Since at least the Bread and Roses Strike at a Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile mill in 1912, the Right and Left have been at odds over child labor. We tend to not be especially fond of it because we want children to go to school and also not die in industrial accidents, while the Right tends to romanticize it as some kind of glorious character-building experience that just so happens to benefit employers who want to pay less than it would cost to hire actual adults to do that work.
It seemed, for a time, that we had settled on a compromise of teenagers working limited hours at mall stores and fast food restaurants, but lately the Right has been looking to expand that by passing bills increasing the number of hours children are allowed to work and the places where they are allowed to work. And how has that worked out?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that, since 2018, 57 children under the age of 15 have died from injuries sustained at work, while 68 teens ages 16-17 died during that same period. I think we can fairly assume that they were not folding sweaters at The Gap.
Earlier this month, the Department of Labor fined Florence Hardwoods, a Wisconsin sawmill, $1.4 million following the death this June of Michael Schuls, a 16-year-old boy who “became trapped in a stick stacker machine as he tried to unjam it” and died two days later as a result of his injuries.
WELL LOOK AT THAT:
An investigation by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that the sawmill did not provide the appropriate safety training to either teenage or adult employees, reporting that “[s]ince 2019, at least five employees of Florence Hardwoods, Sagola Hardwoods and Minerick Logging have suffered serious injuries due to lockout failures, including a fatality at Minerick Logging where a worker suffered fatal injuries while servicing a trailer in 2019.”
“There is no excuse for allowing underage workers to operate this type of machinery,” said (Acting) Secretary of Labor Julie Su in a statement. “Federal child labor and safety regulations exist to prevent employers from putting children at risk. They also exist to hold employers like Florence Hardwoods accountable for endangering these young workers.”
RELEVANT:
The Department of Labor reports that there has been a 69 percent increase in businesses illegally employing children. This increase is likely due, in part, to the influx in migrant children coming to the United States, many of them unaccompanied by parents.
But it’s also due to the fact that Republicans have been trying to “loosen up the child labor laws” so that companies can more freely employ minors to do jobs they don’t want to pay adults enough to do. In Wisconsin in particular, Republicans have been pushing to allow child bartenders — who wants this?! — and eliminate work permit requirements for those under the age of 18.
COINCIDENTALLY!
And then something like this happens. Big surprise!
A child is dead because the people who operated the sawmill, where he never should have been working to begin with, didn’t even bother to train him properly. They are not afraid to do this because they think, correctly, that Republicans are on their side. But Republicans can’t save them from that OSHA fine or from becoming internationally known as The Sawmill of Death.
There is nothing wrong with a teenager having a summer job or even an after-school job — but no, they should not be working in situations where they could be killed in the course of doing their jobs (outside of shootings, because this is still America, after all).
It makes me so angry reading the fate of these kids. That it's even a double-digit number of *children* as a death toll from working in hazardous environments enrages me further.
America is a horrible place to raise children. And it's like the "Pro-life" people want to make sure it's awful.
Least among the evils of child labor is the downward pressure it exerts on wages in general.
Completely on brand that this is the big reason that republican donors spend the way that they do.
Capital frowns on training disposable employees, "They'll want 𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘵𝘴 next!"