You need to fight for keeping any accomplishments you’ve got. US rolled back many child labor regulations, so we have 14 years old killed by sawmills again. It’s not like the US banned children from mines because it was economically more profitable.
Concerns over child labor when working at McDonalds or Walmart is one thing, but it's a real stretch to go straight to 14 year olds dying in sawmill accidents.
I have a hard time believing many children are dying in this way in the US today but I'm happy to be wrong and learn something new if there is real data there.
Actually, that report includes a few examples of children killed on the job. Like a 16 year old who died while working in construction, he fell about 160 feet to the ground after trying to jump from a roof to a nearby powered lift. In Nashville. [2] (same link as [1])
It also details the rise in children being employed to do hazardous labor.
Killed in sawmills is a bit of hyperbole, but it's not far off from the truth it seems.
I did dig and found another news article about the anecdote included.
https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville-family-advoca...
It looks like there is a discrepancy between State and Federal law, so the employers may indeed be acting in a twisted version of good faith. Despite the fact that Federal law supersedes state law. [2] https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/all-things-work/child...
I'm not implying regulations are the fix, I just think it's a little fucked up.
At least that was the theory. Clearly private lobbyists and various interests groups who want to erode the country don't care about such factors.
Exactly: Child labor laws are more profitable for society; child labor is more profitable for a small set of individuals. Lobbying by interest groups is often pushing away from the former and towards the latter.
ETA: In line with this sub-thread, I'd say: There are and always will be private interest groups lobbying against the former and towards the latter; and so there will always need to be public interest groups lobbying against the latter and towards the former. That applies to LVT as much as environmental and labor protections.
The closest thing I could find was a single 16 year old killed in Wisconsin last year. Very sad, but n=1, and the attribution to 'rolling back' child labour regulations seems spurious (did the previous regulations prevent 16 year olds from working?).
Edit: I'm noting the downvotes, but I stand by this. Just because something plays into your political preconceptions doesn't mean it's true. (We should all be doubly sceptical of spurious factoids that just so happen to perfectly align with our political views!)
Hyperbole is by definition false, its use illustrates nothing beyond the speaker's willingness to stretch the truth.
In this case, to make political claims. Ought we organise our societies on the basis of political claims 'illustrated' by bombastic falsehoods?
The increase in child labor-related deaths is happening and will continue as child labor laws are rolled back in states across the US.
You’re accepting the claim because you already believe it to be true, but both you and the original person making the claim have no evidence for this. This is a very dangerous style of political argument. “Well, there are no facts here, but this claim reinforces my already existing beliefs, so the vibes check out!”
We want policy around workplace safety to be evidence based, not vibes and feels based, because the former will save lives and the latter will not.
However, data from 1910 is accurate for 1910, not for 2024. If children are dying en masse in workplaces today, it ought not be difficult to collate the data required to tighten the laws further. And yet, all I’ve seen is assertions, vibes, and vague conspiracy theories.
Policy making is a balancing act; we calibrate laws for the circumstances as they develop. The only way to do this intelligently, or even competently, is on the basis of evidence.
If a point is valid and clear hyperbole isn't needed. Concerns over children dying in job related accidents or being made to work extreme hours or in bad conditions is a fine point. Children falling into sawmills just muddies the waters and will draw in people who disagree that that is a concern at all.
- 16 year old in Mississippi last July: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/16/business/mississippi-marj...
- Iowa allowing teens 14.5+ years old to drive to work. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/state-government-news/2024-0...
--- Using data from the National Household Travel Survey, the fatal crash rate per mile driven for 16-19 year-olds is nearly 3 times the rate for drivers ages 20 and over. Risk is highest at ages 16-17.
--- Given that Risk increases as age decreases, 14-15 year olds are at a high risk of fatal injury while driving on the road. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teenagers
- 16 year old loses both legs in Washington: https://www.lni.wa.gov/news-events/article/24-01
This was with a few minutes of searching. You have to filter out child labor deaths abroad and other breaking news, but the deaths are there and they're increasing.
Note that for each death that results in a successful lawsuit, you should assume there are other deaths happening where the family either (1) couldn't afford to bring a case, (2) agreed to private settlement, or even (3) it just didn't get big enough to make the broader news.
Roofing companies shouldn't have anyone falling off the roof, there are OSHA regulations for a reason. 16 year olds being bad drivers has nothing to do with their employmwnt status. Using trenchers is dangerous no matter who you are, that isn't age related and if we are collectively concerned with how much damage they can do we should not use the machines.
Protecting and teaching kids is totally reasonable, but how far down the path of trapping them in a bubble do we really want to go?
- You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.
- You cannot vote in elections.
- You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
So the takeaway is that yes, teenagers are too fragile and don't have the risk assessment capacity to work some of these dangerous jobs.
Yes, we have OSHA and other safety regulations. Still the jobs are dangerous. Adults are more likely to call this out or recognize when these regulations are being disregarded, but a 14 year old might not realize that what they are doing is more dangerous than it should be.
> You cannot vote in elections.
These two are both linked. In the US, military enrollment age was 20-45 (The Enrollment Act). Around the two world wars it was lowered to 18, primarily because they didn't have enough troops and most kids graduated high school at 18.
The 26th amendment set the voting age to 18 because that's what the draft age was already set to.
Neither had anything directly to do with developmental differences by age. The first followed social norms for schooling age and the second just followed along.
> You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
There are many studies showing the risks of consuming these chemicals are much higher for people under the age of around 20. I don't know if those data were known before age limits were set, but there is a good reason to keep it today that has nothing to do with teenagers' ability to make decisions. Alternatively, I'd be just as happy seeing these also removed and us better teaching kids what the risks are so they can make their own decisions.
