Child Labor

attempt to ~ baby jail when dhs lost track of teens pbs?

Maddow quotes rep? answer to labor shortage is not shorter workers 4 24

AN 4 24 TOM DISP

...In deference to the supposedly fierce spirit of “worker independence,” Project 2025 would also like to see many more workers classified not as employees at all but as independent contractors. And what would such workers gain from that “independence”? Well, as a start, freedom from those pesky minimum wage and overtime compensation regulations, not to speak of the loss of protections like disability insurance. And they’d be “free” to pay the whole tab (15.3% of their income) for their Social Security and Medicare taxes, unlike genuine employees, whose employers pick up half the cost.

Young people, too, would acquire more “independence” thanks to Project 2025 — at least if what they want to do is work in more dangerous jobs where they are presently banned. As Berry explains:

“Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people, even if their family is running the business, from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.”

The operative word here is “adults.” In fact, no laws presently exclude adults from hazardous work based on age. What Berry is talking about is allowing adolescents to perform such labor. Duvan Tomás Pérez, for instance, was a 16-year-old who showed just such an “interest” in an inherently dangerous job: working at a poultry plant in Mississippi, where he died in an industrial accident. The middle schooler, a Guatemalan immigrant who had lived in the United States for six years, was employed illegally by the Mar-Jac Poultry company. If there are “worker shortages in dangerous fields,” it’s because adults don’t want to take the risks. The solution is to make the work less dangerous for everyone, not to hire children to do it.

We’re Gonna Roll the Union Over

Mind you, much to the displeasure of Project 2025 types, this country is experiencing a renaissance of union organizing. Companies that long thought they could avoid unionization, from Amazon to Starbucks, are now the subject of such drives. In my own world of higher education, new unions are popping up and established ones are demonstrating renewed vigor in both private and public universities. As the bumper-sticker puts it, unions are “the folks who brought you the weekend.” They’re the reason we have laws on wages and hours, not to speak of on-the-job protections. So, it should be no surprise that Project 2025 wants to reduce the power of unions in a number of ways, including:

• Amending the National Labor Relations Act to allow “Employee Involvement Organizations” to supplant unions. Such “worker-management councils” are presently forbidden for good reason. They replace real unions that have the power to bargain for wages and working conditions with toothless pseudo-unions.

• Ending the use of “card-checks” and requiring elections to certify union representation. At the moment, the law still permits a union to present signed union-support cards from employees to the National Labor Relations Board and the employer. If both entities agree, the union wins legal recognition. The proposed change would make it significantly harder for unions to get certified, especially because cards can be collected without the employer’s knowledge, whereas a public election with a long lead time gives the employer ample scope for anti-union organizing activities, both legal and otherwise.

• Allowing individual states to opt out of labor protections granted under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act.

The measures covered here are, believe it or not, just the highlights of that labor chapter of Project 2025. If put into practice, they would be an historically unprecedented dream come true for employers, and a genuine nightmare for working people.

Meanwhile, at the Trumpified and right-wing-dominated Supreme Court, there are signs that some justices are interested in entertaining a case brought by Elon Musk’s SpaceX that could abolish the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal entity that adjudicates most labor disputes involving federal law. Without the NLRB, legal protections for workers, especially organizing or organized workers, would lose most of their bite. Despite the court’s claim to pay no attention to public opinion, its justices would certainly take note of a resounding defeat of Donald Trump, the Republicans, and Project 2025 at the polls.

A New “Contract on America?”

The last time the right wing was this organized was probably back in 1994, when Newt Gingrich published his “Contract with America.” Some of us were so appalled by its contents that we referred to it as a plan for a gangster hit, a “Contract onAmerica.”

This year, they’re back with a vengeance. All of which is to say that if you work for a living, or if you know and love people who do, there’s a lot on the line in this year’s election. We can’t sit this one out.

