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To everyone talking about how they worked as a kid, the bill talks about industries with labor shortages, such as meat-packing and construction. These are very

• lr4444lr 4y ago
  Your point is taken, but we have to consider the opportunity cost. For kids not academically focused nor have even with the temperament for vocational ed., who may be getting into trouble at school or flirting with drugs, a steady job even if it's a little rough could be a lifeline. Working in meat processing is extreme, but I don't think it is anywhere near kitchen labor. We can certainly pair these work exemptions with stronger workplace safety oversight, to your point.
  • swatcoder 4y ago
    Sounds like a great opportunity for an apprenticing program for trade work, not child labor.
  • carlosjobim 4y ago
    Crime and drug dealing is a better career opportunity for young people than low-wage jobs.
  • germinalphrase 4y ago
    Opportunity cost? We’re talking about 13-14 years olds sanitizing meat packing facilities on the overnight shift as was recently exposed up here in Minnesota.
  • warent 4y ago
    While we're at it, let's save people of color by making them slaves. Hey, if they're flirting with drugs and dealing with poor social support, then this is a lifeline! An illustration of how this completely bogus argument a societal race to the bottom. We cannot bandage serious social issues with more serious social issues. Masquerading this degree of child labor as being a lifeline is tone deaf and short sighted at best, but teetering on amoral and vile.
  • 8note 4y ago
    I don't think you'll find that these jobs could compete with being a school drug dealer. Both in time spent, popularity, and profitability, drug dealer is a much more appealing job for teens.
• f6v 4y ago
  > Want your kids to work forced overtime attaching dead chickens to hooks in a fridge? I get your point. But the example doesn’t look convincing. If you’re comfortable with eating meat you should be comfortable with seeing how it’s made.
  • rat9988 4y ago
    Not as a kid.
    • Teever 4y ago
      I have a good friend whonwpuld frequently cut chicken's heads off with an axe while helping out ar a familt farm and another who would frequently go duck hunting with his dad and describes killing the ducks by violently spinning their necks. I've never done any of these things but my friends seem fine to me. The problem with children working in slaughter houses isnt that the children will be exposed to dead animals, its that they'll be exposed to unsafe working conditions and taken advantage of by their employer.
      • hunter-gatherer 4y ago
        Your point can really be expounded on a lot. I am one of those people who, as a kid, hunted various types of game. I also worked a summer as a 17 year old at ritewood egg in southern idaho. Although I wasn't butchering animals, the mental toll of watching where the 2-dollar-a-dozen eggs came from was more noticeable than hanging and gutting a deer in the woods. I have no issues with children (14-18) having jobs, but there are industries we should strive as a society to keep them from. I wouldn't want kids working in animal food production for the same reasons I wouldn't want them in coal mines. It is important to consoder that those _reasons_ to start to dissipate as one matures and gets older and able to hold their own. As a society we really should be striving to give kids the best opportunities to engage in constructive play and school before jobs in my opinion. Not that my opinion matters at all though...
      • pixl97 4y ago
        Really it's the repetitive motion injuries that are by far the most dangerous here in this specific industry. Especially in people that are still developing and are not fully grown. The industry will gladly burn them up and then farm off their injuries to socialized healthcare for the rest of their lives. And you're completely correct. There are reasons why we don't let kids make a huge number of different contracts. They don't have the knowledge to know when they are being exploited.
• pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Ugh.. anyone thinking of sending their kid to work in a meatpacking factory should read the Jungle by Upton Sinclair instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle
  • hkxer 4y ago
    My understanding is that “The Jungle” spurred a huge improvement in safety regulations. Why do you think the conditions are still bad?
    • myspy 4y ago
      Profit before human or worker rights? People working in these companies in Germany are fucked up because of all the killing and handling of dead animals. And how do you need to be to want kids working in anything before they completed their education (minus a couple easy summer jobs). Some American legislators are scum.
    • PuppyTailWags 4y ago
      > Why do you think the conditions are still bad? Since the jungle was published, more recent research has been published to show that simply having a meatpacking or butcher factory in the community causes more violent crime, sexual assault, and drug addiction.
      • BlamSthzusa 4y ago
        Source?
        • PuppyTailWags 4y ago
          https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1086026609338164 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/108602660933816... - "Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates: An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From “The Jungle” Into the Surrounding Community" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34231439/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34231439/ - "The Psychological Impact of Slaughterhouse Employment: A Systematic Literature Review "
• supriyo-biswas 4y ago
  Not to mention, this is the lowest of low value jobs that they’d be employed in, which can be actively harmful to your career as you never get the time to develop high value skills due to the strenuous work involved in these positions.
  • carlosjobim 4y ago
    It's mainly harmful to your career due to the prejudices of other people. And that is a good reason to stay away!
  • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
    What kind of reality denialism is this? A teenager with ANY work history on their limited resume has a huge leg up over the equivalent teenager who has a little more other stuff but no work history.
    • jerlam 4y ago
      Poster is saying that having a manual labor position takes up time that could be used to study more and get better grades, take higher level/honors classes, interesting extracurricular activities, etc. There is an opportunity cost.
