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It is clear that many aren't reading the article. This is not about kids working at McDonald's for a summer job:

"In February, the Labor Department announced that it had found more than a hundred children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen working in meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses, in eight states, for Packers Sanitation Services, one of the nation’s largest food-sanitation companies. The facilities themselves are owned by major corporations, including Tyson Foods and JBS. (All three companies denied that they had engaged in any wrongdoing.) The children worked overnight shifts at such jobs as cleaning bone saws and head splitters with hazardous chemicals. At least three were injured."

The amount of “pro child labor” comments in this thread is truly disheartening.

Extremely on brand for HN, there's always a notable contingent in these kinds of threads.

There's a lot of people here who forgot what they were before the internet made them comfortable livings, and then a bunch more that are MBA types willing to say anything that makes money makes sense

As a parent, I am watching the latest generation of kids where they are struggling to find meaningful work because some of them never worked a day in their life. I want to avoid that situation. I obviously am not advocating for child labor in a meat packing plant working night shifts around dangerous tools and machinery.

I “never worked a day in my life” until I turned 19 and found my first job. You don’t need to work in you mid teens to find a meaningful job as an adult.

I was raking leaves when I was 13, and I started freelancing 15...

Why? Well, it started because I wanted to play Mario Kart on Super Nintendo...

There is something about developing a work ethic as a young person that is important. It starts with chores like mowing the yard.

There's nothing that says you can't develop this without depending on child labor.

I work hard, and my first job was when I was 18. Nothing about a work ethic is special to working hard in a job. Some of the most impressive people I work with had really impressive school work ethics.

It's not just about work ethic. It's about social skills. I worked as a lifeguard for 6 years and the amount of skills I picked up from socializing with the parents and children really helped me out. I probably learned a lot more from that job than I did at school. I learned things about psychology and raising children as I saw a lot of parents with different styles and got to follow their kids as they grew up. I learned about responsibility and showing up on time. I learned how to manage money. And probably most importantly I learned how to talk to adults. It was my most rewarding and fond memory of my childhood.

The alternative life path was basically me staying at home for hours playing Diablo 2.

Because there aren't real people on the internet who you can learn social skills from? With any of this, you get out what you put in. Social skills can absolutely be learned at school, and often are. Try again.

> I learned how to manage money. And probably most importantly I learned how to talk to adults.

I learned how to manage money from an very simple allowance for chores my parents gave me. But also... I really learned to manage money at 18 due to a number of things including college expenses and other stuff. Managing money is not the end-all you think has to be learned at a job. Home Ec is a real class in most public schools.

Talking to adults is a thing you learn by living and interacting in the world. You might've happened to learn some of it at work, but there is no requirement to learning it at work. Also, there's nothing that special about talking to adults that's that different from talking to teenagers... Basics of conversation are simple.

> It was my most rewarding and fond memory of my childhood.

None of this justifies child labor. There are plenty of other rewarding opportunities that don't mean that children have to work dangerous meat-packing jobs.

Very importantly, there are plenty of paths that are not your path that were equally valid. (I'm telling you this from experience). Just because you did it that way doesn't mean everyone has to, or necessarily even should. Not saying the way you were raised was wrong, but we've learned a lot more about child-rearing. We don't have to pull out dunce caps just because people had associations with having to go through that in school.

> Because there aren't real people on the internet who you can learn social skills from?

Ah yes, the famously well adjusted always online teens.

> Also, there's nothing that special about talking to adults that's that different from talking to teenagers... Basics of conversation are simple.

Have you ever listened to teenagers talk to each other? I honestly can't tell if you're trolling.

You're mistaking "there are real people on the internet" for "all people on the internet are great people."

I think teens are much better at sifting through the BS than you're giving them credit for. Also I've talked to plenty of teams who seemed perfectly well adjusted for their age. I'm not talking about them being the best conversationalists, I'm saying they have opportunities to learn. Also, are teachers not adults?

The basis for my argument is that school is sufficient for all of this. Nothing you've said has disproven that.

> There is something about developing a work ethic as a young person that is important.

I started delivering newspapers when I was 10. Dropped out of college and was somewhat depressed with a series of menial jobs. Eventually got on track again, got an A.S. and got a job in the industry I wanted to be in. But it was a low level job that left me very little autonomy and didn't tax my intelligence.

At some point I just stopped caring. A "work ethic" can be killed. Or can devolve into a "money" ethic where people play the kinds of financial engineering games that led to the 2008 recession.

I care again, but only because I'm not doing a menial job anymore.

For context, I was 13 walking door to door asking neighbors if I could rake their yards. Fall was money. Same thing in winter with shoveling snow.

You seem to get my argument. It is about helping your child develop good "Work Ethics" which unfortunately these days is equated to being exploited if you dare to bring it up.

That’s not true at all. People work much harder than in the past, especially considering what they get back. 20-30 year olds are the first generation in almost a century that give away half of their waking hours and struggle to get decent housing.

Rates of unionisation are extremely low, strikes are extremely rare (it took a 30% real income loss before junior doctors started striking in the UK), employment rates are the highest throughout the world and unpaid overtime is the norm in almost all careers.

What exactly is important about it?

Things have to get done.

I own a house. Some time ago, my plumbing had issues. I had to go down into my basement and deal with shit. Literal shit. Work ethic is what lets you put on the "I got things to do" hat, and then you do them.

That's just life. Life is hard and brutal requiring constant effort.

> Things have to get done

Is homework not inadequate to teach this lesson? Kids are not dumb.

There's a pervasive stench of Calvinism in American work culture, even among atheists. There's nothing sanctifying about work, insomuch as it is a good (or bad) thing to teach kids its importance by having them clock in.

Using children as a backup labor force due to an adult worker shortage is - as the kids call it - yucky.

Maybe if I went to a more challenging school (I was already a straight A student who did all homework in class) I might not have needed a full time job during High School to drill some work ethic into me?

And I think a lot of people saying kids shouldn't work during school didn't have poor parents and the problems those conditions create if you can't take your destiny into your hands before that magical 18th birthday when you can do anything you want.

Does homework have to get done? Like, really?

Growing up, the yard had to be done weekly. I did it, got paid, and I was able to walk to the store and buy shit. Work when done well is gratifying.

The way we think about jobs sucks...

> Work when done well is gratifying.

As are hundreds of other things[1] we don't try to indoctrinate[2] our kids with. Work is not special and doesn't make one "whole" more than the other potentially gratifying tasks. I say this as someone who enjoys their current job, but I've worked in other less enjoyable jobs (that incidentally pay less and harsher work environments)

2. Expect children to perform at the same level as fully grown adults, but perhaps with fewer hours

1. Sports, math, games, gardening, sex, most hobbies, repairs, etc.

Things get done when people are motivated to do them — either extrinsically ("I need money to not starve") or intrinsically ("I want my toilet to work").

Maybe I misunderstood you, but you seem to be talking about "work ethic" in the abstract, though — like, valuing the labor itself, rather than the fruits of it. My question is, why is that important? Who cares about labor for its own sake?

