March 12, 2023
Instead of paying adults more, some states might let companies hire kids as young as 14 to fill the labor shortage
Lawmakers in Iowa and Minnesota have introduced legislation in the last month proposing exceptions to child labor regulations in their respective states, due to the persisting labor shortage hitting them particularly hard. Minnesota lost 90,000 workers alone during the pandemic, according to state demographers, making it one of the tightest labor markets in the country. Iowa’s not far behind with roughly 75,000 open jobs in December. (From the article on business insider)
Additional link to discussion on Y-Combinator
While I continue to grow older, a privilege not given to some of these meat and auto industry children employees, I realize there is so much more marketing spent on selling the idea that part of America’s “boostrap” mentality stems from this mythical “nucleation point” of a child’s life - where they have to begin a hero’s journey toward adulthood. By working. For someone else. While unable to really even stick up for themselves, let alone understand how the whole work-life balance is managed and how it has a direct relationship between outcomes later in life. (This isn’t a scientific journal, and my evidence and knowlege is anecdotal at best, but I think the relationship between “works hard as a child” and “ends up exhausted by 30” is pretty clear.)
I, myself, started working at 16, with the proper paperwork, for the minimum wage at the time. With my first couple paychecks came UFCW union membership initiation; this same union will step in and defend me later when the managers tried to bully 16/17yo me into working >40 hours a week and late on school nights. It wasn’t hardcore child labor, just working at a grocery store. My girlfriend, at the time, worked there too - I doubt I did any real productive work, though I do remember enjoying it. I would start my “adult life” not really understanding how important that union was, as a philosophy, even going so far to (one single time) cross a line because I was pissed UPS would not. My eyes were opened, as I grew into adulthood and started to provide for a family.
This is not the story of how I became very pro-union, but a simple sidebar comment on the idea that children, if given a little bit of money children will enter the meat-grinder (no pun intended) much earlier than previous generations - and therefore will sooner become more disconnected with how a real work-life balance should operate. Tired employees are too tired to ask for more.
Part of the claims made is that this is a practice taken during a “labor shortage”. Mind you, that word/phrase “labor shortage” means “corporations don’t want to pay more to make jobs attractive enough to jump ship…” “Labor shortage” is that very “market” all those corporations claim to love, doing what it does best - setting the prices, no?
In very recent times corporations have been found being used by Hyundai in an Alabama plant and in February of this year (like, “last month”) a meat plants in eight states were employing children to use hazardous chemicals to clean the places.
It’s clear that anything a corporation can do to increase profits - they will do.