    • micromacrofoot 4y ago
      a leg up when? if they’re a 17 year old drop out looking to climb the meat packing management ladder maybe? trades won’t care about meatpacking experience, and if you’re trying to look good for college you’d be better off doing anything else I worked terrible jobs because I had to starting at 14 (tobacco farms, cleaning meat plants, unloading trucks) and all it did was age me, no one cared about the experience and once I was through college putting it on my resume would have been a detriment
    • myspy 4y ago
      You give kids an education and let them do some summer jobs if they want to earn something additionally but you don‘t let them work a real job when going to school. And gaining work experience starts when having vocational training. Look up the German dual education system we have in Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_education_system
• sokoloff 4y ago
  MN law currently prevents working on a construction site at all until age 18. That includes benign jobs like hanging/finishing drywall, painting, cabinet installation, and many other jobs that seem entirely fine for some 17 year olds to do.
  • crazygringo 4y ago
    Yeah but it's tricky to decide and list all of the exact tasks which are allowed and which are prohibited, and keep updating it each year. Plus ensure that it's actually enforced, when kids might want to do the dangerous stuff or be pressured into it and it's not like there's an inspector right there watching everything. A blanket prohibition on construction sites just seems simpler and much more enforceable.
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      There are many things that are simpler, more enforceable, and more restrictive on freedoms than necessary.
      • crazygringo 4y ago
        "Restrictive on freedoms"? It's not in the Constitution that kids have a right to work on dangerous construction sites. These aren't adults we're talking about here.
        • kevviiinn 4y ago
          I think he's talking about the All-American freedom to exploit as many people as possible, child labor laws are obviously too strict and infringe of the freedom of red blooded Americans
  • pixl97 4y ago
    There are not really any benign jobs on a construction site. Pretty much everything you listed there requires ladder work, which in theory at a corporate level, you need to do safety training on.
• mc32 4y ago
  Before the fifties kids did all sorts of “grown up work” including dangerous ones. Question is, do we have the right safety in place, are they being overworked and are they mentally mature enough. Kids are likely okay in many opportunities but not okay in others and someone should be figuring this out. As long as we have the right safeguards in place, I think it’s okay. Being able to work as a kid helped me immensely.
  • Tanjreeve 4y ago
    This is definitely going to get used as a stick to beat parents with and do the usual sidestep from talking about why people's standards of living keep declining. "Oh youre complaining about not affording food but you have two kids wasting their time in school?"
  • ilyt 4y ago
    No, the question is why government is trying to make children to work instead of having company to pay for labour they require to run the business.
    • Mizoguchi 4y ago
      Because the goverment should not dictate wages. The market should. The minimum wage should actually be zero. I would certainly like to see a minimum wage of $30/hr but realistically I know that's not possible, particularly in low skill level tasks that today can be easily automated. Wages is the number one cost in many industries, some operating with very tight margins. If you give industries a reason to automate they will, and those jobs will be gone forever once the investment is done and machines are in operation. Which is not a bad thing but you don't want it to happen suddenly without having a plan to retrain the workforce and give them valuable skills like they do in other countries like Germany. So if you want better wages, it is simple, get people skills that are in high demand.
      • giantg2 4y ago
        "So if you want better wages, it is simple, get people skills that are in high demand." It's simple in theory, but in practice it seems difficult. How do you provide people in low skill jobs with better skills? I'm sure many of them are capable of learning higher skills. However, I would guess there are many others already operating at their top level. They would likely be able to learn other lower skilled jobs, but I don't see them jumping to a higher level. How does that work in Germany?
• xiphias2 4y ago
  I wish there would be exceptions to child labor regulations, but just the opposite kind: I could already do programming at 8 quite well, but I started professionally only after I was 23 because of all the rules. I wish I supported my family more by doing knowledge work. Now the work introduced here has nothing to do with knowledge work, and it just takes away time from building a carreer, so of course I’m against that kind of child labor.
  • kibwen 4y ago
    I'm not sure what was stopping you from working until 23, but in the US people can generally start working full-time at 16. I certainly know people who dropped out of high school after 10th grade in order to start working as mechanics. "The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) administers and enforces the federal child labor laws. Generally speaking, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets the minimum age for employment (14 years for non-agricultural jobs), restricts the hours youth under the age of 16 may work, and prohibits youth under the age of 18 from being employed in hazardous occupations." https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/workersunder18 https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/hiring/workersunder18
    • xiphias2 4y ago
      I was born and raised in eastern europe before having access to internet. US is much more business oriented thinking by default than eastern-europe (where education comes first), although young people nowdays have global access to a lot more information.
      • CyberDildonics 4y ago
        What does this have to do with not being able to work as a programmer earlier than 23?
    • cwsx 4y ago
      I'm not from the US but I started working part-time as a developer at 16, and full-time at 17. This was 10+ years ago, but I know more teenagers now doing something similar than there were when I was growing up (for non-typical teenage jobs).
• Mizoguchi 4y ago
  There are many operations withing these industries that are not necessarily dangerous let alone difficult. I guess when you hear of construction or meat-packing you think about 15 years old kids hanging from a harness 50 ft high or butchering a cow. This is ridiculous, there are many roles that would be completely appropriate for a teenager in virtually any industry and we have agencies that could make sure kids are working in safe environments and conditions.
• DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Lets call a spade a spade, it's a slaughterhouse. Packing is a very small part of what is going on there. I wonder if the new term is the industry pushing for a euphemism as a PR move?
• delfinom 4y ago
  They don't care You know what the true subtext is? They are doing this to allow all the child migrants to work without issue. That entire child labor pool that is growing rapidly to the point Hyundai is spinning off subsidiary only to reduce the blame on themselves, they are still keeping the supplier.