Respectfully, I wouldn't want my kid to wait till 19 to do that. I want them to get a job the moment they turn 14-15 (whatever the legal age is in my state). I am very privileged and want my kids to learn the value of money and what it takes to survive in the real world. I want them to work in a dirty shitty McDonalds where they see how tough the real world is. Yes I wouldn't send them to a meat packing plant but there is big difference between never working or just working cool summer jobs and working in a meat factory. I want my kids to experience some hardship where your boss is yelling at you to get shit done. As long as it is not full abuse. I want my kids to learn that the World is not rainbow and sunshines from an early age. I still love them to death and would die for them.

I truly don’t understand the mindset that suffering is not only something that we should not try to eliminate, but something that we should actually indoctrinate people into.

The truth is that we haven't solved automated all the jobs that require suffering.

With the worry about AI, I was staring at my plumbing stack the other day for hours... Realizing, this is a shit job in the truest form, and I couldn't figure out how a machine could do it.

The reason to understand the suffering, to indoctrinate people as you say, is to teach people to respect those that have these jobs. Life is hard, and we are in it together.

I agree with the end you're talking about — respecting people who have difficult jobs — but I find the means bizarre. Can you not respect someone without having put yourself in the exact same position? Your default position should be empathy!

But you also glossed over an important point I'm trying to make: we should see suffering as a sometimes necessary evil and try to alleviate it whenever possible, rather than see it as some sort of virtue.

Why do you think work a worse fate than school? At least with work you get paid for your time and effort, and get the chance to network with people older than yourself

> I want my kids to experience some hardship where your boss is yelling at you to get shit done

This is a horrendous take, and I’m glad you’re not my parent.

They’ll learn the world isn’t rainbows and sunshine without being in a toxic work environment before they’re even old enough to vote.

See, that's where I disagree where a tough boss is considered "toxic" nowadays.

A "tough boss" is very different from a "yelling boss". If you can't control your emotions enough not to yell at your fellow people, you should have no power over anybody.

Why is a dirty shitty McDonalds more real world than an upbringing where you didn't arbitrarily force that on them?

If I want my child to learn anything about bosses that shout, is that you don’t let anybody shout at you.

You're willing to come into a thread as a parent making comments in defense of child labor (your note saying you're not advocating it is at odds with your comment and irrelevant),based on your myopic generalization of a generation. Youve got cranky old person brain and are flirting with dangerous solutions. a pitty

I am not advocating for Child Labor. Putting a 15 year old in a Meat Packing plant working night shifts is wrong. I would never advocate for that. But I wanted to highlight that we have gone in the other direction too much as a culture where kids are over protected and we no longer teach them work ethics at an early age and that creates problems when many of them get out there in the real world after 18. I have seen many in my own friends/family and I refuse to let my kids go through the same.

Your feeling about what direction you think anything is going is irrelevant and again limited, it's a personal insecurity it has no place here in a thread discussing an article describing what you claim to know is wrong while sewing some doubt that it's wrong because of anecdotal anxiety

My grandfather thought that his sons, college-bound as they were, should experience manual labor. For my father, it was a county road crew one summer, for his younger brother a stint or two as a railroad track worker. Sometime after their days with shovels, they sat down and reviewed the old man's chronology. He had never done paid manual labor, had gone right from a commercial high school to an office. He admitted this, saying that he thought that it would be good for them.

But a) these were his sons, big strapping guys of seventeen or so, and b) they were not in especially hazardous conditions. The people who think it is well for other people's adolescents to do dangerous work, I don't understand.

Funny, my grandfather worked in agriculture since he was 5 by his own account. He is the hardest working man I know, but I never heard him say anything about the value of a hard day's work. Instead he told me how important an education was and how I should always work smarter and not harder.

> The amount of “pro child labor” comments in this thread is truly disheartening.

Why is there no nuance between "let the kids do safe jobs if they want" and "make the kids do dangerous jobs" positions? I guess you are either for it all or against any of it?

Because the article is about the exploitation of migrant children in dangerous industries and people are commenting with pro child-labor takes citing their summer job in high school. It's

1. An unproductive shift from the actual topic.

2. Clear they didn't bother reading the article.

I don't think anyone has an issue with teenagers working at McDonald's, although I think they should be taught about labor protections first to avoid being exploited by a megalomaniac store manager. Which is a common occurrence since teenagers don't know any better.

There is a war going on, and HN is influential enough that it warrants propaganda.

I have felt that way for a while. It seems like a place where propaganda would have a very good ROI. I see fewer and fewer tech articles on here and more and more "culture war" stuff. But I have only been active about 2 years. I'd like to know if the vibe was different before.

why? Do you have any idea how many of them would be in a significantly better place financially by their 20s instead of being in debt?

Keep reading. The next paragraph:

> It was clear, in any case, from a range of reports, that they were all, or nearly all, drawn from the great underage labor pool of children who have crossed the border in recent years. “Unaccompanied minors” who arrive from non-neighboring countries—which, in effect, means Central America—are permitted to remain in the U.S. and are remanded to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which delivers them as quickly as possible to a sponsor while asylum applications are processed. The asylum processing typically takes years.

The problem seems to be driven by undocumented workers crossing the border. There are a lot of dangerous second order effects from having a porous border and this is one of them.

It's also interesting how they talk about it. "crossed the border". You won't find Mexico, undocumented or migrant in the rest of the text. Without a careful reading you'd think these are lower middle class American's sending their children to coal mines because free school lunch plans were cut due to austerity. There is only one mention of "the border" in the last paragraph:

> Republicans say that the problem is an insecure border.

> Keep reading.

I did.

> The problem seems to be driven by undocumented workers crossing the border. There are a lot of dangerous second order effects from having a porous border and this is one of them.

Ok? They are still children. Child exploitation is not an immediate downstream effect of having illegal immigration. It is a downstream effect of having an exploitative system.

> It's also interesting how they talk about it. "crossed the border". You won't find Mexico, undocumented or migrant in the rest of the text.

Yeah probably because the exploitation of children is much more disconcerting than people overstaying their visas or escaping violence. I think the only benefit that the added context would be to segue into arguing for stronger protections for undocumented laborers.

> Without a careful reading you'd think these are lower middle class American's sending their children to coal mines

Again, I don't care if it is undocumented migrant children or middle class Americans. I don't understand why you think this context would change the impression the article is going to give on readers.

I feel like the point you are trying to make is that "It's only the exploitation of people who came here illegally, so it's no big deal."

> Child exploitation is not an immediate downstream effect of having illegal immigration. It is a downstream effect of having an exploitative system.

I disagree. You have people outside of the system. It's hard to pass a law that protects these people because they are outside of the legal system by being undocumented

> people overstaying their visas or escaping violence.

Most of the people that are caught up in this situation came without a visa so please don't conflate the two.

> I feel like the point you are trying to make is that "It's only the exploitation of people who came here illegally, so it's no big deal."