REBECCA GORDON

FL lawmaker declares 16 year olds are ‘not children’ but ‘youth workers’ amid labor shortage - Alternet.org

strict fr?

mars, nestle and __ pledge not to use child labor // trafficking/ sex?

wisc

https://www.alternet.org/lower-age-serving-alcohol-14/

tom disp

https://www.alternet.org/return-child-labor-american-decline/

https://boingboing.net/2023/05/25/state-lawmakers-want-children-to-work-in-bars-on-school-nights-to-fill-labor-shortage-caused-by-people-refusing-to-work-for-a-pittance.html

so much ignorance, hypocrisy hard to tell from just bad faith

https://www.alternet.org/weaponized-nonsense-lauren-boebert-climate/

no lnx twt vid

Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) referred to climate change as a "religion" during a floor speech in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

:{

"It's past timeHouse Democrats start to have a little empathy and dismount their moral high horse of climate change. There are thousands of children currently today slaving away in the Congo at Chinese-owned mines. They have to dig for cobalt with their bare hands. Instead of freeing these slaves and even ourselves from the need of these, this resource, they want to buy Chinese-made products," Boebert hollered."It's clear they have a climate religion. They worship the Earth while I worship the Creator, not the creation. We are here to be good stewards of our land. So stop sacrificing the American families at your altar of climate change."}:

Exploitative slave labor is a major problem in the industrial extraction of rare-earth minerals like cobalt, which is an essential material in a vast array of products such as electric cars, medical devices, and smartphones. As National Public Radio noted in February, "cobalt is used in the manufacture of almost all lithium-ion rechargeable batteries used in the world today."

READ MORE: Lauren Boebert declares war on Disney and immediately loses

NPR further pointed out that "the mines have taken over everything. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced because their villages were just bulldozed over to make place for large mining concessions." NPR added that "it's not chattel slavery from the 18th century where you can buy and trade people and own title over a person like property. But the level of degradation, the level of exploitation is on par with old-world slavery."

NPR added that Chinese companies "have about 70, 80% of the refined cobalt market and probably half of the battery market."

:{

Yet Boebert's own actions and record do not square with her proclamation. First, her Bible explicitly commands in numerous passages that humans be "good stewards" of the Earth.

Faith leaders have championed this idea too. Pope John Paul II once said that "the Earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations."}:

READ MORE: 'Such a pathetic hateful person': Lauren Boebert buried for tweeting unprovoked attack on immigrants

Second, Boebert opposes legislation and regulations aimed at protecting the environment, putting her at odds with science and reality. In 2021, Boebert filed a bill to nullify the Paris Climate Agreement, which President Joe Biden rejoined, prompting outrage from residents of her district.

"As the 'representative' of a district in which 59% of constituents are worried about global warming, 56% think Congress should do more to address global warming, and 72% think carbon dioxide should be regulated as a pollutant, Boebert’s sweeping, ill-informed bill is not only a rebuke to District 3 — which will suffer the impacts of a warming climate disproportionately — but an abrogation of fact itself," Darmouth student Soleil Gaylord wrote for Colorado Newsline that year.

Jacobin Magazine compared Boebert's anti-climate bill of running a "self-enrichment scheme" aimed at "benefiting her husband's fossil fuel business."

Last month, Boebert trivialized the climate crisis by tweeting, "Nothing against climate change. I totally believe in it. It happens four times every year."

Twitter users called out her hypocrisy after Tuesday's outburst.

LoveToHike: "Um aren't Christians supposed to be stewards of the Earth?"

Christian SoxKehd: "Then why is she fine as humanity is destroying the Creator's gift to us? If you hold him in the exalted reverence you claim, wouldn't you wish to preserve the gifted home He left for us."

Gayle Glade: "I don't care if her higher power is Jiminy Cricket or Buddha. That's private. What she is PAID to do is be a legislator. As such she needs to deal with facts, figures, science, and reality. Nothing more. She can preach on Sundays. Mon-Fri she's on constituent time!"

Ken: "If @laurenboebert worships the creator, then wouldn't she and other so-called 'Christians' do what it takes to protect what the creator created?"

