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That’s not true. In what way could that be true? I think people forget there are these things called parents. This is not sone kind of forced labor or dawn of i
by dinkumthinkum 3y ago
That’s not true. In what way could that be true? I think people forget there are these things called parents. This is not sone kind of forced labor or dawn of industrial age coal mine situation or something like that. There’s nothing wrong with kids doing some work under the guidance of their parents. As far as the “education system,” this is largely a function of parents as well.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoChildren being maimed in factory labor is unfortunate but it's the fault of their parents. We merely created the crushing economic pressure that made it necessary for their children to work and removed the legal obstacles to the factory hiring them. Ultimately this is a matter of personal responsibility, like every other bad thing we caused to happen.
- stuaxo 3y agoThere have always been parents, including when kids worked in mines or up chimneys.
- dinkumthinkum 3y agoThe situation in the US now is very different from the dawn of the industrial age. You really parents are going to have to ship their kids off to coal mines and Soviet style factories? People can downvote all they want but they are not living in reality if they think that.
- bobmcnamara 3y agoI'm from the Midwest. Poor folks ship their kids off to clean the pork plants and slaughterhouses on the night shift. Cargill and JBS were some of the worst. It was easy to tell in school, they were dead tired and stunk of bleach. > The situation in the US now is very different from the dawn of the industrial age. Different for many, and different for you, but not for all.
- busterarm 3y agoPeople act like we left this all behind hundreds of years ago but child labor didn't really end as standard practice even in densely urban environments until the Great Depression...
- red-iron-pine 3y agoI believe it. A kid died about a year ago while working in a poultry plant. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slaughterhouse-children-documentary-rcna129405 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/slaughterhouse-children...
- bobmcnamara 3y agoEvery time its heartbreaking. I'm glad they're covering this in the news at least though.
- nl 3y ago> The situation in the US now is very different from the dawn of the industrial age. You really parents are going to have to ship their kids off to coal mines and Soviet style factories? Genuine question: why do you think they wouldn't? These days of course they are called Amazon warehouses or non-union car factories or industrial slaughterhouses but the point is still the same.
- patcon 3y agoYeah, but there are modern equivalents of that period's parental negligence and collective failure. We have contemporary versions of the exploitation of mines and factories. If mines and factories were what we recognize (from today's perspective) as abuse in that industrial economy, what do you suspect are the current places that might need protection in the today's economy?
- Sakos 3y agoNecessity trumps any sort of "but parents care too much about their kids". Parents all over the globe care about their kids, but many of them put their kids to work because it's what's necessary to keep the family fed and housed. It's no different in the US, especially with how the labor market and prices look with recent inflation.
- analognoise 3y ago“Necessary”? It’s so weird people think that the system “must” work like this, that there are no alternatives. “All those kids had to go to work” - 5 families have more wealth than 50% of Americans combined, but somebody’s kid needs to work in a meat packing plant? The system doesn’t need to work like this.
- Sakos 3y agoI absolutely don't think the system should work this way. But people will send their kids to work if the money is needed to keep the family afloat. And the families who have to do this aren't thinking about the wealthy, they're more concerned with being able to afford their home and put food on their table. They're not thinking about how the system should be, they're thinking about how it is now and how to cope with it.
- defrost 3y agoI'm afraid it's yourself who is divorced from current US reality. US Laws have explicit carve outs for agricultural work, in the fields and in the slaugtherhouses. Even so, children still work illegaly, without the appropriate permissions: In February [ 2023 ], the Labor Department announced that it had found more than a hundred children between the ages of thirteen and seventeen working in meatpacking plants and slaughterhouses, in eight states, for Packers Sanitation Services, one of the nation’s largest food-sanitation companies. The facilities themselves are owned by major corporations, including Tyson Foods and JBS. (All three companies denied that they had engaged in any wrongdoing.) The children worked overnight shifts at such jobs as cleaning bone saws and head splitters with hazardous chemicals. At least three were injured. Packers, which is owned by Blackstone, the world’s largest private-equity firm, paid a civil fine of a million and a half dollars. Child Labor is on the Rise (June 2023) https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/child-labor-is-on-the-rise https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/child-labor-is...
- leereeves 3y agoWhat that article doesn't tell you is that those are illegal immigrants, who would be working illegally even if they weren't children. Those companies obviously don't care about the law. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-labor-crisis https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-la...
- defrost 3y agoSo are children working in US factories and processing plants or not? The context here is whether child labour occurs in the US.
- leereeves 3y agoNo, the context is whether that labor is illegal. It is, and it remains illegal even with the changes discussed in the article. And those are mostly unaccompanied minors, with no other way to support themselves, so it's not so simple as saying they shouldn't be working.
- hollywood_court 3y agoI can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic and trolling or if you really believe that. Please look at any number of recent news headlines regarding Alabama and how our education systems and libraries and such are regressing. It’s becoming dangerous for educators even teach basic reproductive safety to our students.
- dinkumthinkum 3y ago[flagged]
- djbusby 3y agoThis site al.com has some articles about events down south that might be of interest.
- Frost1x 3y agoLabor can be forced through many different mechanisms. What matters ultimately is just how much flexibility one has to not work or how many necessary things needed for surviving depends on actively working. Everything else are just levels of choice of flexibility within working, but you still for all functional purposes need to work. There’s a whole lot of illusion of choice we like to give people anymore.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 3y agoI already shared this link once but you should read it to. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-labor-laws-violations https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/us-child-lab...