Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs law loosening child labor protections | Hacker News Reader

Arkansas Gov. Sanders signs law loosening child labor protections

washingtonpost.com

34 pointsmirthlessend16 comments

There's ~450 words in this article, and maybe only 100 of them have to do with this law, which isn't even named or linked in the article. Usually that's a good tell that something is fishy and this "journalist" isn't actually reporting but driving a narrative. I don't live in Arkansas, so I don't have a dog in this fight, but I found what I think is the actual law[1] and it looks like it's removing a requirement that under-16 year olds and/or their employers have to register with the State before they can get a job, where they needed to verify the age of the child in the process.

I'll admit, when I first read that my reaction was "what, why would they have to register with the state?" but I'm from the midwest where getting a job when you're 14 or 15 at the hardware store or gas station was pretty dang common (this was somewhere back in the 90s).

Anyway, the article makes it seem like all of child labor enforcement in Arkansas hinges on 18 lines of Arkansas legal code. There's plenty of other laws on the books that do that.

[1] https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/FTPDocument?path=%2FBil...

I worked at 15 too, and I had to obtain some kind of work permit. It was pretty common throughout the country even back in the 80s/90s. I don’t remember anyone making a big deal about this being “registering with the state” back then and it was pretty trivial.

This reminded me of a batch of widely-reported stories from way back in… December, where Hundai/Kia suppliers in Alabama were found to be employing under-16 year olds throughout their parts businesses [1]. It was a big deal, and not some minor issue with kids getting part-time jobs at gas stations. I cannot help but wonder if this change in Arkansas is designed to get ahead of similar issues, which sure would be a lot more sinister.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-immi...

I guess I don't really have a problem with it on principle, it's just foreign to me as a concept. In a small, high trust area where everyone knows each other is something like registering with the state really necessary? Probably not. If you're a large company employing people to do hard, manual labor? Yeah seems like you should be subject to increased scrutiny.

>I cannot help but wonder if this change in Arkansas is designed to get ahead of similar issues, which sure would be a lot more sinister.

Is there any evidence that something like what the Reuters investigation uncovered is going on in Arkansas? In any case, federal child labor laws exist.

Two pieces of context I got from other news stories: (1) “Sanders' signing of the bill comes after a major US food sanitation company that operated facilities in eight states, including Arkansas, recently paid a $1.5 million civil penalty for employing minors in hazardous conditions. Packers Sanitation Services illegally employed at least 102 children between the ages of 13 and 17 in jobs that required them to use toxic chemicals and clean razor-sharp saws.“ and (2) this is the result of a major Federal crackdown on child labor announced a month ago. There are also similar bills advancing in other states that seem problematic to me: “a bill advancing in Iowa would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and would shield businesses from civil liability if a youth worker is sickened, injured or killed on the job.”

I suppose there’s a bright-eyed idealistic view that these state legislatures just happened to make this change now, because they suddenly want to make it easier for kids to get part-time jobs at the ice cream parlor (despite the fact that work permits have existed for many years.) A more cynical view is that we’re in a labor crunch and major industrial processors are desperate for (mostly migrant) workers, so state politicians are rolling back child-labor protections to oblige them and reduce their liability. Nothing about Arkansas politics has ever inclined me to the idealist view.

And still my brother says "It's the leftists who are radical and they are doing just as bad things as Republicans".

Why are they so pleased with this? Why does any republican view this as an improvement in the world?

That's just what reactionaries are about, reacting not planning ahead

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary

I had a summer job years ago when I was in high school and had to get a work permit… this sounds like that

https://archive.is/Yf9Ak

Many children are unsuited to full high-school education. It would be better for everyone to send them into the workplace.

We can save money on educating the "unsuited" (which will be determined entirely by family income, as is appropriate), depress wages for everyone, AND give kids something to do while their parents are at work. It also will instill important values of Hard Work, Education is Bad, and Submit to Capital. There are really no downsides!

This is possibly the most "hacker news tech bro libertarian" comment I have ever seen. Children aren't doing well in school; rather than fix the school, just condemn them to a life of dangerous manual labor!

This is pretty much what Japan does.

"We must protect the children!"

Now they are free to work jobs and devalue minimum wage labor by working at sub minimum wage prices!

And we've protected the meat packing industry from the potential fallout of children being killed on the job!

Because we care about the children!

We must protect the children! Think of the children! Their tiny little hands are perfect for degunking the chicken nugget processors!

Thank God they won't be exposed to the leftist woke horrors of not having to work until they are adults or knowing the difference between good touch and bad touch!

> Now they are free to work jobs and devalue minimum wage labor by working at sub minimum wage prices!

Not trying to defend this bill, and neither do I have a dog in this fight (I live in Seattle), but this is a disingenuous take that is also very misleading.

I am not talking about the second half, I am talking about "now they [teenagers] are free to work jobs" specifically. The reason it is misleading is because teenagers in Arkansas are already free to work jobs. The only difference between now and the timeline where this bill ended up passing is that currently teenagers need to get a work permit before starting work (and if the bill passes, they won't need to).

If the bill was actually decreasing the minimum work age, that would have been a different story, and I would have been opposed to it. But this is just removing a barrier.

Ironically, even though it is not a very similar situation at all, it reminds me of voter id requirement discussions. With the irony being that the dem/rep alignment for that one seems to be flipped (with democrats being against voter id requirements for voting, and republicans being for it), compared to equivalent stances for the Arkansas bill (with democrats being against the law removing the work permit requirement, and republican being in favor of the permit requirement removal).

Many places are already advertising for 14-15 year olds and offering them less than the usual minimum wage for sub-20 year olds (because legally they can do that) and since families need money some of them are taking them up on it.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/32-minimum-wage...

I feel it's a terrible practice and exploiting a legal loophole.

Also, specifically for meat packing plants, it is explicitly illegal for under 18-year-olds to operate the machinery:

https://www.employmentlawhandbook.com/employment-and-labor-l...

However, they can clean the machinery and thanks to the protections this bill is offering if the random child gets ground into hamburger the plant won't have to pay the family much of anything.

I can't think of this as anything but a travesty, doing harmful things to our fellow Americans just to hurt them, so forgive me if my responses sound unwell.

This allows as young as 12 year olds work

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