You may have heard or read the shocking news that some Republican lawmakers are considering loosening the laws governing child labor. In fact, children have been found working in slaughterhouses, at an age when they still haven’t given up TV cartoons. Seriously? What century is this, anyway?
A photo of a little girl working in a factory helped spur the movement to ban child labor. Kids need to be in school, developing their intellects and social skills, not watching spools of thread or hacking animal corpses. Their minds and bodies are still growing. Forcing them to work stunts mental as well as physical growth. How can they learn when they’re working 16 hours a day? It is as though Big Business is grooming them for a lifetime of wage slavery.
We think of child labor as something that happens in developing nations, but it is happening right here in the United States. Companies such as Hearthside Food Solutions, General Mills, PepsiCo, Hyundai and Chipotle have been caught using child labor. This summons memories of the Gilded Age, when everybody in a family had to work just to make ends meet because wages were so low – and worker protections were a joke if they even existed. Many children lost limbs, eyes and even their lives handling manufacturing equipment or slaving away in mines.
There is no excuse for allowing – or forcing – children to work. While we condemn chocolate companies for allowing enslaved children to harvest cacao for our M&Ms and Hershey bars, we unwittingly support child labor here. We need to contact those companies that allow children to work when too young, or longer-than-reasonable hours, or in dangerous positions; and we need to demand that our elected representatives tighten regulations on underage workers.
And just who have been attacking child labor laws in the USA? Republicans, of course. They seek to roll back child labor legislation by increasing permissible hours and broadening the types of jobs kids can do – including hazardous jobs, such as the aforementioned slaughterhouse positions. In addition, the laws that Republicans have written shield employers from liability for injuries, illnesses or workplace fatalities involving very young workers. In other words, if Junior dies on the job, tough noogies Mommy and Daddy. Just as in Victorian times.
The kicker is the same people seeking to loosen regulations on child labor are pretty much the same people who fiercely defend embryos and fetuses. Die in an abortion, that is a horrible tragedy and a crime; rip your arm open in an abattoir and bleed out, or get crushed by heavy equipment, that’s only a statistic.
Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa AFL-CIO, stated “All of these protections have been put in place for a reason. Child labor law is there to make sure that kids are working in age-appropriate work activities or occupations that are appropriate for their age. We think this is a rewrite of our child labor laws in Iowa that are going way, way, way too far and has the potential to put kids in dangerous situations.” Children working in positions inappropriate for their age is just one of many reasons why we have unions, and why they are important. Kids belong in the classroom and the playground, not the factory.
