work but unless you have had experience with kids working (or trying to work) in the last decade you don't have much idea of just how difficult it is.
            
            I'll offer one more thought for your consideration; most OSHA controlled jobs, run by honest owners, are less dangerous than leaving a child at home alone for hours each day.  I'm seeing a commercial with two young girls cooking an afternoon snack; one says "350 degrees for 20 minutes" and the other says "How about 700 degrees for 10 minutes?".  They decide that's an excellent idea - exactly the kind of thinking I expect of young children left to their own devices...and exactly what a business would put a screeching stop to.

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               Credence2posted 9 months agoin reply to this

               What changed in regards to a paper route, what rules prohibit this activity, can you show where kids cannot do this anymore? No, it did not hurt you, but you still had to go to school, route or no route. I see plenty of teens working in retail every day. I don't know where you get this idea that kids don't want to work and that the desire to earn your own money when you are a kid is so much different now?
               
               We are going to disagree as we always do, but I think that it is inappropriate  for a 14 year old to work in a Tyson Chicken factory, both parttime or full time. Who is responsible when a kid losses a finger or a hand? I see corporate exploitation as the reason they don't offer better pay and benefits to responsible adults. It is conservatives doing what they always do,exploit the most vulnerable among us.
               
               OSHA controlled jobs are for adults, minors are entirely different issue.
               
               I worked as a paper boy, retail and janitorial under 18, but nature of the work, and depending upon the age of the teen, the time they are allowed to work was proscribed as every kid needs to go to school. But, with conservatives, we are to go back to a time where only the privileged had any expectation to acquire an education and rise above his or her station in life.
               
               And that is why you and I are always going to see things differently. As an uncle, I press upon my nieces and nephews that school and grades always come first. Education is the way out to a better life and to be diverted from that is not going to help them in the long term.

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                  wildernessposted 9 months agoin reply to this

                  Paper routes, at least where I am, are strictly by car.  In addition, most suburban streets are far too busy for a kid to ride around on.  Some have sidewalks, but many do not.
                  
                  Some kids DO want to work...at least if they are not simply given pretty much whatever they want.  But to find work for a 14 or 15 year old, and even 16-17 is not easy - too many laws restricting what and when they can work.
                  
                  Why not work in a Tyson chicken factory?  They can do janitorial, they can work in the shipping/receiving dept,. they could perhaps even do some office work.  Most places have at least some yard work to do (I also mowed lawns at an even earlier age). It is fallacy to think that every job there (or any factory type setting) is dangerous.  Same for construction work - not every job is dangerous.  As an electrician we always had clean-up to do, pulling wire, fetching tools.  A youngster wanting work, under adequate supervision (and that IS a rub), is safer there than at home alone.
                  
                  Why are OSHA jobs only for adults?  Every job I've had (as an adult) was under OSHA - nearly every job is.  And the rules are designed for idiots so they don't hurt themselves - virtually the definition of a new employee whatever age.
                  
                  Time of work is absolutely a problem.  Children must attend school, must get adequate sleep (10 hours?) and have some free time to boot.  As usual, your silly comment about conservatives going back 200 years is foolish.
                  
                  For much of it I don't think we disagree - you just assume that most jobs are very dangerous, that employers violate the laws on a regular basis and that children cannot work and go to school both.  With these things I DO disagree, but then I don't have that built in bias against anything conservatives try to accomplish.

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   Willowarborposted 9 months ago

   This is not sensationalism or exaggeration. An Economic Policy Institute analysis found a nearly fourfold increase in labor violations involving children from 2015 to 2022.
   This speaks volumes about the state of the U.S. capitalist economy.
   Lawmakers, mostly Republican ones, increasingly want to deregulate laws governing children in the workplace.
   Arkansas, whose GOP governor is the former White House press secretary under Donald Trump, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In March,  signed a new bill removing employer requirements to verify the age of children as young as 14 before hiring them, calling such protections “burdensome and obsolete.”  Really?
   
   My take? What they appear to care about is businesses having a larger pool of vulnerable workers to exploit at a time when worker demands for higher wages and better working conditions are rising and strike activity has increased. Who’s more vulnerable than children, particularly undocumented and low-income ones?
   We would be hard-pressed to imagine these lawmakers' 16-year-old children or grandchildren serving alcohol for six hours a day at a bar past 9 p.m. on a school night and letting the bar owner off the hook if that child gets injured on the job, which is what Iowa Republicans have now legalized.
   Just another area in which Republicans seem to want to roll back a century worth of progress.
   A right-wing think tank called the Acton Institute, one that obscures its agenda in religious thought, declared in 2016 that “Work is a gift our kids can handle.”  but  hey they just may develop some  "skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,”   

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      wildernessposted 9 months agoin reply to this

      Iowa has legalized a 16 year old working until 4AM on school nights?  And does not hold the bar owner liable if that employee is injured on the job?  A link to that law would be helpful.

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         Willowarborposted 9 months agoin reply to this

         No worker’s comp for injury or death to students
         Section 92.24 of the bill, “Employer Liability in Work-Based Learning,” would strip away worker’s compensation claims to students and their families, even if a business’s negligence was at fault.
         https://iowastartingline.com/2023/01/31 … et%20hurt.
         
         The child labor bill was signed by the governor in May. Some say it violates federal law.
         https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ne … -rcna85321
         
         I do not believe I ever stated anything about working until 4:00 a.m.
         
         It does appear that using children to fill jobs in this country is increasingly becoming a problem.
         We see children being used to clean blood and slaughterhouses and recently a 16-year-old was killed in a Mississippi poultry plant. He was the third teenager to die in a workplace accident so far this summer.
         Why are we allowing this to happen?

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