Quite the opposite. I'm saying that pretending like having open borders and having all these undocumented workers and turning the blind eye necessary leads to exploration. And this includes exploitation of children. It's not humane to just pretend there isn't a problem. This is the same logic that thinks it's compassionate to let mentally ill people sleep on the streets and self medicate

They aren't outside of the legal system, labor laws don't discriminate by immigration status. They know that if they seek redress under those laws, they will be punished under others.

The system prioritizes immigration enforcement over the rights & safety of workers and children. The system chooses not to protect them. Other choices are possible here don't pretend this is the inevitable & only outcome there could be.

For example we could easily give temporary immigration amnesty to victims of alleged crimes. Instead we have ICE camped out at family court, companies like this using the threat of deportation to keep their exploited workers in line. To the point of using child labor. Look at what you are defending here.

Couldn't have said it better.

You quoted earlier: "are permitted to remain in the U.S. and are remanded to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which delivers them as quickly as possible to a sponsor"

Which means that they are not "outside of the system", and not without documentation (as minor-aged asylum seekers).

> It's hard to pass a law that protects these people because they are outside of the legal system by being undocumented

It's really not. Don't deport people who file labor complaints. You can protect undocumented workers quite easily.

> Most of the people that are caught up in this situation came without a visa so please don't conflate the two.

I don't care if they came without a visa or overstayed a visa or literally walked across the border. I think borders are arbitrary and see very little difference anyways.

> I'm saying that pretending like having open borders and having all these undocumented workers and turning the blind eye necessary leads to exploration.

You are claiming something to be inherent when it is not. Illegal immigration does not create exploitation. Threat of deportation creates exploitation. If the threat of employer retaliation didn't exist, if illegal immigrants were educated about our labor laws, there would not be as much exploitation. It's really simple, I feel that you are being obtuse.

> This is the same logic that thinks it's compassionate to let mentally ill people sleep on the streets and self medicate

Nobody thinks it is compassionate to "let" people live on the streets, they just don't think cops should forcibly remove the homeless. Compassion would be giving them housing and treatment, but you wont see many "liberals" supporting free no strings attached housing.

If by self-medicating you mean harm reduction by giving opioid addicts heroin then I wouldn't say that is compassionate, just the bare minimum. When the alternative is them overdosing on fent or dying from withdrawals.

I think you haven't really thought very hard about these things because your arguments are very tired and simplistic. The answer is not more cruelty, nor is it the half-measures you see in San Francisco or Seattle or whatever. The policy solutions are pretty simple and are supported by empirical evidence in many countries and case studies.

The problem seems to be driven by undocumented workers crossing the border.

No, as always (and from basic physic, as it were): what it's driven by is greed, and a lack of oversight. And to some extent, it may be a negative side effect of the rising minimum wage in some states. The undocumented workers, are just following the path of least resistance -- and are getting sucked in over the border, in response to these forces.

Remember, by themselves they are essentially powerless -- and the very opposite of a "driving force" for anything in this picture,

"basic physics"

Why the blame the kids and not the companies?

Like how was it easily determined that these children working for this company were working without permits?

You left out the part where the government is trafficking them to the "sponsors."

Wouldn't regulating the companies protect the children from the harsh environments regardless of the intentions of their sponsors?

A little misleading, perhaps, that at the top of the article is an illustration of a kid working at McDonald's.

> with hazardous chemicals. At least three were injured.

Windex is a hazardous chemical and scratching yourself on a bandsaw is an injury. Needs more details.

What an argument in bad faith. You are being extremely reductive in order to glaze over the litany of other issues here.

Minors should not be cleaning dangerous equipment in slaughterhouses. Not to mention the lack of labor protections, blatant disregard for existing labor laws, the fact that most of the children are undocumented... need I go on?

And I was called out for a slippery alope argument when critiquing loosening child labor laws (https://apnews.com/article/child-labor-laws-alabama-ohio-c11...). Seems like we are at the bottom of the slope already.

Either way, disregard for child labor law might not be happening in some of these cases.

I'm going to guess the companies that are willing to employ kids are not going to report when said child grazes their knee.

You say that like you can't cut off a limb with a bandsaw! [0]

> The accident summaries from 2021 to 2023 show that most injuries involve hands and fingers. While some are only cuts and lacerations, most incidents proceed to partial and full finger amputations.

My guess is that minor injuries usually go unreported.

0. https://www.sawinery.net/bandsaw-accidents/#:~:text=Even%20t....

These kids are cleaning bandsaw blades, not making furniture with them

Best quote from that page

> No matter what you’ll use the bandsaw for, loose clothing and pieces of jewelry should be part of your work attire.

You can cut off a limb with a bandsaw, but scratching yourself and cutting off a limb are different injuries.

"Arkansas’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, recently signed a law ending a requirement that fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds obtain a parent’s consent and a state permit before starting work. Linking the bill, strangely, to parental rights, the governor’s office called the permit “an arbitrary burden on parents.”"

Yet... teens shouldn't have access to abortion or other sexual health services without parental consent because... they're children(?). My initial thought reading this was the word 'astonishing' but... on reflection, it's not that astonishing. It's just depressing. Also, more than mildly infuriating.

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Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What's the alterative, pay adults a competitive wage? Value for shareholders must be created and we've already sacrificed our children's future environment and economy. Getting upset about sacrificing the actual children to make a buck is a moot point.

/sarcasm.

Why sacrifice our children's future only when you can sacrifice their presents too? /s

Why stop here? The next logical step will be optimizing the process by removing this inefficient phase where animals are involved and going full Soylent mode.

The market is a magical system that both creates value for necessary jobs, and also can't pay people wages for those same valuable jobs, so we need to put children to work.

The children yearn for the coal mines.

also much less likely to get shot there than at school!

Children not working is a modern phenomenon in privileged nations. When times get tough and people need to pay bills just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, see how fast that changes. And they are about to get tough.

This surge is being propelled by an unhappy confluence of employers desperate to fill jobs, including dangerous jobs, at the lowest possible cost; a vast wave of “unaccompanied minors” entering the country; more than a little human trafficking;

This is such a strange thing for legislatures to prioritize weakening child labor laws and not generally care about how these minors got here. It just shows that special interests drive the legislative process.

Edit: Please read my comment in context. I’m explaining a mindset. :( I have no issues with existing federal labor laws.

It’s not strange to me. A lot of conservative people I knew growing up would think this is great.

Having a job is a moral obligation and making kids work is good for them. It’s what the Bible says: spare the rod, spoil the child.

Same goes with minimum wages laws. They are oppressive to businesses and make them pay people more than they are worth.

Anything that gets in the way of people’s freedom to do as they please (including exploiting others) is bad.

They think that the market will prevent abuses because people can just walk away and find a less exploitive job. It’s your responsibility to not be exploited.

> Having a job is a moral obligation and making kids work is good for them.

The second part of this sentence is not obviously false to me. Kids working exploitative & dangerous jobs, yes that's bad. Kids being allowed to work in general, I think is good.

I like Simon Sarris's take on this, from:

https://simonsarris.substack.com/p/the-most-precious-resourc...

