America is divided over major efforts to rewrite child labor laws

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/31/us-child-labor-laws-state-bills/

by petethomas • 2 years ago

50 113 2 years ago

I’m in Alabama and it seems like we’re actively working to make the education system worse so we can use the kids to replace the immigrant laborers who are leaving.

dinkumthinkum6• 2 years ago

That’s not true. In what way could that be true? I think people forget there are these things called parents. This is not sone kind of forced labor or dawn of industrial age coal mine situation or something like that. There’s nothing wrong with kids doing some work under the guidance of their parents. As far as the “education system,” this is largely a function of parents as well.

giraffe_lady2• 2 years ago

Children being maimed in factory labor is unfortunate but it's the fault of their parents. We merely created the crushing economic pressure that made it necessary for their children to work and removed the legal obstacles to the factory hiring them. Ultimately this is a matter of personal responsibility, like every other bad thing we caused to happen.

stuaxo• 2 years ago

There have always been parents, including when kids worked in mines or up chimneys.

hollywood_court2• 2 years ago

I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic and trolling or if you really believe that. Please look at any number of recent news headlines regarding Alabama and how our education systems and libraries and such are regressing. It’s becoming dangerous for educators even teach basic reproductive safety to our students.

Frost1x• 2 years ago

Labor can be forced through many different mechanisms. What matters ultimately is just how much flexibility one has to not work or how many necessary things needed for surviving depends on actively working. Everything else are just levels of choice of flexibility within working, but you still for all functional purposes need to work. There’s a whole lot of illusion of choice we like to give people anymore.

Red_Leaves_Flyy• 2 years ago

I already shared this link once but you should read it to.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-lab...

busterarm14• 2 years ago

Most states trying to loosen standards are just trying to get in line with federal regulations (from their already more-stringent state standards) which are mostly minor changes like allowing minors to serve alcohol or work an extra two hours a day.

On the other hand, the media is constantly driving this idea home that there are no jobs for young people, so it's kind of hard to know which side of their ass they're talking out of.

What I do know is if you look at the data we have since COVID, young men have been dropping out of high school and college in record numbers in order to work to support their families out of necessity. Inflation has crushed a lot of poor and middle class people.

If regulators and rich liberals really want to save the children, they should get a handle on supply chains and pricing of basic necessities so that young people don't have to choose between feeding themselves/their families and their education.

toomuchtodo2• 2 years ago

Rising wages due to labor shortages is likely more effective in quality of life increases in the face of elevated prices versus allowing children to work longer and more risky jobs. But conservatives are somewhat allergic to labor having any power or wage increases, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. As long as there is enough anti-immigrant sentiment that keeps immigration subdued (versus Canada’s “open doors, citizen economics around housing and wages be damned”), the problem works itself out eventually with structural demographics and a compressing working age labor force. The world is getting old fast; bad for capitalistic heavy socioeconomic systems (which relies heavily on surplus or under compensated labor), good for people who must exist in the labor market.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/our-w...

https://hbr.org/2022/11/the-global-population-is-aging-is-yo...

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Anal...

hn_throwaway_998• 2 years ago

But this ignores the fact that if wages rise too much, the product or service the company sells may become uneconomic. I literally have seen people complain about how "the man" is trying to keep wages down while at the same time bitching that their fast food meal costs $11 dollars. I guarantee many of these small business owners of places like restaurants are not exactly raking in the dough (in most cases a software engineer with like 5+ years of experience can make more money with less risk). I make a good living but I've noticed myself eating out less because it's tough for me to stomach a $100+ per person bill at even a reasonable (i.e. not super fancy) restaurant.

hn_throwaway_998• 2 years ago

On the other hand, the media is constantly driving this idea home that there are no jobs for young people

I have no idea what you're talking about. Where I live I constantly see articles about worker shortages in low wage roles like restaurant workers and retail that have typically been the main jobs for teenagers.

busterarm14• 2 years ago

LMGTFY

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/06/why-so-few-teenagers-have-jo...

https://www.epi.org/publication/young-workers-covid-recessio...

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/24/wearying-and...

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-young-people-not-find-work

https://www.reddit.com/r/Adulting/comments/18k394x/the_econo...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/good-jobs-are-out-of-reac...

AnarchismIsCool9• 2 years ago

https://www.statista.com/statistics/247407/average-annual-co...

It's not even basic necessities (food, healthcare, misc bills), it's that the median person is spending an overwhelming fraction of their take home income on housing.

Supply chains will bounce around and settle (though there's work to do there), but we've created so much bad regulation around just building places to live that they're a goddamn investment vehicle instead of a human right.

If we cut housing costs in half they'd still be absurd but suddenly everyone would have an insane amount of financial flexibility relative to where they are.

busterarm14• 2 years ago

Housing isn't a basic necessity?

Seems like the most basic, to me.

webwielder2• 2 years ago

Both sides journalism prevents the headline from being “Republicans seek to weaken laws against child labor”

AnarchismIsCool9• 2 years ago

I'd accept "Republicans continue crusade against childhood innocence"

bongodongobob2• 2 years ago

While I'll agree that a lot of their aims are definitely nefarious, I think the childhood innocence thing is a modern invention. Good intentions, but maybe misguided.