KevinMc: "God spent 3 out of 7 days creating the Earth...1 day creating the rest of the universe...2 days creating sea creatures, animals and humans...and then God rested. God thought the Earth was the most important part of his creation...seems worth saving. 'True' story. Look it up."

Waffle Pocket: "Lauren Boebert coming out strong against the planet Earth."

Mo Ray: "Little Miss Cliché trots out her tired talking points to mock those of us who would rather not trash the planet, it's neither helpful nor accurate. Most scientists believe that climate change is real, it's not a religious movement, simply an attempt to prevent further damage."

Randy Watson: "The only creator she worships is Smith & Wesson."

Half Centaur: "Another in a long string of GOP 'weaponized nonsense.'"

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Then why are you allowed to vote?' Lauren Boebert goes down in flames after new Constitution gaffe

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Watch: House Republican told to 'search your heart' during contentious climate change hearing ›

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see illegal immigrant kids USA

mta email 3 23

child labor in the U.S. has long been thought to be a thing of the past. Although not the first state to do it,Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently signed a bill that allows children as young as 14 to work up to 48 hours per week without parental permission. Additionally, children under 16 no longer need the Division of Labor’s permission to work in Arkansas.

Iowa and Ohio also introduced bills to make child labor easier. Here’s what those bills look like:

IOWA

The bill proposes that children aged 14 and 15 can work in dangerous industries such as meatpacking if they and the employer have the right exemptions. Those exemptions are:

• The child must be “participating in work-based learning or a school or employer-administered, work-related program.”
• The employer must demonstrate “the activity will be performed under adequate supervision and training; the training includes adequate safety precautions; and that the terms and conditions of the proposed employment will not interfere with the health, well-being, or schooling of the minor enrolled in an approved program.”

According to this bill, kids under 16 can work as late as 9pm, and until 11pm during the summer. Although a company can be held liable if a child is hurt during the commute to work, the labor commissioner of Iowa holds the right to waive any such penalty towards a corporation.

OHIO

The bill proposes that children aged 14-15 can work through 9pm year-round (this bill is actually being reintroduced after it failed to pass in 2021).

Such laws make it easier for children to be exploited in the workforce and ignore decades of hard-won precedent. In a specific example, the proposed bill in Iowa delicately dances around the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Act states that only teenagers who are 16-17 who are “bona-fide student-learners and apprentices” may work with meat-processing machines.

Proponents for the bills say that it puts power in the hands of parents by allowing their children to work more. The reality seems to be that they will be exposed to more hazardous work environments for longer periods of time, giving the corporations the hard labor that they so desperately desire.

In this sense, the bills that are being both introduced and passed are giving corporations more power. Corporations can now hire children as early as their middle school years for dangerous positions, rather than hiring a perfectly capable adult whom they deem unfit.

Corporations should not have the right to hire children. We need to stop child labor laws. And we must stop the ability of corporations to influence the introduction of and advocacy for child labor laws. That means ending corporate rule

==

3 23 pbs? migrant kids 13 up working in factories and other dangerous jobs

will not

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/enforcement-solve-child-labor-crisis/

an 2 23  child labor

https://www.alternet.org/sarah-huckabee-sanders-2659557134/

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/apple-and-google-named-in-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths?ref=home

world’s biggest tech firms have been named in a U.S. lawsuit brought byCongolese families who say their children were killed while mining for cobalt used to power smartphones, laptops, and electric cars.The Guardianreports that Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Teslahave all been named as defendants in the lawsuit filed on behalf of 14 parents and children from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The companies are accused of aiding and abetting in the death and serious injury of children. The families say their children were working illegally in mines that produced battery-grade cobalt used in products made by the tech giants. The families claim children were paid as little as $2 a day, and say some were killed in tunnel collapses while others were paralyzed or suffered life-changing injuries from accidents. Cobalt is an essential component of rechargeable lithium batteries. The companies haven’t commented on the lawsuit, but a spokesperson for Glencore—the company that owns the mines— said it “does not tolerate any form of child, forced, or compulsory labor.”