> I find it striking just how early, and how varied, the avenues were that allowed one to pivot off-script, to do something differently than everyone else. For a 13 year old today, what is the equivalent of being a telegraph office boy, where he can learn technology while contributing? What about for a 16 year old? 21 year old? What is today’s equivalent to being a studio apprentice of Verrocchio?

I absolutely agree. But I think existing laws already struck this balance. But what we're talking about now is kids cleaning the floors of slaughterhouses at night.

>The second part of this sentence is not obviously false to me.

It's systemic racism and inequality. As long as we pretend everyone has equal opportunities, then we can make simple claims as you do.

>For a 13 year old today, what is the equivalent of being a telegraph office boy

The internet. Youtube. Udemy. MIT free courses.

Of course the claims will be about only the most positively wistful jobs of a bygone era, but strangely not "For a 13 year old today, what is the equivalent of dying inside a chimney?" because these jobs are they chimney kind, not the paper-boy kind.

I happen to mostly agree.

You’re picking one sentence I used as context for the rest of my comment.

Regarding the telegram office, I’m pretty sure 13 year olds have a lot more schoolwork than they did in 1850. I frequently had days I spent all day in school and spent most of the night on homework.

Most 13-year olds in the 19th century (including Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison, both telegraph boys in their youth) had literally no schoolwork. High school wasn't a common thing then and most people only went to grade school to learn how to read and write and do basic math. Carnegie went to grade school in Scotland before his family moved to America, and Edison was only given a basic home school education by his mother.

I'm not saying that was good, but comparing 13-year olds then and today is hard. 13-year olds then were basically already adults.

Yeah. I know. I’ve read a lot about the 1800s, specifically squared-rigged warships. Midshipmen were very young. Taking children into battle on naval vessels… it was a very different time.

"Having a job is a moral obligation and making kids work is good for them"

I wouldn't call myself hardcore conservative but what's wrong with this ? Would you rather have your 15 year old sit home all day playing video games or get a real life job where they could learn a few valuable skills ? Honest question and not trying to troll. As an American, I am seeing our kids being over protected and the result is a bunch of 20 year olds who have no direction and have never faced hardship to prepare for the real world.

The way this debate ends up is odd to me. There's no question about human trafficking or why so many unaccompanied minors have turned up and how they got here. Nothing about whether this is safe and what happens if one of these kids injures themselves. There's no question about what the cost is on local resources to put them in school and whether they are even going to school and how they are doing. There's nothing about the cost to pay for their housing and medicine versus the theoretical economic benefit, etc. No one asks what their health and safety status is or whether they owe anything to cartels. Are they paying half their meager wage to an adult? What happens to the money? Let's not ask who is watching over these minors. Let's not ask where their parents are and whether the parents are exploiting them or immigration laws.

Instead the debate turns to them working. Who benefits from this? It's not even close to being the average person in one of these states.

It's because ultimately they don't care. They've already put their feet down and they believe working is inherently good. So anything that makes more people work is good, even if it involves stuff that rollbacks worker protections.

It's so transparent. The worst part is that these jobs in question suck so badly that the only way they can find workers is by lobbying to grab people who have less labor power. Rather than properly existing as part of a free market and paying people more.

I worked as a child and I worked as a teen. These were safe jobs with well defined boundaries that would not interfere with my education. I don't see much of a problem with that.

This article isn't about legislation giving children a sense of direction are building their fortitude through work. For one thing, I very much doubt there is any jurisdiction with a blanket prohibition on child or youth labour when the work environment is safe and the boundaries are well defined. Child labour laws are about protecting a vulnerable population from the types of abuses that have existed historically. Those protections aren't perfect. For example: having a parent sign a form to grant permission implies parental and government oversight, but it does not guarantee it. On the other hand, it is better than nothing. The motivation of those wishing to remove those protections should be considered seriously, particularly when they tout the supposed benefits to the people they are being put into a position to exploit.

Videogames, 100%. As an aside, I think they positively impacted me and got me interested in computer programming to make my own. But my main point is we are talking about children being trafficked into dangerous meatpacking plants where several were injured!

The benefits of work and summer jobs aren't the stakes here, not being coerced into doing manual labor during long night shifts is. The idea of saying "at least they aren't playing videogames" is so absurd to me, it'd be like looking at a homeless person and saying "at least they aren't wasting money on uber eats!".

> Would you rather have your 15 year old sit home all day playing video games or get a real life job where they could learn a few valuable skills ?

The issue most people take with this is that it compares the best outcome of one version with the worst version of the other. If we want to compare the worst outcomes then we should be talking about the difference between children idling playing video games versus children being exploited in workplaces.

You can just as well say: Would you rather have parents force 12 year olds to clean slaughterhouse floors at night, to make ends meet (oh and this happens partly because child labor of course also depresses parents' wages, so let's please not blame the parents immediately), or would you have them study one day out of 10 because the games really bore them?

There is a pretty big gap between only letting children play games all day and allowing them to participate in high risk labour unsupervised and without special protections.

You only have one childhood. Taking that away from kids to force them into working in factories or lower than minimum wage labor for the sake of appealing to some fantasy that they're learning 'real' skills is bullshit. If we wanted to do that, we'd have more protections and give kids opportunities to sign on with labor unions and get mentorship. That can actually lead to a full and well paying career unlike your laughable McDonald's comparison in another post.

I don’t see anything wrong with teenagers working. The issue is them working in jobs with high risk of injury. (Like industrial labor.)

What valuable skills do you expect a kid to have in a slaughterhouse? The jobs are not safe for anyone. They only exist because lax regulation allow hiring of illegal immigrants with little or no oversight. They are the equivalent of Uber rent extraction except they damage your body instead of your vehicle.

Pretty bad take overall. I understand your sentiment. I really do. However we will always have people in exploitable situations. If it’s not poor kids it’s people running from extreme poverty in another part of the world or just falling on hard times at home.

At a certain point we have to say no one should be making less than this. As a society we likely want a floor on what human time is worth. If your business truly can’t function and that floor is reasonable which I believe it is in almost all states your business isn’t viable.

There is no free market when companies collude and form monopolies or oligopolies. Let’s stop pretending that free market rules apply in the current climate.

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There aren’t any straw men here. I’m explaining the mindset of the community I grew up in.

The core of the belief is market forces are the only control necessary in a society. Regulations get in the way. Ultimately, every person being personally responsible for not being “exploited”, whatever “exploited” means.

Might as well re-establish slavery then. If there's a better ROI in owning a person outright than in owning just their labour, then by logical inference you should encourage the higher-ROI activity where ever possible.

For this comparison to make sense, the slave would have to sell themselves. Which is a very different conversation from what is commonly understood as slavery.

> For this comparison to make sense, the slave would have to sell themselves. Which is a very different conversation from what is commonly understood as slavery.

Slavery is when human beings are property, I don't know from where you get your "commonly understood" part, but it's not so common as you want other to believe.

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I worked a number of near-minimum-wage jobs from the time I could find one at 16 years old and had no money whatsoever until then. I didn't learn to drive until my late 20s because I couldn't afford the mandatory lessons until I finally had a decent-paying job after graduating university. I didn't even eat three meals a day for most of high school and university since I couldn't afford it. I paid my tuition by working as a highly underpaid intern and delayed my graduation by years as a result. So enjoy your pity party, but keep your uncharitable assumptions to yourself. Labor laws don't govern how your parents treat you.

