Putting children to work in 21st Century equivalent of coal mines makes perfect sense if moral standards don’t include space for empathy and respect for law. Being able to justify unsavory conduct by claiming victimhood also helps.
Who’s behind this?
The political party refusing to disgorge its own who are advocating for the death penalty to apply to women having abortions
The political party participating in book banning,
The political party affirming people’s right to kill themselves based on medical disinformation
The political party that sees drag queens as a menace and ignores its own horrible record of serving as a safe haven for child molesters.
Need I go on?
It can be hard to believe, but less than a century ago the federal and most state governments did not have a means of protecting minors from exploitation and dangerous work situations.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which came into force during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration was the first sweeping federal law restricting the employment and abuse of child workers.
While the FLSA placed limits on many forms of child labor, agricultural labor was excluded. Most of the New Deal’s exclusions involved people of color; it was the bargain Southern lawmakers made to gain their votes.
Today, an estimated half million children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the United States.
As is true with everything else FDR accomplished, today’s reactionaries are seeking to undermine and discard this legislation, advancing bills in state legislatures lessening protections for youth at risk to be exploited by employers, like migrant children and kids from families facing financial problems.
Some of their actions are above board, like the law recently signed by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) making it easier for teens as young as 14 to work without obtaining a permit.
The Iowa version of looser child labor laws shields businesses from some liabilities should minors get injured on the job. They would also be denied coverage for Workers Compensation eligible incidents.
The legal rollbacks come in the face of under the table actions by companies employing minors for positions endangering their health and welfare. Such actions have become widespread, and the federal government has promised to crack down in the face of a 69% increase in companies employing underage workers over the past four years.
Last month, the Labor Department announced $1.5 million in fines assessed on 13 Packers Sanitation Services Inc. facilities in eight states for illegally employing more than 100 minors to carry out hazardous jobs.
The Wisconsin-based company provides cleaning services under contract to meat and poultry producers, including JBS Foods, Tyson and Cargill. Those companies were able to avoid prosecution by claiming they were ignorant of the contractor’s practices.
The facilities listed in the department's announcement were mostly across the South and Midwest, including Arkansas, Minnesota and Nebraska.
Incidents described by the Labor Department sounded like something right out of nineteenth century accounts of factory life. At least three minors suffered injuries while cleaning slaughterhouses, including a chemical burn to the face, according to the Washington Post.
Minors had overnight shifts and used caustic chemicals to "clean razor-sharp saws" and other high-risk equipment.
A shocking New York Times investigation focusing on the exploitation of migrant children involved sending a reporter to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia.
The growth of migrant child labor in the United States over the past several years is a result of a chain of willful ignorance. 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.
“As the government, we’ve turned a blind eye to their trafficking,” said Doug Gilmer, the head of the Birmingham, Ala., office of Homeland Security Investigations, a federal agency that often becomes involved with immigration cases.
Mr. Gilmer teared up as he recalled finding 13-year-olds working in meat plants; 12-year-olds working at suppliers for Hyundai and Kia, as documented last year by a Reuters investigation; and children who should have been in middle school working at commercial bakeries.
More than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states were interviewed. A few were willing to be profiled and have their names used.
Nery Cutzal was 13 when he met his sponsor over Facebook Messenger. Once Nery arrived in Florida, he discovered that he owed more than $4,000 and had to find his own place to live. His sponsor sent him threatening text messages and kept a running list of new debts: $140 for filling out H.H.S. paperwork; $240 for clothes from Walmart; $45 for a taco dinner.
“Don’t mess with me,” the sponsor wrote. “You don’t mean anything to me.”
Nery began working until 3 a.m. most nights at a trendy Mexican restaurant near Palm Beach to make the payments. “He said I would be able to go to school and he would take care of me, but it was all lies,” Nery said.
The really sad part of these stories is the lack of consequences faced by the contractors and the companies who hired them. Some of those companies (which mostly issued press releases mumbling about how good they were, etc.) included Ford, General Motors, J. Crew, Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, Fruit of the Loom, Pepsi, General Mills, and meat processor JBS.
Hearthside is a contract food processing company, with 39 locations and a history of being cited for safety violations. Since 2019, 11 workers have suffered amputations at their facilities.
Underage workers in Grand Rapids said that spicy dust from immense batches of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos made their lungs sting, and that moving heavy pallets of cereal all night made their backs ache. They worried about their hands getting caught in conveyor belts, which federal law classifies as so hazardous that no child Carolina’s age is permitted to work with them.
Hearthside said in a statement that it was committed to complying with laws governing worker protections. “We strongly dispute the safety allegations made and are proud of our safety-first culture,” the statement read.
The Labor Department is limited to assessing fines and penalties. And the fact is that most Americans, though they may find these practices abhorrent, simply don’t have the time or energy to address these companies individually.
You who does have the time? State Legislators who are content to ban drag queens, prevent upsetting history from being taught in schools, lower the age at which guns can be bought, protect child marriage, and scour libraries for dirty words.
If they’re truly interested in protecting children, attaching criminal penalties to abuses and requiring companies using contractors to insure legal working standards are met, would seem like a task much more worthy than whining about who or what is woke.
Oh, and by the way, the demand for child labor is supposedly driven by a shortage of workers. The reality is that people are unwilling to work jobs with crappy working conditions, pay, and benefits.
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Woo Hoo!
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Yet another example that so-called pro-life, family values Party of Death is neither pro-life or in favor of family values. Hey, though, if the children work, they can't go to school and become educated enough to think for themselves and they will sell their souls to the company store.
Honestly, I am convinced that all of the things you mention, "The political party refusing to disgorge its own who are advocating for the death penalty to apply to women having abortions
'The political party participating in book banning,
"The political party affirming people’s right to kill themselves based on medical disinformation
"The political party that sees drag queens as a menace and ignores its own horrible record of serving as a safe haven for child molesters," distractions and subterfuges from much more awful things they are doing. I shudder to think what that might be. I am certain that we will find out.
In my prayers daily, Doug.