Kids need chores, responsibilities, struggles etc. Coddling kids until they are 18 and then throwing them into the world with 0 life experience is just setting them up for failure. I had a paper route for a couple years when I was 12 and got a job at McDonalds when I was 14.

A lot of this can be learned in extracurricular sports as well, but that's obviously not for everyone. Two a day football practices in summer were harder than any job I've ever had but no one says sports are bad for kids. I don't really see the difference, plus, you don't get paid for sports.

Of course I'm not suggesting kids should be working in the coal mines, but I don't see anything wrong with summer or weekend jobs, working on the family farm, etc. It's good for them and a part of learning how to be an independent adult. Kids shouldn't be infantalized and sheltered through college.

refurb5• 2 years ago

Allowing a 17 year old to work the night shift is a "crusade against childhood innocence"?

refurb5• 2 years ago

You act like that's a bad thing? Journalists are supposed to report the news not their opinions or what they think is the good side and the bad side.

If you want that, just watch Tik Tok or read the opinion columns.

But I actually applaud Washington Post for attempting to be somewhat neutral on this issue. If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws.

So the logic would be - if a state follows federal labor laws, are they "exploiting child labor"? Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble.

I mean, if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws. Is that wrong?

triceratops4• 2 years ago

If you actually read the article, the states are simply relaxing laws that were more strict than federal laws.
Clearly the feds have set laws they feel are reasonble

I did read the article. Iowa now allows minors to work in roofing and industrial laundries. If it's true they're aligning with federal laws (doubtful) I'm going to go ahead and say that federal laws about children working in roofing are not currently reasonable, and that Iowa should not have done this if they gave two shits about children.

if a child labor law said "Kids can't work at all", then it was changed to "Kids can work up to 10 hours per week", that would be weaking child labor laws

Is that what happened though? Be honest. What does the article say?

AnarchismIsCool9• 2 years ago

I'm so fucking glad I'm not a kid right now.

We're trying to make the education system somehow worse than the dumpster fire it was when I was little, we have people campaigning on making sure kids don't get free lunches for...reasons?... and now we have people trying to ensure they can be exploited so the 0.1% class can make an extra 0.1% this year.

Screech about bootstraps all you want, it's awfully hard to pull yourself up by them if you don't have shoes at all. This isn't politics, this is thunder-dome-ism.

busterarm14• 2 years ago

If you can't even afford shoes, it's likely you're dropping out of school to go work and you need less restrictions so that you can get more hours and better opportunities.

If I need someone for an 8 hour shift and laws only allow me to hire you for 6, then I'm going to hire someone else instead of you.

giraffe_lady2• 2 years ago

This is the HN classic pro-sweatshop labor argument but aimed at americans? An interesting variant I guess.

AnarchismIsCool9• 2 years ago

Fuck that, kids should have basic necessities (food, clothing, education etc), at a minimum, covered through public funding. If the government has one fucking purpose, that's it right there. If people can't even have a fucking childhood what are we doing.

patcon2• 2 years ago

Omg I truly want to be respectful in my reply. But... just... I need to communicate to you that this logic is so messed up. Just because systems of capital want something from us, that does NOT mean that we must provide it. We don't need to allow a social context where a child must work harder to survive or support their family -- we can, and should, reject that premise. If the household is failing in that way, we need to ask how we elevate that household.

Social welfare exists to protect ppl from the exact sort of thing you are arguing permission to indulge.

There's no lack of wealth in this country, it's just been captured and is distributed massively unequally in fucked up ways.

dinkumthinkum6• 2 years ago

I agree that teaching kids things that aren’t true, or telling them to not believe their own eyes, just to follow a particular political ideology is not good but I’m not sure what you mean about it getting so much worse. It is very hard to have any kind of education system without involvement from parents and instilling a value of education. I’ve seen many kids unable to recite basic facts or understand basic things that they were definitely taught in public schools. Being able to work at sandwich shop a little bit more a week and maybe learn a bit about business and how to deal with people and act professionally is not going to scar these kids. This idea is leftist hysteria.

prisenco• 2 years ago

Being able to work at sandwich shop

I’d much prefer the kids who struggle with academics be given a comprehensive trade school education than having them act as a labor release valve for when businesses are unwilling to hire adults.

I’ve worked at sandwich shops and the idea that this is a good way to learn about business is not the experience I had.

mikeytown2• 2 years ago

Alternative source that's not paywalled https://usaherald.com/changes-to-child-labor-law-being-propo...

srameshc• 2 years ago

2024 and we are still divided on this issue ? It must be like , "We got 99 problems but this ain't one"

vinyl7• 2 years ago

It's easier for congress to rat-hole over already solved issues than it is to work to solve actual issues. It's been this way for decades now and it's exhausting. We need to find a way to solve this failure in the incentives that congress people have

77pt772• 2 years ago

Just ratify the "Convention on the Rights of the Child" [1].

It's long overdue!

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

America is divided over major efforts to rewrite child labor laws

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