==

omg

10 yo kid get 1 parENT permission and sign contract?!

https://kpfa.org/episode/the-ralph-nader-radio-hour-january-28-2019/

119

Republican state senator in Indiana whose business employs hundreds of minors is making a major push to scrap his state’s child labor laws.

The *Indy Star* reports that Indiana state Sen. Chip Perfect has filed a bill that would get rid of work permit requirements for underage employees, while also removing restrictions on the hours underage teenagers can work.

Perfect, who is the CEO of the Perfect North Slopes ski resort, estimates that his business employs between 300 to 400 minors.

The Indy Star writes that, to drum up support for his bill, Perfect had his human resources director testify “in favor of the bill during a committee hearing last week, raising questions about whether his involvement in the legislation is a conflict of interest.”

However, Perfect is insisting that he is not conflicted in proposing the law, even though it would allow him to hire more minors and give them longer hours.

“It wouldn’t affect me directly, because as I testified today, we have invested an incredible amount of money and we are currently adhering to the laws,” Perfect said. “This is really more about small businesses who cannot afford the resources to adhere to these antiquated laws.”

Federal child labor laws offer strong protections for young workers under the age of 16, but treatment of workers aged between 16 and 17 is left up to state legislators.

https://www.alternet.org/heres-how-trump-administration-bringing-back-child-labor

no lnx

Continuing on its mission to deregulate worker protections, the Trump administration’s Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor has proposed a new rule that would allow 16- and 17-year-old nursing-home workers to operate power-driven patient lifting devices without any adult supervision or assistance, despite evidence that it is dangerous. These devices are used to lift and transfer patients out of their beds or a chair who cannot lift themselves.

Huh? You ask. Didn’t we settle the issue of child labor like a century ago? Don’t we have a government agency that researches the hazards of this kind of work?

Background

The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor — and not the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — is the agency tasked with determining what kind of work children can perform safely, under the child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. The main rule is that if you are not yet 18, you are prohibited from being employed in occupations that have been declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor. That seems pretty clear, until you ask what the Secretary of Labor considers to be “hazardous.” For example, is the use of power-driven hoists to lift and transfer patients in hospitals or nursing homes hazardous?

Good question. Wage and Hour didn’t have the expertise to decide, so when this issue first came up during the Obama administration, they went to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health for some help. And what did NIOSH say? According to Deborah Berkowitz at the National Employment Law Project:

Based on a review of the relevant scientific literature regarding evaluations of patient handling devices and biomechanical analyses, NIOSH has determined that many 16- and 17-year-old employees cannot safely operate power-driven hoists to lift and transfer patients by themselves . . . Independent use of power-driven hoists by 16- and 17-year-olds would put them at increased risk for serious musculoskeletal injuries.  Moreover, the scientific literature indicates that most 16- and 17-year-old workers do not have the ability to properly assess the risks associated with using power-driven lifts.

OK, that sounds pretty clear. Which is why the Obama administration adopted, a common-sense enforcement policy mandating that if a 16- or 17-year-old caregiver is going to use a mechanical lift, he or she must have completed 75 hours of nurse’s aide training and must be assisted by an experienced caregiver who is at least 18 years old.

The Current Proposal

Despite the NIOSH recommendation and the current policy that seems to be working pretty well, the Labor Dept. has now proposed to rescind this enforcement policy, allegedly in order to expand apprenticeships for young workers.

With over 1.1 million jobs currently open in healthcare and social assistance, the U.S. Department of Labor today announced a proposal to allow younger Americans to safely develop critical skills for fast-growing jobs in healthcare.

New regulations need to be justified with hard evidence. Weakening those regulations also need hard evidence. Wage and Hour must consider all comments and evidence submitted before it issues the final rule. The agency is accepting comments on the proposal until Monday, Nov. 26. If you’re interested, you can submit comments here: www.regulations.gov/comment?D=WHD-2018-0002-0001.

