We've already seen stories about meat processing plants having children working as janitors, and GOP states fighting to make it legal for kids to work longer hours than before, so I figured I'd start a thread to keep track of these fascinating developments into the return of the Gilded Age in the US. Oh, anyway, two 10 year old kids found working at McDonalds in Louisville, Kentucky, that were "employed" but " not paid," which is an odd way to frame it. Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/03/business/mcdonalds-child-labor-louisville This is a perennial reminder that corporations in the United States once employed poor people's children to work shit tasks and for little or no pay in order to maximize profit, and they wish to do so again.
All you fuckers screaming for regulations and unions to go away, this is what you wanted. If pointing that out makes you sad, fuck your feelings.
Remembering my teen years working in fast food, plenty of the other teens, myself included, would have jumped at the chance to make “overtime”. Doesn’t mean that we should have been allowed to.
Mississippi slaughterhouse is directly responsible for death of migrant teen who was sucked into machinery, OSHA says
Well, they don't wanna have to wait 18 years until they can show off the economic benefits of forcing women to give birth to the kids of rapists. Which the folk pushing this shit increasingly turn out to be. But, if it's legal for 16-17 year olds to work, there's precedent for them to be allowed to be sex workers. So then, they don't even need to be rapists, just customers.
I figure that's next on the docket, lowering the legal age for sex work. These fuckers are all the very things they claim to be against.
Yes because ensuring students have no time to study will prove public schools are a waste of taxpayer money.
I brought this up with Paladin and the other rights a while ago, the impression I got is that when it's sex work most "Libertarians" are guided by their social conservative influences rather than their predatory capitalist urges. Letting an 8 year old foreign kid destroy their bodies in a mine for a few cents a day? That's great, they're generating income for their family, it's more productive than school considering their limited opportunities. An 8 year old foreign kid giving handjobs to tourists? No, that's exploitation and it's bad and wrong because reasons. What if they get carpal tunnel syndrome? There's no ethical consistency there, but in this case I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
Worked two jobs in high school. Still had time to study, exercise and get drunk. Being a kid is easy.
I didn’t work and I didn’t exercise and I didn’t study. … … Sorry, thought we were bringing up completely irrelevant topics. If you think the results will not be used in the manner in which I’ve suggested, then 2 years from now, expect to be arguing against public education because 17 year old kids are stupid and don’t need to be in school any goddam way.
You can't know they won't have time. It's far more likely it will continue to be a matter of discipline and motivation. If it CAN be done, I expect them to be accountable for their failure to make the effort.
At that age, most will work at the expense of their education. If politicians really wanted to help students (not businesses) they would change the entire US public education system. Most students do not get any new information in high school. It’s basically 4 years of wrapping up the previous 8 years. Children learn more in the first 5 years of their life than they will the rest of the lives, let alone the next 15 years. Parents should be teaching their children everything from elementary school before they start kindergarten.
I used to work 8 hour shifts as a busboy at 16 and 17 but not on school nights, those were more like 5 hour shifts
Florida man shot himself in the foot last year with the crackdown on illegal labor. Getting 16 and 17 year olds to work 8 hours on a school night is not the solution.
