With new outrages erupting every day, I find some comfort in knowing that We the People have at least eliminated certain particularly-ugly plutocratic abuses. Child labor, for example – outlawed in 1938, right?
Well, outlawed, yes; stopped, no. Recent reports reveal that thousands of children, ages 12 to 17, are toiling illegally at dangerous jobs, in manufacturing, construction, food processing, etc. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with teenagers working – they help their families, gain experience, or just earn a few bucks. Indeed, I worked part-time throughout my high school and college years, and while I did gripe some, overall it was positive.
So, this is not about children working – it’s about corporate child abuse, plain and simple. For example, last year Packers Sanitation Services was caught “employing oppressive child labor” in meatpacking plants to clean saws, head splitters, and other butchering machines. In a typical incident, one 13-year-old was badly burned by the caustic cleaning chemicals they used during long night shifts – which ran from 11pm to at least 5am!
Once caught, top executives of Packers Sanitation tried to sanitize their reputation by proclaiming they have “zero tolerance for any violation” of child labor laws. Oh? Ask that 13-year-old. These executives would be comical, except they’re completely disgusting and morally repugnant. Yet, our worker protection laws are so weak that Packers’ multiple violations, involving 102 children in this one case, resulted in a fine of… $1.5 million.
That’s not even peanuts for this nationwide giant, which is owned by Blackstone, a trillion-dollar Wall Street hucksters run by with well-manicured executives who pretend they know nothing about the children they endanger for profit.
How about we make a few of the teenage children and grandchildren of Blackstone profiteers work some midnight shifts cleaning meatcutting machinery? I’m guessing they would stop the abuse overnight.
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One Idea for Actually Stopping Child Labor Abuse