Why are they deregulating and weakening these protections?

A bipartisan group of lawmakers and the regulated community have criticized the 2010 regulation on the grounds that it unnecessarily deprives youth of valuable skills development opportunities; exacerbates staffing shortages at healthcare facilities; delays the care patients receive; and causes youth to manually lift patients – even though using patient lifts is widely recognized as safer.

In other words, the Labor Dept. is bowing to industry pressure for cheap and compliant labor.

Many in Congress aren’t pleased. A group of 47 House Democrats sent a letter to Sec. of Labor Alex Acosta last August “to express their concerns that DOL’s efforts to weaken hazardous work protections for minors could put the health and safety of young workers at risk” and asked that the department first request a NIOSH review of the proposed changes.

Weakening protections for young workers could reverse the progress of lowering fatalities among young workers and further jeopardize their health and safety. Workplace safety laws and the Department’s [Hazardous Occupation Orders (HOs)] have made a difference in saving lives and limbs of young workers. The number of young workers aged 15 to 17 killed on the job has declined over the past 18 years….While we believe in expanding job opportunities for young workers, I am sure you would agree this should not be done at the expense of their health, safety or lives.

Patient Lifting: Health Worker Hazard

Healthcare workers often experience musculoskeletal disorders at a rate exceeding that of workers in construction, mining, and manufacturing. These injuries are due in large part to repeated manual patient handling activities, often involving heavy manual lifting associated with transferring, and repositioning patients and working in extremely awkward postures. The problem of lifting patients is compounded by the increasing weight of patients to be lifted due to the obesity epidemic in the United States and the rapidly increasing number of older people who require assistance with the activities of daily living.

And on Sept. 25, Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.) called on Acosta to rescind the proposal:

There are many ways to expand job opportunities for young people without risking their safety and the safety of patients in hospitals and nursing homes across the country. The administration should follow the scientific evidence and withdraw this proposal.

Patient advocates aren’t very happy either. A group composed of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Long Term Care Community Coalition, National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care and Penelope Ann Shaw a nursing home resident stated that

Revoking the 2011 DOL Field Memo that prohibits 16- and 17-year-old nursing home assistants from operating patient lifts by themselves would recklessly ignore research and experience and turn over one of the most complicated and hazardous jobs in nursing homes to the least experienced workers. The most vulnerable and dependent patients in the health care system would be at increased risk of injuries that can cause pain, broken bones, medical complications, increased disablement, hospitalization, and frequently, death

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https://www.alternet.org/hunger-games-child-labor-poverty-and-terrible-working-conditions-lie-behind-all-sugar-you-eat

Reach for a packet of sugar in the café, browse the shelves at supermarkets, or take a look at the packaging of your favourite sweet treat, and you are likely to see the Fairtrade label. What’s more, the UK’s Modern Slavery Act requires large companies to publicly report on the steps they take to ensure that forced labour is not a part of their products. The EU’s non-financial reporting requirements broaden out from modern slavery to include many issues related to social responsibility and human rights.

Provisions such as these, as well as a multitude of corporate social responsibility programmes and industry specific commitments, have been put in place as measures to correct the longstanding social risks and challenges faced by the people who produce the goods we consume. To deepen our understanding of the status of those risks and challenges, our team has, for the past nine months, taken a close look at the sugarcane consumed in the UK.

About 25% of the UK’s sugar comes from sugarcane imported from outside the EU, while the rest comes from sugar beet grown in the UK and other EU nations. Consequently, given the prevalence of the Fairtrade mark and supply chain reporting requirements, most of us are likely to have the impression that sugar is produced in a socially responsible way.

But unfortunately, serious problems including forced and child labour, poverty, and dangerous heat-related illnesses persist in today’s sugarcane industry.

