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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

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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...

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.

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