The Child Labor Thread

[TradeTheBeal!]

Can these Arkansas children be trained to harvest coconuts?

 

Asking for a friend…

[The Evil Genius]

11 minutes ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Can these Arkansas children be trained to harvest coconuts?

 

Asking for a friend…

 

[Larry]

2 hours ago, Wildbunny said:

As long as it's not their kids, they are fine with it...

Or trans. 

[China]

12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes — but they can work in tobacco fields

 

José Velásquez Castellano started working in agriculture when he was 13 years old. Ten-hour days, five or six days a week, in North Carolina's summer heat. It was sometimes blueberries, sometimes cucumbers — but mostly, it was tobacco.

 

"Its prime hits right at the peak of summer," Castellano told NPR, and the tobacco created a greenhouse effect. It would be 90 degrees outside, "but inside those fields, it feels like well over 100 degrees."

 

He'd go home dehydrated and exhausted and then wake up at 4 a.m. the next day and do it again.

 

For children 12 and older in the United States, difficult, low-paying and dangerous work in tobacco fields for unlimited hours is legal, as long as it's outside school hours. Child labor laws are more lenient in agriculture than in other industries, and efforts to change that have repeatedly failed, leaving growers and companies to decide whether to set the bar higher than what's legally required of them. In the meantime, kids work, often trying to help their families make ends meet.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

U.S. Was Warned of Migrant Child Labor, but ‘Didn’t Want to Hear It’

 

In the spring of 2021, Linda Brandmiller was working at an arena in San Antonio that had been converted into an emergency shelter for migrant children. Thousands of boys were sleeping on cots as the Biden administration grappled with a record number of minors crossing into the United States without their parents.

 

Ms. Brandmiller’s job was to help vet sponsors, and she had been trained to look for possible trafficking. In her first week, two cases jumped out: One man told her he was sponsoring three boys to employ them at his construction company. Another, who lived in Florida, was trying to sponsor two children who would have to work off the cost of bringing them north.

 

She immediately contacted supervisors working with the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for these children. “This is urgent,” she wrote in an email reviewed by The New York Times.

 

But within days, she noticed that one of the children was set to be released to the man in Florida. She wrote another email, this time asking for a supervisor’s “immediate attention” and adding that the government had already sent a 14-year-old boy to the same sponsor.

 

Ms. Brandmiller also emailed the shelter’s manager. A few days later, her building access was revoked during her lunch break. She said she was never told why she had been fired.

 

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, a recent Times investigation showed. After the article’s publication in February, the White House announced policy changes and a crackdown on companies that hire children.

 

But all along, there were signs of the explosive growth of this labor force and warnings that the Biden administration ignored or missed, The Times has found.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[Larry]

There's a good large chunk of people who believe that what's wrong with our economy is that American workers make too much money.  

[gbear]

I was horrified to read that NY times article. I admit I didn't know the scale of the issue.  250k undocumented children in the last 2 years.  Then to read how many we lose track of/sign off to go to what looks like indentured servitude.  I thought we were beyond that phase of our history. 

 

Suddenly, my oldest son's fortunate placement in my house looks even more fortunate.  For those who do not know, his parents were illegal immigrants from El Salvador.  His mom might have been one of those kids 2 decades ago.  

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[The Evil Genius]

The same group that fought against Medicare expansion and anti poverty programs are behind these new let's put little Johnny on the assembly line. 

 

The GOP needs to be extinguished. 

[Larry]

It's all about pushing down the price of labor.  

[China]

So they want to get rid of immigrants, thus reducing the labor pool, and replace them with child laborers.  Got it.

 

Edit:  with the side effect of keeping the kids focused on work not school, thus ensuring an uneducated voter base that they can easily manipulate with misinformation.

Edited April 24, 2023 by China

[Larry]

They don't actually want to get rid of the illegals. They want to make sure they stay illegal. Easier to exploit that way. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[The Evil Genius]

Quote

Investigators also determined two 10-year-old children were employed – but not paid – and sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m.”

 

I suspect there is more to the story...

[Destino]

On 4/17/2023 at 2:34 PM, China said:

U.S. Was Warned of Migrant Child Labor, but ‘Didn’t Want to Hear It’

 

In the spring of 2021, Linda Brandmiller was working at an arena in San Antonio that had been converted into an emergency shelter for migrant children. Thousands of boys were sleeping on cots as the Biden administration grappled with a record number of minors crossing into the United States without their parents.

 

 

 

Click on the link for the full article

so people alerting that human trafficking is occurring get fired, and children are being housed in crowded room and being forced to pay off their “debts”.

 

I wonder what companies will have to pay small fines over this.  I’m sure that will fix it
 

 

[LadySkinsFan]

The Republican Fascist Party is truly repugnant. All the above posts exactly lay out their purpose: drive down wages (always a goal), making it okay for poor kids to work at night so they're too tired for school and education, make it look kinda legal to traffic in children for legal work (other than sex work), and so much more. 

 

The Republican Fascist Party needs to go. 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2023 by LadySkinsFan

[TheGreatBuzz]

3 hours ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

 

Apparently there were a few more.

 

 

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

 

[China]

New, Conservative Push To Weaken Child Labor Protections Is Gaining Steam

 

A movement to weaken American child labor protections at the state level began in 2022. By June 2023, Arkansas, Iowa, New Jersey and New Hampshire had enacted this kind of legislation, and lawmakers in at least another eight states had introduced similar measures.

 

The laws generally make it easier for kids from 14 to 17 years old to work longer and later — and in occupations that were previously off-limits for minors.

 

When Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed her state’s new, more permissive child labor law on May 26, 2023, the Republican leader said the measure would “allow young adults to develop their skills in the workforce.”

 

As scholars of child labor, we find the arguments Reynolds and other like-minded politicians are using today to justify undoing child labor protections echo older justifications made decades ago.

 

Many conservatives and business leaders have long argued, based on a combination of ideological and economic grounds, that federal child labor rules aren’t necessary. Some object to the government determining who can’t work. Cultural conservatives say working has moral value for young people and that parents should make decisions for their children. Many conservatives also say that teens, fewer of whom are in the workforce today than in past decades, could help fill empty jobs in tight labor markets.

 

Opponents of child labor observe that when kids under 18 work long hours or do strenuous jobs, it can disrupt childhood development, interfere with their schooling and deprive them of the sleep they need. Expanding child labor can encourage kids to drop out of school and jeopardize young people’s health through injuries and work-related illnesses.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Teen boy dies following industrial accident at northern Wisconsin sawmill

 

A 16-year-old boy died Saturday from injuries sustained in an industrial accident at a sawmill in a northern Wisconsin County.

 

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the fatality, and has made a referral to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for possible child labor violations concerning hazardous occupations, according to Scott Allen, the Labor Department’s regional director for public affairs and media relations.

 

The Florence County Sheriff's Office was called last Thursday to a report of an unresponsive teenager at the Florence Hardwoods logging company. 

 

The Sheriff's Office says the teen was transferred to a local hospital before being sent to Children's Wisconsin, a pediatric hospital in Milwaukee. He died from his injuries Saturday. 

 

Click on the link for the full article

[LadySkinsFan]

Really, that we even have a child labor thread in the 21st Century is a travesty.

[Simmsy]

On 7/6/2023 at 9:46 AM, LadySkinsFan said:

Really, that we even have a child labor thread in the 21st Century is a travesty.

 

This is what the right wants, to bring us back to the stone age. Normally, I would cheer this stupidity on...but a lot of children are going to get hurt over this.

[Larry]

But at least they won't get told that racism exists.  Or gays.