Causes.com
| 7.17.23
Teen Killed in Sawmill Accident as Child Labor Law Violations Grow
Do you support stronger child labor laws?
Updated July 17, 2023, 11:30 PST
- While lawmakers want to eliminate child labor laws, a 16-year-old died in an industrial accident while working in a sawmill in Wisconsin earlier this month. A cause of death has not been released, but the incident points to the growing trend of child labor law violations across the country.
- Statistics from the Department of Labor reveal that the number of minors employed in violation of labor laws was up 37% in 2022 over the previous year.
- Observers and activists point to the small fines that companies receive when they violate child labor laws as being an insufficient deterrent. A food sanitation company was fined just $1.5 million for employing over 100 children to clean meat-cutting equipment with toxic chemicals earlier this year.
What's the story?
- State lawmakers are passing laws that allow more minors to work in low-paying and dangerous jobs.
- In 2022, the Department of Labor reported a 37% increase in the number of minors working in violation of child labor laws compared to the previous year. This number has gone up by 283% since 2015.
- This increase is driven by several factors: employers seeking cheap labor, a large influx of unaccompanied minors entering the country, instances of human trafficking, and state legislatures relaxing child-labor laws to accommodate industry demands.
- Some Republicans argue that the weakening of laws is a response to a competitive labor market and the challenges businesses face in hiring workers.
Child labor laws
- The federal government established the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938 to regulate youth employment. The FLSA prohibits harmful child labor and sets minimum standards for wages and working hours for teenage workers. Most minors are protected by the FLSA, however, states are making efforts to reduce their own protective measures.
- In the past two years, at least 14 states have weakened child-labor protections. These new laws often increase work hours, remove restrictions on hazardous jobs, lower the age for serving alcohol at tables, or introduce lower wages for minors.
- In Iowa, new laws permit children as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. With approval, 16-year-olds can also work in hazardous occupations like roofing, excavation, demolition, and operating power-driven machinery.
- Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas recently signed a law that removes the need for 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent and a state permit before starting work.
What's being done?
- Following a New York Times investigation, the Biden administration announced plans to strengthen measures against child labor and better enforce existing laws.
- The Department of Labor and Health and Human Services will create a combined task force to investigate companies hiring underage migrant workers and to improve the screening of sponsors for unaccompanied children.
Do you support stronger child labor laws?
—Laura Woods & Emma Kansiz
(Photo credit: Pix4Free)
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We are falling back to the Industrial Revolution era. If kids get hurt, you just hire new ones.
We need to protect children from being taken advantage of.
Teenagers need to have more jobs available to them for their own economic situation, improving job skills, learning workplace procedures, self discipline, pride in accomplishments, etc. Excessive free time leads many teens to engage in negative activities.
We refuse to pay well, so we can't find workers. We refuse to let immigrants come here, so we can't find workers.
Hey! I got an idea! Let's let kids work younger! Maybe then we can find some workers! What's that you say? Less people are having kids because it sucks ass being in the U.S. of A right now? Well then we'll make them get pregnant whether they want to or not, make school less and less appealing a prospect, make college unaffordable and housing outrageously expensive...and THEN we'll let their kids work for us! (And after that we'll MAKE their kids work for us! Brilliant!
~ Capitalists probably.
Just because child labor violations had gone down (probably due to decades of existing laws), that's no reason to get rid of the laws. They were there (and should remain) for good reasons. The answer to the job crisis is not to insert younger workers into the workforce; the answer is to incentivize the young adults who aren't working to get off their lazy butts. Children should be allowed to be children (go to school, join in sports/music/clubs, have actual free time to play). Soon enough, adulthood and all its responsibilities will be forced upon them.
I oppose child labor laws because
Democratic donors are allowed to rape trafficked kids on pedophile Island like the ones they visit that were owned by Jeffrey Epstein, you sicko Democrat voters are just as guilty.
Democrats are allowing illegal kids across the border that are most likely being put to work illegally in farm fields or Democratic prostitution whore houses.
If legal usa kids want to drop of of Democratic indoctrination camps and work they should be allowed to at the age of 8
Let's face it, you sick pedophile Democrats want to sneak our kids gender drugs and surgery at the age of 8.
They can make the choice to work also.
Leave our kids alone budweiser, target, and DNCC
Regulations are made to protect people. Every time you roll them back, people die. Same thing with speed limits. Every few years, they get dropped and accidents and deaths drop as well, so people yell and scream that they want to drive faster, so speed limits are raised and along with it so do the number of accidents and the body count. Now, people are screaming about "permitless carrying" of weapons. As this idiocy passes, so will the body count. "Protect and serve"? Well, WE the people are not being "protected" and it seems to be more and more that our "representatives" are "serving" themselves.
And in our greatest state, another teen dies in a dangerous job.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/20/1188959743/meatpacking-death-teenager-mississippi-poultry-plant
Again, tell us how the right supports life?
no child should be wotking in a dangerous job.
So this is how The PROLIFE supporters feel you can protect children
after birth?????
Rest in peace child... safer workplace is required
Yes!
these GOP hacks always talk a hood game about protecting children but somehow fail to protect them when it may effect their donors bottom line!!
I feel there should be stricter laws.
I work with people who have developmental disabilities. They have to receive training before looking for a job. We call it employment readiness.
We are constantly asking them if they like the job, how are they being treated at work, providing job coaches, and monitoring their paycheck.
We constantly tell them about their rights. We give them a number to call if they feel they are being neglected, abused, or exploited.
The same standard should apply to children so they will not be abused, neglected, or exploited.
No parent should have to bury their child! If you are going to force children to work, then we need to have child labor laws to protect kids...period. Let children be children. No child should be forced to work.
Need to protect children!
It is too damn easy to abuse the younger generation so as to force them to be answerable to those in charge. "Do as you're told or get the hell out" attitude will "brain wash" them into being easy to controll. "Be fruitful and multiply" guarantees an everlasting supply of obedient workers who receive minimal pay for their labors. Strict regulations regarding anyone under the age of 16 should be a "no brainer" and safety in the work place should be a priority regardless of age.
Republican politicians truly HATE poor people---even poor children. They don't care if these children lose a few fingers or a limb or ruin their health.
The works MUST get done...
The CEO's must get the multi-million dollar bonuses...
I cannot believe this question is coming about in 2023. It seems more like the 1890s to me!
we need stronger child labor law not loosening them children shouldnt work in slaughter houses , industrial companines and other dangrous industries, the republicans may think that its appropriate for children to work long hours and in dangrous postitions but its not so unless they r willing to let their children to work in such places its not we need stronger child labor laws and instead of fines for companies we need to shut them down and fine them
Let's be clear! It's REPUBLICAN lawmakers pushing for expanding child labor! But republicans are sooooo worried about the children huh?! Yea...BS!
You guys are always pushing the science. The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions. This is from: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know#:~:text=The%20brain%20finishes%20developing%20and,prioritizing%2C%20and%20making%20good%20decisions.
Absolutely! This is why we had them in the first place.History gives us a reference to learn from so we don't repeat what failed before! There are no words.....
YES!!!!! This turning back the hands of time on child labor laws is unacceptable, as is all the other shit the f-ing Republicans are doing to voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, etc. The f-ing Republicans are a bunch of fascist who want to turn this country into a dictatorship thus putting in on the same path as Nazi Germany took and we all know how that turned out.
Child labor laws were put in place for a purpose. Children do not have the maturity to stand up for their own protection so laws have to be in place to do that. And shame on the industries that are using children.