In 2014, Fairtrade International discovered that children were working during school hours on certified farms in Belize,in direct violation of Fairtrade standards. Fairtrade suspended the certification of the entire Belize programme while the local industry worked to address the problem and the programme has since been reinstated. Belize, a Commonwealth country bordered by Mexico and Honduras, has long been a key provider of sugarcane to the UK market – in 2016 it accounted for 14% of UK imports of raw sugarcane. Yet, that same year, while the Belize sugar industry was already making considerable efforts to eliminate child labour within sugarcane, the United States Department of Labor (US DoL) found that the country as a whole had made minimal progress in eradicating the worst forms of child labour, including within sugarcane.

Another report by the US DoL also documented child labour in sugarcane in Guatemala and El Salvador, which together provided 14% of the 2016 UK supply. This means that child labour was documented in countries that supply nearly one-third of UK sugarcane in 2016. Additionally, the US DoL found forced labour in Brazil (12% of the UK supply). Previous research suggeststhat this is a recurring problem in this nation, even among operations that are certified by the rigorous Bonsucro production standard, which uses six principles to achieve environmental, social and economic sustainability in the production of sugarcane.

The hunger crop

Sugarcane is known as “the hunger crop” due to the low prices paid to farmers and low earnings among workers. Because they earn so little, those producing the sugarcane we consume – and their children – are often forced to go without adequate food and nutrition.

Our preliminary research indicates that even among Bonsucro-certified sugar mills in Minas Gerais, Brazil,

==

Nestle has initiated its child labor prevention system in its Cocoa Plan, from freedomunited.org/ anti-slavery NGO. 10/17.

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http://www.alternet.org/immigration/leaves-poison

From a "hillbilly mining family" in West Virginia, Bailey moved to North Carolina in 2001 and soon got a job enrolling the children of migrant laborers in school. The hard edges that characterize life for North Carolina's 90,000 migrant farmworkers felt familiar. Bailey's grandfather entered the mines at age 12 and died at 32 in 1949 from a methane explosion; her grandmother, who helped raise Bailey, was evicted from company housing after the accident. When Bailey was a toddler, a coal company dam burst, killing several other relatives. Like many of her peers, she got married and had a child right after high school and spent most of her 20s getting by on welfare.

Still, she was surprised to discover that child labor was still legal in the fields; the more she learned about the hazards of tobacco, the less those fields seemed like a place for kids. A 2001 study found that one in four tobacco workers suffers from acute nicotine poisoning, or "green tobacco sickness." Symptoms range from dizziness and vomiting to difficulty breathing and heart rate fluctuations requiring hospitalization. The pain can be so excruciating that some workers call it the "green monster." A tobacco farmer in Kentucky said the sickness "can make you feel like you’re going to die," a phrase I'll hear others repeat. 

Republican congressman Jack Kingston from Georgia, currently in the early stages of his bid for the Senate nomination, may have just put his foot too deep in his mouth to ever fully get it out. Over the weekend he was quoted saying that poor children should have to either pay or sweep floors if they want to eat school lunches. 

“[The] school lunch programs are very expensive” Kingston explained during a speech to the Jackson County Republican Party, “but one of the things I’ve talked to the Secretary of Agriculture about: Why don’t you have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria—and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money,” which is, of course he sees as the most egregious part of the plan: the potential loss of money. 

He is by no means the first Republican to suggest that poor kids do menial work just to get what other children receive labor-free.  Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich similarly pitched the idea of replacing unionized janitors with children to Harvard’s Kennedy School while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2011. He even suggested children as young as five be forced to work.

“Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday,” the Georgia Republican told a room full of Harvard students.

He stuck with the theme during the 2011 Republican debates:

“If you take one half go the New York janitors, who are paid more than the teachers,” Gingrich explained, managing to hit two broad right-wing strokes in one go, “you could give lots of poor kids a work experience in the cafeteria, in the school library, in the front office, in a lot of different things.”

It was another non-starter for Gingrich, whose campaign soon tanked, which did not stop Kingston from coming up with a similar heartless idea.