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My state is trying to pull this shit too and it's maddening. A bunch of businesses owners got together and whined about an "worker shortage" (ie nobody wants to work a dead end job for shit pay, shit hours, and shit managers) and so our brilliant legislature said, "I know just the kind of people who will work those jobs -- teenagers that are desperate enough for cash that they'll work into the night on school nights."

They can already work weekends, summers, and holidays by the way, the only time they can't is mon-thurs because of that compulsory education thing.

The sad part is that it's not even about there being a void to fill, their competitors who are offering $17.50/hr are rolling in applicants, it's pure greed using the legislature and teenage labor to drive down wages for everyone under the guise of "well it's fine because it's just spending money" (and labor exploitation).

I remember a year ago (peak “labor shortage” in the food industry), visiting a middle sized, remote New England town.

We went to a Chili’s where there were 2 wait staff to service ~100 seats, maybe 40 of which were full, and it was as chaotic and depressing as you could imagine. Sentiment among customers was “it’s a shame nobody wants to work anymore.” “Help wanted” in the window.

The next day we went to a locally-owned and operated brewery + pub in the same town. It was overflowing with about 120 eager patrons and buzzing with 20+ smiling and joking wait staff of all generations.

We don’t have a labor shortage, we have a quality employer shortage.

I'm expecting a conservative call for the re-institution of slavery soon. It will be called something else, of course, such as "privatized incarceration".

A few years back, I was at the Design2Part show, which is for manufacturing, and the California Department of Corrections had a booth, offering slave labor.

The slavery is already enshrined in constitution. Just need to build those work camps and get people imprisoned there.

I wouldn't be surprised if certain states start forcibly relocating homeless people any day now.

That already exists in the form you describe.

There is a local theme park nearby where they have 13 and 14-year olds working. To guide people, help them out, check for belts, opening gates and such. Minimum wage starts at 15 years old so the owner doesn't need to pay them much.

At 13 years old you can't work at a factory but you can stock shelfs or pick fruit. No more than 7 hours a day and no more than 35 hours a week. No Sundays.

The Netherlands, not the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhAgO8M4mZA

Now I don't speak dutch, but in a context like that that seems fairly reasonable I guess as long as everyone's cool with it? With a caveat of 'if they don't hire anyone in those roles over 15, to me, that would kind of in bad faith.'

They mention it in the article, the case that sticks in my mind is the one with Packer Sanitation, where they had at least 100+ teenagers working overnight shifts cleaning equipment and floors in abattoirs/meatpacking plants.

They interviewed one of these kids, and he was working like 10pm-6am, then going to high school afterward. They obscured the kid's identity because he didn't want to get fired, as he was supporting his family in Guatemala.

It's one of those things where it just strikes me like, how do you even fix that? Like even with the best intentions, are you going to inadvertently derail someone's life, or their family?

No more than 7 hours a day and no more than 35 hours a week

...and only outside school hours. If a child is absent from school, the parents will be fined more than the child will earn.

You know the dumbest part about this ageist attack on youth (in context of climate and social life) is the gerontocrats dictating such are frail, old, and have no ability to feed themselves.

It’s all designed to isolate grandpa and grandma from work; prop up their ephemeral investments and keep producing their potatoes, kids! They earned it!

Sorry but I don’t think your grandma and parents are owed Porsches and mansions at the cost to my kids.

It's morbidly fascinating to see so many "normals" of the last 50 years evaporate bit by bit.

It must be because it's been almost been 60 years since Europeans and Americans last fought for better working conditions, and a little less than 100 years since child labor has been banned. People fighting for these rights have long died, and so will be their legacy.

probably. I often want to search about the memory capacity of society

It's been almost 60 years since Europeans and Americans last fought for better working conditions, and a little less than 100 years since child labor has been banned. Is it because the people fighting for what we have today in terms of working conditions have long died? Is it because rogue capitalism and globalized economy is putting such a toll on industrialized countries that workers in those countries aren't be able to compete with the countries where the cost of living is cheaper? Anyway, it's sad to see that the U.S. are slowly getting back to the 1900s in terms of work conditions.

So what are they proposing?

They claim that the existing regulations don't work. That the unaccompanied minors are the ones filling the vast majority of these roles, but that the border crossing isn't the issue. It sounds like they don't have a solution?

I'm 100% in favor of children working starting with chores at home and continuing through the rest of childhood, to some degree. But I'd rather see it be things like lawn mowing, babysitting, and what I would call "ordinary" childhood expectations and responsibilities. Keeping kids focused on these domains mostly removes the problem of defining what counts as child labor and what counts as excessive. One problem I have with allowing kids to work in typically adult workplaces, is that I hate working in those places myself and have worked hard my whole life to avoid them, as much as possible.

If people come from Mexico and "take your jobs", that's worth shutting down the government. If your neighbors' 14 year old kids "take your jobs"... that's just good old capitalism?

Many of these are children of immigrants, so picture the cognitive dissonance.

History has shown that in capitalism the absolute floor for wages and rights for employees is chattel slavery. The slave states were willing to build an entire culture around exploiting cheap labor.

Look, if 10-year-olds think it's wrong for them to be allowed to work at low-paid and dangerous jobs, then they should have voted for someone else.

And worker harder at school, those bootstrap are not gonna pull themselves

Exactly! They're being given the OPORTUNITY to work in dangerous low-paid jobs.

Can't they just put together a spreadsheet of their assets, personal investment opportunities, and future income to decide how to optimize their legacy and retirement?

You misspelled "OPOORTUNITY"

And should have pooled their allowances to purchase the house belonging to a SC justice’s mother. If you can’t even do that, do you really deserve a childhood?

“Kids don’t vote” - Thomas Carcetti, “The Wire”

I don't know if this is sarcastic or not.

I'd call it satire more than sarcasm, my primary target is the kind of argument that blames the victim. In this case, children cannot vote and therefore it is the adults' job to protect them. By allowing them to work these jobs, adult lawmakers are exploiting people who don't even get a say. It's self-evidently abhorrent. If you disagree, how do you even begin the conversation? It's like arguing with someone who thinks a plate of human shit is delicious - it's such an alien and disgusting position that it's almost impossible to engage with, except, perhaps, with satirical contempt. Which is what I did.

I'm not sure either. It's really hard to tell

It's a one-sentence comment that undermines itself no fewer than four times; of course it's sarcastic. The only question is whether the two of you are being sarcastic.

It would be sarcastic if people didn’t believe things like that. If you’re in a bad situation, that’s your fault and not my problem. Kids with bad parents should have stood up for themselves.

It leads to the implication that the kids should have picked better parents.

I wish I was joking.

There are clearly people who believe it's the parents fault, and not our responsibility (especially through government) to fix it. There may be people who believe it's the child's fault for... being born to those parents? Not earning full scholarships at 10? I am skeptical that there are many of those people.

