State lawmakers want children to fill labor shortages, even in bars and on school nights

I heard this story yesterday and started doing some research.

1. I recognize there is a labor shortage. Even so, I fear employers will hire kids, pay them lower than minimum wage aka "training wages" and this will hurt all employees. Greedy CEOs and legislators sent good manufacturing jobs overseas for years. Benefits and pensions are a thing of the past.

2. Teens are easy to exploit. I taught high school business. As part of one course, I developed a lesson plan about labor law for minors. Then I used an OSHA lesson plan developed for young people about safety at work. The OSHA video showed an interview with a young girl who got a job filling plastic bags with ice. Her training was short and no one was supervising her. She dropped a bag and without thinking, tried to retrieve it. The machine sucked her hand/arm in and twisted. She is now disabled. Even WITH child labor laws, about 70 young people die at work each year and 70,000 are injured at work, seriously enough, to go to the emergency room.

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/97-132/default.html

As far as labor law, students do NOT know their rights. Not many schools have high school business departments, so I'm pretty sure students are not getting this education. Every single year during this unit, working students told me what was happening to them at work. Asked to go in a freezer and clean with a mix of chemicals that made them sick. Told to clock out at midnight, then finish cleaning up. Wage theft. In NYS the employer has the choice to NOT take out state and federal taxes. If they DO deduct those taxes, the student should be filing their taxes in the spring. I think they're allowed to earn $5K tax free. They do have to pay FICA. Invariably, every year students would tell me they did not know this. Another teacher and I helped them go back 3 years to get their refunds.

3. Besides not knowing their rights and labor law, teens are easy to exploit because they are afraid to speak up to an adult when they feel something is not right. They are also afraid of losing their jobs.

4. Parents/families will be able to force a young person to work in order to help pay the bills.

5. I think the majority of young workers will be from poor, marginalized families. Read the book "Weathering" by Arline T. Geronimus to see how this will stress the kids emotionally and, eventually, physically.

6. I bet these states will next reduce the age for which kids can quit school.

7. All this from the Republican states who supposedly care so much about our children. And they are so twisted, they are framing this as more "parental rights".

which ended with me walking away after she commented that kids working full time is better than getting an education in a "woke" school.

She meant local public school, which are not particularly "woke" though the teachers (mostly) do treat GLBT or gender non-conforming kids as human beings.

I need to stop even talking to...nearly everyone in town.

I'm trying to retain a relationship with my uncle, but he listens to some AM radio conspiracy program and he becomes completely unhinged.

Also, trying to be neighborly, I saw my Trump-supporting neighbor in his yard. I walked over to see how he made it through the winter and to inquire about his wife's health. Well, as we all know, there is no safe subject. His wife is a nurse, so she had to get the vaccine to keep her job. He claims she is now having all kinds of health problems. Everyone he knows, man, woman, whatever age, are supposedly having vaccine-related illnesses. I said, that's funny, I hiked with 14 people a few days ago and none experienced problems from the shot. Then I said that the foxes, skunks, possums, etc., are no longer stealing the cat food I leave out for the strays. He pounced! He asked, is it Purina???? I couldn't even follow. He spewed this conspiracy that is going around FB that Purina has changed its chicken feed formula (he has chickens) so that backyard chickens won't lay anymore and consumers will be forced to buy eggs at the grocery store at inflated prices.

Holy cow--I feel like I can't leave the house. And people at church are just as bad. The pastor said something about having compassion for immigrants and people were talking about it later.

and may have to take a break from news/politics for a while for my own mental health...though, not knowing what fuckery is afoot might be worse.

ETA: I had not heard the one about Purina! People are just getting nuttier and nuttier lately.

I'm cracking up about "fuckery being afoot". Yes, neighbor Todd thinks we are the ones being controlled. Probably some person in an armchair in some other country started the Purina rumor just to get people like Todd all ginned up.

Nah, who am I kidding...

These days, most Republicans can't read.

who want their kids to help supplement the family income, are nuts if they think this is going to help.

We saw it in the Gilded Age. As soon as kids can work legally and fill the adult jobs for less money, the adults get fired. Soon, the kids are the only ones in the household who can get a job. A low-paying job that won't support the family, and there's no other family income to 'supplement'.

Business does great. Profits soar. Families starve. And it's all legal.

Rinse, repeat.

I just read the fictional book by Kristen Hannah that takes place during the drought, Dust Bowl, and Great Depression. Holy cow. I was completely unaware of what went on.

The husband and wife live with his parents on a farm. They sort of just get by. Then the drought comes. Crops and animals die. Then the Dust Bowl, at which point the small son gets dust pneumonia and the doctor said they must move or the boy will die. The husband leaves the family. The mother moves to CA and the only job she can get is as a picker. She follows the fruit and cotton crops. These pickers are white and American (if people think it can't happen to them). They are "othered" in the community. Stores won't sell to them. Hospitals won't serve them. They are dirty from living in irrigation ditches and having no access to clean water. Disease breaks out in the camps. When the ditches flood, the pickers lose all of their meager belongings. When the powerful landowners hear talk of strikes, they reduce the price per pound they pay for the cotton. The state of CA establishes policy that if the pickers live there for a year, they can become eligible for cash assistance. The powerful landowners convince the state to stop the payment so that the pickers will remain desperate and just be happy to have a job at any price. Legal slavery. To earn more money, the mother heartbreakingly has to allow her young children to work alongside her in the cotton fields. 10 hours a day under the hot sun. They have to pay the co. store exorbitant prices for gloves and the cotton bags. Now they're in debt with no way to pay. The landowners get the locals whipped up calling the pickers dirty and lazy and looking for a handout. Sound familiar? The same thing we do with immigrants.

Is this the slippery slope we are entering by sending our children to work?

no reason for child labor except they are cheaper to pay

Here in NYS, we are short 5000 ag workers to pick crops and restaurants are cutting back on hours/days open because they can't get help. Two places where I get my hair cut are having trouble. One is closing on Mondays. The other place has to cancel appointments now and then.

But you're absolutely right about kids being cheaper and more exploitable. A recent investigation found 20 states using migrant children as young as 12 working at slaughterhouses, an auto plant in Alabama, agriprocessing plants....

Republicans don't want to solve the immigration system. It works for them to yell and scream about it to their base, then to secretly use the children in their major industries.

with having your son/daughter around a bunch of drunks?

You want workers? Offer higher pay. They’ll come. Such whining…