Especially if you’re underage and undocumented
The graphic above popped up on Twitter last light and then Helaine Olen did this morning in writing about kids working in meatpacking (Washington Post):
“A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor,” wrote Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, as he sent the legislation known as the Fair Labor Standards Act to Congress. With the bill, which also established a national minimum wage, lawmakers condemned the ghastly practice of children toiling on factory floors to the past.
But American child labor is making a comeback. Underage children are operating fryers in restaurant kitchens and assembling parts at auto plants. Last month, when the New York Times published a blockbuster expose on how some of the nation’s mostprominent companies depend on subcontractors who illegally employ migrant children, it brought attention to an ongoing horror. The Economic Policy Institute recently crunched Labor Department data and discovered an almost 300 percent increase in child labor violations since 2015.
Kids from Central America as young as 12 are found working in auto parts and meatpacking plants. What we are seeing is a largely Republican effort to roll back protections for workers, Olen insists, but Democrats sometimes join in as well. In Arkansas, in Ohio, in Minnesota and Iowa.
And in Congress. A bipartisan bill would allow parents who own logging operations “to employ their 16- and 17-year-old children to operate mechanized equipment.” Under supervision, dontcha know:
Meanwhile, not a single Republican has signed onto legislation recently introduced by Senate Democrats that would significantly increase the fines on companies for violations of child labor laws, from the maximum of $5,000 per violation up to $132,270 for routine violations, and from $15,138 to $601,150 when children are seriously injured or killed on the job.
In addition to claiming expanded paid work for teens is a win-win for employers and financially needy children, advocates are draping their appeals in the language of parental rights. That’s right — the same logic that dictates parents should be able to protect vulnerable teens by blocking controversial library books, sex ed and the full racial history of the United States. Requiring work permits for children under 16 “steps in front of parents’ decision-making process,” said the Arkansas state representative who spearheaded the successful measure there.
Yes, of course, lowering average labor costs for business is about parental freedoms and teaching initiative and the value of hard work. Gotta get people serving Mr. Economy years earlier on the front end and then squeeze more out of them on the back end by postponing access to Social Security and Medicare. Because what’s good for Mr. Economy is good for America.
Olen adds that the push to loosen child labor laws is not a 21st century Republican innovation. Ronald Reagan tried it in 1982.
Teenage workers are injured at significantly higher rates than adults employed in the same roles. Working more than 15 hours a week during high school is associated with a higher chance of failing to graduate from college. Academic performance can suffer — which is particularly concerning after a pandemic that saw significant drops in reading and math scores. And immigrant children seeking asylum especially need to attend school, not be pushed into full-time work at 12 or 13 years old.
Not to mention that kids sustaining debilitaiing injuries from dangerous work will draw conservative condemnation for being rendered unable to serve Mr. Economy. Why, the little deadbeats are just faking it to draw disability checks. That undocumented kids are likely ineligible to receive SSI benefits won’t stop the Tucker Carlsons from propagandizing otherwise.
Alexandra Petri satirized the push to loosen child labors just weeks ago. Idleness is a greater threat to children than gun violence:
How dare these children, with their small, nimble fingers, fritter away even a moment that they could be spending sweeping a chimney or, perhaps, working in a coal mine? If minors weren’t supposed to be mining, why is it right there in the name? There are only so many hours in the day, and every hour children spend in a library being exposed to ideas, or playing (even if they are playing at farming, a noble trade), or singing a little song to themselves just for fun, or making friends, or laughing because someone is wearing a silly hat, is an hour they will not be able to receive extremely low wages for doing a dangerous task. How sad. Our children are a valuable resource. We must protect them, at all costs.
I don’t call people holding the view that humans exist to serve the Market the Midas Cult for nothing.