To a first approximation, there is no one who believes it's a 10yo's fault for not voting for different politicians.

I have problems understanding online sarcasm all the time, and people do believe some ridiculous stuff, but no one is under the impression that 10 year olds have the right to vote.

A victim of Poe’s Law.

I was assuming the one above me was sarcastic so I did a +1 to make it more obvious. Seems that didn't achieve the intended effect

Haha, sorry to dampen the joke then, I wasn't sure.

Do you think kids can vote?

I was assuming the one above me was sarcastic so I did a +1 to make it more obvious. Seems that didn't achieve the intended effect

It's probably sarcastic.

Probably.

Hyundai too. Pretty egregious

reminds me of Frostpunk. "get to work, amputee kid!"

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I think generally the people who are against racism and facism aren’t the ones pushing for more child labor

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I don’t understand what you’re saying. People who oppose racism and inequality are responsible for child labor increasing? What?

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Could you explain the connection to the article?

No, it is GOP trying to remove restrictions on child labor and those are also more pro-fascists.

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> Sensible rules about dangerous work of course make sense. Roofers should wear harnesses when appropriate, everyone should have ppe. But calling a sixteen year old construction worker a child laborer is just ignorant. It's a young man working a good job and staying out of trouble.

Okay but, FTA:

>It also limits employer liability for the injury, illness, or death of a child on the job. Adolescents are almost twice as likely as adults to be injured at work.

You’re envisioning Dad bringing Junior to work to help haul off cinderblocks in the back of the family F150, you’re imagining something that isn’t the case. People under 18 are children. They are being endangered while the companies that profit are being protected.

And one is a smokescreen for the other. "Stop treading on me" really just allows special interests to take advantage of people.

Similar to how all these calls for lowering taxes on the top 1% is supposedly to support small businesses when most of those don't benefit and neither does it "trickle down".

Example: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/fact-shee...

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It's a little flippant but I kind of see your point.

Everything I did as a kid was more dangerous because I was an uncoordinated idiot with no sense of danger. I'm still mostly better off for having done the stupid things I did.

Why does attaching pay make it special?

The only aside is that I don't want to end up in a world where substantial fractions of children must work in order to be fed and housed. But if a kid wants to work and someone wants to pay them to, it seems good to me.

> Why does attaching pay make it special?

Incentives. A bouldering gym is incentivized, due to the cost of liability and the impact on their reputation, for every visitor to have a safe experience. If your kid falls and breaks his neck after you paid a gym to help him learn, you’re going to sue.

Employers are incentivized to extract as much labor for the least amount of expense. New laws disincentivize safety by reducing liability.

Attaching pay attached a large amount of coercion: are you willing to give up the future income of this job in order to refuse a bad or dangerous or illegal request? That’s the core argument behind many worker protections. And the idea that children are going to be better at making that decision than they are at deciding whether a cigarette or a special onetime investment opportunity is a good idea is … low evidence.

Your nephew's ability to eat or keep a roof over his head is not conditional upon completing the boulder course at a pace set by a foreman, or completing it at all. That's what makes attaching pay to it special.

I'm attempting to carve that out, but I get that it's extremely difficult to do / might not be possible to do well.

I benefitted tremendously from work I did as a teenager (but did not have to do to survive). Obviously there's some bathwater and some baby here and it's a difficult balance, but I think completely banning the practice is unlikely to be the best possible outcome.

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The 16 year old is also less likely to tell the bossman to get fucked when he orders his workers to do something dangerous and illegal.

> EDIT: Wow, lots of city boys on HN, who would have guessed! :D

I know, it's a little concerning. There are other articles that occasionally get discussed talking about the crisis among young men and whatnot, not having meaningful ways to be part of society and what can we do about it. And then something so simple as work, which obviously comes with tradeoffs, gets immediately dismissed as dangerous or exploitive or anti union or whatever urban sentiments people have. It feels like many would rather try and force young people to conform to some office worker version of life, and if they don't accept that then to drug them or imprison them, or just talk about how ignorant they all are.

Yeah. If a 16 year old gets an internship at a soulless tech/advertising company, HN will cheer and celebrate. But if a 16 year old frames a house, it's [flagged] [dead].

The study you linked didn’t control for age.

Unless you think 44.5% of contruction workers are under 18, the results are still significant. Do you know of another study that controls for age?

Sorry, I don’t have any sources that prove your assertion.

My source already proves my assertion. It's always disappointing to watch people make up excuses to ignore data when the data tells a story they don't want to hear.

Your source does not prove your assertion. You're trying to link two disparate variables, which is chance of injury when inexperienced and chance of injury when young. We objectively know that teenagers tend to get injured more because the whole part of their brain that controls risk-taking behaviors and impulse control quite literally isn't developed yet. So these two are compounding factors that result in teens being injured far more often in dangerous jobs.

That said, the fact that you think people are 'making up excuses' when you post wrong data shows you're just trying to push a narrative rather than actually debate.

It's basic math, no? Teenagers cannot account for 44.5% of injuries if they don't make up 44.5% of the workforce. Do you believe more than 44.5% of the workforce are teenagers?

Yes, teenagers are more injury prone, but obviously not 44.5% more, and it isn't obviously more impactful than the effects of an older human body deteriorating with age. If you go to the average hospital, are 44.5% of the patients teenagers?

> Sorry, I don’t have any other sources that contribute to the discussion.

FTFY

Hence why the companions and trade schools existed, and why internship exists in white-collar jobs (because if the new hire destroy the prod DB, it cost way much than a kid dying on the job).

Also, one major flaw that the US caught by destroying its trade schools and hiring like qualifications do not matter is that the skill level of your construction workers seems abysmal from my point of view. Only talking about carpentry here, since it's the only trade i witnessed, but if you've worked in carpentry for ten years and don't know how to apply basic math theorems on triangles and draw a plan, you might want to go to a carpentry school.

Also: imprecise cuts, cannot use protractors (thus redoing the cuts multiple time) and poor understanding on how weight is distributed.

I did all those jobs before I was 18 and I did farm labor too all for less than minimum wage and it's simply exploitation. These jobs are open because they pay shit, they are dangerous and they work you like a rented mule. The solution is simple and always ignored, raise the wages and if you keep raising them people will flock to the job. The fact of the matter is paying $7.50/h (less because they are minors) for dangerous work where you have a foreman screaming at you 8-12 hours a day is just not worth the effort -adults figured it out, so now the businesses are trying to exploit children.

And these aren't good jobs they are laborers at best, no skill required, you are a human mule.

"The solution is simple and always ignored, raise the wages and if you keep raising them people will flock to the job."

I generally agree, but it's not so simple to do. Perhaps the easiest thing to do is remove the minimum wage exemptions from things like servers and farm workers, not just for kids but for adults too. Not a lot of appetite to effectively raise food prices though.

Rasing wages might add pennies to your food bill, honestly do you know how much food a worker can pick in an hour let alone a day? A lot aren't even paid by the hour they are paid by the ton/bushel. Labor is cheap that's why they still use people and haven't replaced them with machines.