What "global society" is this? Most of the world by numbers doesn't seem to have signed on to this agreement. Well-off countries may have made child labor largely illegal, though some of it persists inside their borders, but this just moves most of it offshore. Not that the places where it lands didn't have child labor before, but the scale of their operations grow with exports and industrialization.
Children banned from working in sawmills: "how far down the path of trapping them in an overprotective bubble do we really want to go?!".
We could do a lot to let children be more independent, interact more with the world, be able to walk or ride to school or to the shops or to friends' houses or to parks or to get jobs in various places to avoid bubbling them, first. The kind of company wanting to hire a 16 year old for its sawmill seems far more likely to be doing it for cheap labour than for the child's good.
The claim, though, was that rolling back labour law has led to the situation deteriorating, so we would need statistics from today, to compare with statistics from the 1970s, 1950s, etc. Are children dying at work at a higher rate today than they did in 1950? 1970?
Your argument is that unless we have thousands dying, it's fine?
I don't understand why people are even arguing this. Children working is never going to make society better. It might make more money for a few, but that's about it.
I honestly can't believe I'm seeing people arguing against child labor laws. I thought this was the kind of thing that you'd read in books and think "those were crazy times" but never witness it, yet here we are.
Do you think it outweighs those involved having a higher risk of maiming for lower compensation?
If they have to work to help out with money, then our system has failed in providing an adequate environment for a kid to grow up.
If a child wants to learn a craft or pick up specific skills, that should not be done in a work environment that can put them in danger. Again, that's another failure of the system.
Most of us already have to basically work until death since they can't ever properly retire, so I see zero benefits in forcing humans that are still developing into that reality even sooner.
And where are you seeing these people, exactly?
My argument is that the claim “winding back labour law has caused a rise in workplace deaths involving children in sawmills” is unsupported by any statistical evidence, and very likely false. There are no statistics that support this claim.
False assertions are no way to debate about policy, provided we want good policy that is actually effective at keeping people safe. Such policy must be evidence based, and not vibes and feels based.
You’re battling a strawman of your own creation.
Still not sure how sending kids to work will increase their safety. You've mentioned evidence but I've never seen any evidence that supports it increases their safety. We've seen evidence it can decrease their safety since some are killed/injured, even if you dismissed it as not statistically relevant.
So in the end, this goes both ways: we don't have evidence that allowing kids to work improves their lives or society, making it a bad policy.
My guess these policies were based on greed, not "vibes". Clearly better, right?
I’m saying there exists no evidence that the number of children dying in sawmills has dramatically increased as a result of changing labour laws. This is important, not pedantic, because it goes to the heart of the claim that modern labour law has changed in a way that harms children. If the data isn’t there, this claim is false. If this claim is false, we shouldn’t be rushing to revise labour law on the basis of it.
One person can claim that modern labour law kills children, another can claim it protects children. Until some statistics come in, all of this is noise.
Labour law exists to protect workers. It is too important to get wrong, such as by rushing into ill considered changes on the basis of vibes or feels. There may well be other reasons to adjust labour law - based on facts and hard evidence that it’s not working in some way.
I don’t understand why you seem to take such umbrage at the view that important safety laws should be made on the basis of actual data, so we can ensure they’re effective.
-Alabama: "The department’s Wage and Hour Division found Apex Roofing illegally employed the teen in violation of a Fair Labor Standards Act child labor hazardous occupation order that prohibits workers under the age of 18 from engaging in dangerous jobs designated by the act, including roofing or construction operations."
-Iowa : I would like to see data that shows the crash rate for teens going to/from work vs general teen driving.
In half of the examples, the company was having the worker do prohibited work. If the company is breaking the law, how does the fact that labor laws were changed affect that?
I'm not sure your intentions with trying desperately to convince yourself that it's safe and reasonable to have children work dangerous jobs.
14 year olds can work all sorts of jobs already, they can make money and learn skills.
There is obviously a reason these laws were passed. So the evidence you are so sure does not exist has been around for a century. These laws weren't vibe based.
...because in small scale, instead, would be acceptable?!
Because it’s generally a bad idea to legislate for over a third of a billion of humans on the basis of rare freak accidents.
It is probably a "rare freak accident" to be shot by a baboon but nonetheless it is illegal to to create dangerous situations like giving a loaded weapon to animals at the zoo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour is very much illegal around the world, yo.
Try to engage in good faith. You don't really think that people don't know what child labour is illegal, and require a Wiki link to elucidate this obscure fact. You're just performing outrage. Why do so? What benefit does doing so bring you, or anyone else?
> Rushing to make legislation to respond to (media coverage of) freak occurrences rarely leads to good lawmaking.
I agree. Yet, laws against child labor already exist and they work as a "blanket" safety mechanism against all threats to children, regardless of what incident might happen.
> Try to engage in good faith. ... You're just performing outrage.
Please do not accuse other people of acting in bad faith.
I genuinely have no idea what your point is. The most generous reading I can give this is that you took my words to be an assertion that we should abolish all laws relating to workplace accidents, but that is a farcical misinterpretation. Both on its face, but especially in the context of the wider discussion.
> I agree. Yet, laws against child labor already exist and they work as a "blanket" safety mechanism against all threats to children, regardless of what incident might happen.
Of course they do. I'm unsure why this requires explanation. What's the alternative? Non-blanket child labour laws? What would that even look like? Again, I have no idea what your point is.
> Please do not accuse other people of acting in bad faith.
This exchange began when you accused me, in a one line comment, of finding the death of children acceptable. If that was intended to be a good faith, constructive comment, I'm happy to hear how exactly.
More broadly, I reject your view that bad faith comments ought not be called out. Why not? In the best case, it helps a person become aware that they're not engaging constructively; alternatively, it's informative for others, and can help them from entering into a pointless discussion.