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Third Teen Worker Killed In Industrial Accident As States Try To Loosen Child Labor Laws
(www.huffpost.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Who in their right fucking mind thinks letting teenagers work at landfills, meat processing plants, and logging companies is a good idea?! I think the record clearly shows that teenagers don’t always make the best damn decisions. Jesus wept this shit is insanity.
Party of family values…. They’re going to extract every last drop of value from them kids.
Well it's their fault they weren't born rich brought to you by the party of family values, if your family cared they'd have made more money before you were born.
Well when COVID killed off a bunch of your workforce because you pretended it didn't exist and you don't know how many because you refused to keep accurate counts, and a bunch more retired because they figured they were close enough and COVID gave them an excuse, and all the undocumented immigrants are leaving because you're passing laws targeting them and to them it's not worth the pittance you've been gleefully paying them under the table- well, you've got to get more slaves from somewhere, right?
The same kind of people who, in Florida, are going to teach kids that slavery "taught black people valuable life skills."
Remember kids, if your arm gets ripped off by a meat grinder, that's not a horrific and totally preventable accident. No, it's a "life skill" you've just learned! "Getting your arm ripped off is painful." If we don't have kids shoving their hands into meat grinders, how are they going to learn these life lessons?
And generally the pay is fuckin' horseshit. Can barely pay rent at those payrates, let alone groceries for your family.
Which is why they want kids to do the work, kids will work for less money.
Which means adults that would be doing that job also get paid less because there's more competition for those spots.
Remove child labor and the rich owners might be slightly less rich. Which republicans vehemently disagree with.
Because kids still live at home, the company is exploiting the family unit to save money employing the child.
But the funny economy line demands child sacrifice! You expect us to lost money? /S
Desperately poor people let it happen, and in this day and age have to let it happen. Meanwhile corpo fucking greed will take on anyone willing to work the shit wages those jobs offer.
The problem is that cheap labor in the form of teenagers drives down the pay for adults. These people think that letting their teens work may bring extra income for the household, but what's really happening is that they're now competing with their kids for the same jobs.
You are supposed to be 18 or older to work in meat processing. I saw an article that said false info may have been provided for that kid who came from a staffing agency (which may or may not be true). I don’t have an issue with a 16 year old working at a landfill or logging company. Both are probably good paying summer jobs and possibly where they would have ended up working after high school.
I do have a problem with unsafe working conditions, improper training, loose regulations, and lack of accountability. When money becomes more important than people bad things tend to happen to workers regardless of age.
Logging is actually a very unsafe and dangerous activity. Logging actually has a pretty high injury and fatality rate.
Landfills probably less so, but they really don't have very many jobs. You've got a couple of guys who maybe work the weigh stations doing paperwork, and then a few heavy equipment operators.
Really any job that includes operating heavy machinery with the potential to kill people really shouldn't be done by 16-year-olds.
I lived in an area that had a huge logging industry that eventually became one dude, one machine, and truck that comes and hauls them off to the port. But I was there just after the full mechanization and automation of the industry. So the old timers were still around.
And a lot of those dudes were named things like "three fingered Jack" and "one armed Rick" and "Lefty" ... all from industrial logging accidents for a village of like 500 people.
Nothing like dropping a 400 ft tall tree on your head either.
14 year olds can get drivers licenses in South Dakota (source, which of course requires either scripting to view the text or opening the page source).
Holy shit... my daughter is 13 and I wouldn't want her behind a steering wheel. Not at her maturity level. But then I also think the drinking age should be 16 and the driving age 18 because a lot of young people get in car crashes due to not understanding what alcohol does to them.
I could too as a farm boy in oregon back in the 90s.
Its a far cry from operating a log truck or servicing sawmill machinery. Which requires years of experience.
I kinda agree with your last statement. Maybe add that certain jobs must not be performed by minors. Jayxson shouldn't be anywhere near dangerous machinery and Abbreeyeghl can't be near the incinerator.
I'm making fun of the parents btw and not the kids.
logging is actually one of the more dangerous jobs out there.
it is actually a much longer tradition to have child labor then not. But yeah it is horrible and man people just don't see it