Depends on the food. Yeah, being paid 1-2 cents per pound of tomatoes picked won't raise the price much if you make it 10-20 cents even. But it can raise the price of other things like dairy where it's an hourly rate and usually smaller farms.

If it's such a small increase, then why hasn't it been raised/changed? Why do we still subsidize a lot of farm stuff too?

From local price of 56 cents per litre of milk to the farm. Even if we doubled that it wouldn't still be that expensive for consumer. And that would cover doubling of the wages. As that price already includes all other costs.

Labour isn't actually that big of an part.

Most consumers think milk is expensive at $3-4/gal. Maybe it's different where you're at, but in the US it's a race to the bottom. Much of the agriculture relies on subsidies because we can't compete on price when doing global exports.

Farming is the only business in the US that is propped up whether they grow crops or not. We pay these millionaires all sorts of money to grow crops nobody wants and we also pay then not to grow crops nobody wants. The fact of the matter is if we didn't states like Iowa and Nebraska would simply close down, they have no industry and no reason for people to live there but since they have equal representation in the congress they get billions just to exist. We could close down several Midwestern states and give them to Monsanto and we'd all be better off...except the millionaire farmer that didn't get a subsidy.

I think you could have made your point without resorting to baseless ad hominems

> people who have never done a day's real work in their lives

What a dumb statement to make. And you know it.

I have never worked a real farmers day of work in my life. I sit at desks and use computers for up to 8 hours a day. I have never worked a field, built a house, or done anything significantly physical for work ever. This is not unusual.

I've done all of those things and a host of other shitty jobs -note I called them shitty jobs because despite being back braking work they pay the least and the bosses expect the most -don't ever be caught not moving on a construction site (unless you're union). These are jobs for people who can't find anything else and need money, people are worked like rented mules and paid like share croppers. These are labor positions not skilled trades and are filled by the lowest rung on the financial ladder, usually immigrants and the poor. Stick to working in an office, you'll me much happier -how often do you hear a trades person say they hope their kid goes into the trades, they don't, they want their kids to go to college so they don't have to work in the trades.

Yeah having done both, if you've never done long days of hard physical labor, it's just a totally different animal.

I would point out that you still do real work.

My bosses would disagree.

> My bosses would disagree.

If they believe you are not doing real work, what it tells you about the fact they still supervise you? They are admitting that they are useless at their position and that trained pigeon would outperform them.

Just because it makes you feel seen doesn’t mean it’s baseless.

Read Early Life (the author of TFA): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Finnegan

In fairness, of all the long-winded, self-important, over-socialized drivel that New Yorker puts out, this is atleast somewhat focused on the “real world” (and not the latest hot topic for over-educated yuppies to have neurotic fits about).

People who have never worked hard labor/trades/“back-breaking work” have zero insight into what goes on in the jobs being discussed, aside from some misplaced abstract notion of “I spent my youth being educated in a school — so that is what’s good and right; and all children should have that life.”

I grew up in a blue collar, rural part of the country. Education sucked — it was a waste of time that wouldn’t help you much at all in life. You will sit in a classroom for hours every single day, and for what? So you can go to college? You’re a lower class white kid from bumfuck America, no way you’re getting in; and no way you’re not paying for it yourself if you do.

If you’re lucky, there’s a church around that has families that own construction companies attending. They’ll set you up with some work, take decent care of you, and now you’re part of a community.

Hell, maybe your family or friends own a trades biz, and will take you on as an apprentice.

If not, then you take up the shitwork (landscaping, concrete, roofing), start building your skillset, and start learning and earning. Once you have a little bit saved up and can prove you’re not a drugged up criminal, you might start shooting for better work. You’re 20 now, you’re still young, you have no debt, a little bit of cash, and you have some hard skills, the world is your oyster.

Instead of being 22-24 graduating into a tech recession, with zero real skills, a bunch of debt, and little hope of landing your first job unless you schmooze or play dirty.

You go from one caricature to the next, trying to sound like you have it figured out. And yet, your inexperience shows from how you view the world.

I think you should self-reflect on whether you're projecting the same flaws you exhibit onto others, whose shoes you also haven't walked in. I think you're earlier on the Dunning-Kruger line than you believe.

Some jobs are probably ok for certain 16 year olds, but it's disingenuous to ignore:

- many 16 year olds are not ok to work around dangerous machines.

- they are working in environments with risk that they may not fully grasp.

- they end up being paid less.

They should probably be in apprenticeships. There should be guarantees about expert supervision when it comes to dangerous work conditions.

They shouldn't be exploited in minimum wage dead-end jobs like fast food.

I might entrust a 16yo to physical labor overseen by a parent. But overseen by some managerial type incentivized to neglect and exploit ? Umm.

Ah yes the classic conservative trope of using blue collar aesthetics to undermine labor protections. Glad to see people in this comment section are smart enough not to fall for it.

This is fair, to a point. A sixteen year old should be allowed to train or practice some skills on a construction site, but shouldn't be there for a full 10 hour shift.

The reason young adults are restricted from certain work activities like a meat slicer or fryer are because they don't necessarily understand the physical risks associated with it.

> I don't know much about the other stuff but outrage over this is misplaced and typical of comfortable out of touch urbanites

I haven’t worked on a farm or a construction site, but I can comfortably say that I’d be equally outraged if 16 year olds had jobs being the coder or the sales/marketing guy, if they were paid less and had fewer protections while working long hours.

In my experience from doing a "real day's work" since 11, child labor is rather exploitive, prioritizes work over education, and needlessly puts people at serious risk of injury or death.

You are just highlighting the smallest position of the article. I imagine it is honest on the young adult's part, but not on the employers side. I think you are being disingenuous by ignoring the bigger issues in this article, removal of parental consent for under 16 and many illegal immigrant minors working these positions who are in more precarious positions to defend their rights. I would be surprised if these people are getting health insurance from their employer. My country is highly urban and sixteen year olds can work, but they also have access to public health care (covered by taxes, no cost at use).

That’s an interesting point you made.

If in the US we tie flexibility of labor laws to nationalizing healthcare, can we actually get some real traction on the latter while giving an actual safety net yo the former?

> That’s an interesting point you made.

> If in the US we tie flexibility of labor laws to nationalizing healthcare, can we actually get some real traction on the latter while giving an actual safety net yo the former?

Based on past performance it will be the most likely that only "flexibility of labor laws" part will pass through Congress, while healthcare part will be dead on arrival.

In most of Western Europe, 16 year olds can drive 20 tons of agricultural equipment on public roads. Nobody bats an eye at it, it's normal here.

Can you be more specific? Is this legal?

Yes, it is a valid drivers license. It allows you to drive an agriculture vehicle of less than 20 tons. Most EU-countries have a special class of license that allows for this.

It is not defined as an EU-recognised class yet but there is talk about it.

https://www.farmersjournal.ie/common-eu-tractor-driving-lice...

I think you're being gaslit here.

It's not about giving kids a chance to do more grown up things. It's about saving roofing companies money and lowering wages.

Well that’s the funny thing. What defines a child laborer? Most people know that there’s a difference between a 16 year old working the odd summer job and a Victorian 9 year old chimney sweep. But the historical memory of the chimney sweep is deservedly strong. It reminds us that for most of the history of capitalism, when guardrails don’t exist, children get exploited. Firms will act according to incentives and will push children, lacking experience and a voice, to do backbreaking and dangerous work. They’ll do it aided by rhetoric like yours, brushing aside the erasure of the robust edifice of labor laws that protected our young people in the name of “character building.”

I wish I had been learning a trade at a young age instead of wasting my time farting around with friends.

Even if I went into a different profession any trade is very useful.

I welded at a shipyard for two years after the first .com crash, and man was I glad to have a backup skill at the time!

So thank you, Mom & Dad, for pushing both education and more physical skills as both important. It's certainly turned out to be true.

There is a massive distinction between an adolescent working along side a parent or other family, and being individually employed by an unrelated employer and directly subject to the economic/social grindstone. (why are you wasting time on fall protection? why are you asking for a mask just to drill some holes in concrete? try being a man!)

The former is going to happen informally regardless of what the law says, but I agree the law should be more conductive to it. The latter is fraught with misaligned incentives, and is mainly what people are reacting to. If workers' economic power were generally rising, the whole topic would be essentially moot. But economically empowered workers are generally impossible due to that rarely questioned policy of continual monetary stimulus and other business-uber-alles regulation. Hence the specific concern about working conditions and workers' rights.

> outrage over this is misplaced and typical of comfortable out of touch urbanites,

Born and raised on a farm. Worked logging from the age of eighteen. Worked in housing construction and also as a plumber's assistant and as an electrical assistant. And I, too, call bullshit.

Liability laws diminished (This was already the case with most state agriculture laws, so you have a lot of farm kids with injuries from tractors and the like.)

Kids working in bars serving alcohol and not old enough to drink, yet I've seen these exact people scream about a family-friendly drag show held in a bar venue when the bar part is shut down (so no alcohol served), yet they want minors around possibly inebriated adults.

People need a baseline education to participate in modern democracy. They should not be forced out of school by economic circumstances in order to work low-paying jobs for multi-million or billion-dollar companies.

"staying out of trouble".

Staying out of the middle class more like.

In Germany it's legal to start working the moment you leave the compulsory 9 years of Education, where you are 15 or 16. Granted, you are then in the apprenticeship-system where half of the time you have to visit an apprenticeship school and the other half of the time you learn a trade, but noone bats an eye.

You work as an apprentice and part of a union -you are actually learning a trade. These are not union jobs so the wages are very low, you have no benefits (likely no health insurance or vacation) and they are strictly labor positions where it's cheaper to use a 15 year old than it is to rent a backhoe.

15-18 years old work has special regulations applied to it. There are protections and special regulations about their physical and mental health in place.

This is true, but as a lot of those apprenticeships happen in small companies (most large companies don't allow any apprentices below 18 for that reason) most of those protections are... tenous at best.

They're still in education - trade education, but education nonetheless. So not really the same thing as working in a meatpacking plant.

What is big deal about meat packing? I could see problems with being part of butchering process with knifes and so on. Or maybe dangerous machine. But in general outside those roles? Let's say putting meat in plastic boxes or building pallets?

There is in fact a whole, and very famous, book about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

It is as much a real object of specific concern as it is shorthand for "oppressive wage slavery in poor conditions" in the general sense.

Poor regulations in all those industries because they operate mostly in migrant labor and everyone looks the other way

This is true of lots of places in the world. US citizens have been indoctrinated to believe the opportunity to abuse is attractive enough that more complex protections, for younger adults, is a political danger zone. God forbid you change something and some abuse appears on the news. Pointing at tradition and saying "I didn't change anything, it must be another bad guy" is the go-to tool for maintaining the status quo in politics. The US position is self-sustaining and oversimplified, like many subjects across the world.

I first looked for work when I was 14-15 and got my first job at 16. No one forced me to do it. It was liberating to have some money and I liked taking some responsibility. But I had trouble finding an employer that hired minors. As far as I'm concerned making it easier for minors to find work is great. And when I see "child labor" I think of 8-year-olds forced to work, not 16-year-olds doing so of their own volition. Sounds like lowering the barriers will benefit poor families the most, despite the clear bias against it in the article.

On the other hand, I knew folks that worked because they had to. Schoolwork suffered, and they didn't really have dreams of college. Poverty does this, especially if you are just above the cutoff lines for help.

One friend didn't have to work, but her rules were that once she started to work, she had to stay working. Nevermind that she was still in school.

Not just that, but young folks are easier to exploit. And that's one of those issues: When you take away protections and barriers, you make it easier for people to be exploited. This doesn't help poor families: Actually making sure folks have the money for young folks only work by choice does.

> but young folks are easier to exploit.

Exactly, this is why have laws against the sexual exploitation of minors by adults. It is much easier much easier to talk a minor in to doing something that is not in their favor by their lack of life experience.

Does this mean minors should not work... No. Things like apprenticeships and things that are low risk of injury should be fine. Myself, I grew up on a farm and every damned thing there is looking to remove some part of your body. I knew young people that had limbs removed on their family farm by what would be simple mistakes, but hey have a life long impact.

perhaps the friction for minors looking for a job exists for good reason. the focus at that age should be school, not work, i recognize that there are those less fortunate that can't afford to do school sans work, but the solution to that should be financial aid, not making them work. society's goal should be to get a more educated populace, by lowering the friction to enter the workforce at such a young age you're endangering that group of kids on the edge who, given more friction, would have stayed in school and gone to do greater things, but since it was so easy to get into work so early they lowered the overall potential of their lives.

so regarding the poor families this would supposedly help, I'd argue it's more complicated than that, and what this may be doing is providing short term help while sacrificing long term social mobility. keep the poor working and not learning and they'll mostly stay poor.

there's nothing wrong of course with a part time gig to get accustomed to different responsibilities, but it should remain restricted to that. you've got your entire life to work full-time, there's no need to rush things.

I first looked for work when I was 16 in California. After a couple rejections, I stopped until I was 18 and easily got the first job I applied for. I feel like everyone lost out for arbitrary reasons.

I am thinking the same. I would rather have my 15-16 year old working on 6 hour hard labor job learning real life skills than playing video games or their IPad. So this is not a simple thing and we need to look at the nuances and details. This article is very low quality without any specifics.

I personally think that we have gone in the other direction too much where our kids are overprotected from real life skills and are shielded too much until they are in early 20s and then they struggle big time. I know at least 2 20+ year olds who are very lost and have never worked a real job in their life.

Personally as a parent, I have no issues getting my kids getting a tough shit job in a McDonalds for a 5-6 hour shift. Does that count as Child Labor ?

> I would rather have my 15-16 year old working on 6 hour hard labor job learning real life skills than playing video games or their IPad.

If only we lived in a world with more than 2 choices for everything...

> McDonalds for a 5-6 hour shift. Does that count as Child Labor ?

No, if there are health and safety protections in place and enforced. And it's not interfering with schoolwork or rest.