https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-poultry-factory-child-worker-deaths_n_64b7ecbce4b0ad7b75f67af7
A 16-year-old boy’s death in Mississippi comes weeks after two other minors recently died on the job in Missouri and Wisconsin.
Who in their right fucking mind thinks letting teenagers work at landfills, meat processing plants, and logging companies is a good idea?! I think the record clearly shows that teenagers don’t always make the best damn decisions. Jesus wept this shit is insanity.
Party of family values…. They’re going to extract every last drop of value from them kids.
Well it's their fault they weren't born rich brought to you by the party of family values, if your family cared they'd have made more money before you were born.
Who in their right fucking mind thinks letting teenagers work at landfills, meat processing plants, and logging companies is a good idea?!
Well when COVID killed off a bunch of your workforce because you pretended it didn't exist and you don't know how many because you refused to keep accurate counts, and a bunch more retired because they figured they were close enough and COVID gave them an excuse, and all the undocumented immigrants are leaving because you're passing laws targeting them and to them it's not worth the pittance you've been gleefully paying them under the table- well, you've got to get more slaves from somewhere, right?
The same kind of people who, in Florida, are going to teach kids that slavery "taught black people valuable life skills."
Remember kids, if your arm gets ripped off by a meat grinder, that's not a horrific and totally preventable accident. No, it's a "life skill" you've just learned! "Getting your arm ripped off is painful." If we don't have kids shoving their hands into meat grinders, how are they going to learn these life lessons?
And generally the pay is fuckin' horseshit. Can barely pay rent at those payrates, let alone groceries for your family.
Which is why they want kids to do the work, kids will work for less money.
Which means adults that would be doing that job also get paid less because there's more competition for those spots.
Remove child labor and the rich owners might be slightly less rich. Which republicans vehemently disagree with.
Because kids still live at home, the company is exploiting the family unit to save money employing the child.
But the funny economy line demands child sacrifice! You expect us to lost money? /S
Desperately poor people let it happen, and in this day and age have to let it happen. Meanwhile corpo fucking greed will take on anyone willing to work the shit wages those jobs offer.
The problem is that cheap labor in the form of teenagers drives down the pay for adults. These people think that letting their teens work may bring extra income for the household, but what's really happening is that they're now competing with their kids for the same jobs.
You are supposed to be 18 or older to work in meat processing. I saw an article that said false info may have been provided for that kid who came from a staffing agency (which may or may not be true). I don’t have an issue with a 16 year old working at a landfill or logging company. Both are probably good paying summer jobs and possibly where they would have ended up working after high school.
I do have a problem with unsafe working conditions, improper training, loose regulations, and lack of accountability. When money becomes more important than people bad things tend to happen to workers regardless of age.
Logging is actually a very unsafe and dangerous activity. Logging actually has a pretty high injury and fatality rate.
Landfills probably less so, but they really don't have very many jobs. You've got a couple of guys who maybe work the weigh stations doing paperwork, and then a few heavy equipment operators.
Really any job that includes operating heavy machinery with the potential to kill people really shouldn't be done by 16-year-olds.
I lived in an area that had a huge logging industry that eventually became one dude, one machine, and truck that comes and hauls them off to the port. But I was there just after the full mechanization and automation of the industry. So the old timers were still around.
And a lot of those dudes were named things like "three fingered Jack" and "one armed Rick" and "Lefty" ... all from industrial logging accidents for a village of like 500 people.
operating heavy machinery with the potential to kill people really shouldn’t be done by 16-year-olds.
14 year olds can get drivers licenses in South Dakota (source, which of course requires either scripting to view the text or opening the page source).
Holy shit... my daughter is 13 and I wouldn't want her behind a steering wheel. Not at her maturity level. But then I also think the drinking age should be 16 and the driving age 18 because a lot of young people get in car crashes due to not understanding what alcohol does to them.
I could too as a farm boy in oregon back in the 90s.
Its a far cry from operating a log truck or servicing sawmill machinery. Which requires years of experience.
I kinda agree with your last statement. Maybe add that certain jobs must not be performed by minors. Jayxson shouldn't be anywhere near dangerous machinery and Abbreeyeghl can't be near the incinerator.
I'm making fun of the parents btw and not the kids.
it is actually a much longer tradition to have child labor then not. But yeah it is horrible and man people just don't see it
They have no shame. They will bow with the spotlight and smile while you seethe with rage.
They. Don't. Fucking. Care.
Well we obviously don't care about kids getting shot up in schools, so why the hell would we care about them getting killed on the job?
The people pushing child labor: "Kids getting killed in schools is a tragedy. They should be getting killed in manufacturing plants so we can at least extract some usefulness out of them before we dump their tiny corpses on the sidewalk!"
Yeah, how is the Orphan Crushing Machine supposed to run if the children don't deliver themselves for crushing?
Children getting killed at school is getting killed on the job. School (and learning) is their job.
They wanted to keep the kids alive so they could kill them. Must be more satisfying for them I guess.
Every time I think that the US is a civilized "first world" country, they find a way to remind me of the reality. It really is shocking how backwards some things are in certain states.
Hope you get a federal law to prevent similar accidents in the future...
First world = aligned with Western forces after WWII
Second world = aligned with Russia
Third world = everyone else
That was the original meaning, yes, but now they're used to refer to a country's stage of development.
They're not "first world" country, if you compare them to other "third world" countries, you'll notice only one difference - US is rich and that's it. Everything else they're just 3rd world country.
Well yes and no. In some sense US is very backwards, in others it's ahead of everyone else. It's a big country so lots of different things fit there.
The tech industry for example. It is easily the biggest, most varied and in many cases the most innovative (due to educated people and resources) in the world. This benefits the economy and the military for example.
You can complete a college without even studying if you're good at football, I wouldn't really call it ahead. And while your prestigious universities are great, it's the same issue as with healthcare - it's probably the best in the world, but it's only for the rich (or you can get into a huge debt).
Neither of that do I consider as being ahead.
Child labor has always been legal and widely used in the US agriculture. In fact American agriculture it's pretty much dependent on farmers using their large families as free labor.
They're trying to expand that to other industries but of course it doesn't work so well without the equivalent of the farmer argument.
But if you're upset because of the child labor or human rights themselves then that ship has long sailed.
In fact American agriculture it’s pretty much dependent on farmers using their large families as free labor.
That was always the excuse, but there's already exceptions for a family owned business regardless of industry.
I grew up on a tobacco farm, and most of my uncle's had them too. So me and all my cousins worked in them pretty much since we could walk. It wasn't that bad because it was a family thing.
We could have done that legally without the agriculture exception though. Especially since it was family we never got paid.
What the agriculture exception did mean tho was other kids were actual employees on someone else's farm or chicken/turkey processing plant. And that's a whole nother story especially considering the type of person to hire a literal child to slaughter birds for 8 hours at a time with a 100 other employees in shitty conditions just doesn't give a fuck about any of the employees.
They just want an employee they can pay less and won't stand up for themselves
Yes I know that very well. In fact I took part in creating a exhibition about American Child laborers in the turn of the 20th century. It's just that news like this remind you how backwards the world's greatest superpower can be...
Here in New York most of the labor on big farms get done by migrants. The Mexicans know more about cows than the locals. Tho laws for maximum hours on farms is being reduced gradually from 60 to eventually 40 before you start to get overtime. So the agricultural industry here is making big moves to automation.
This is what libertarian politics enables. If they get their way, they'll all be snorting coke off the back of their 13-year-old wives while letting their 10-year-old children do all their work for them.
Not gonna lie, I was like "well at least they're having fun" until getting to where they were snorting their coke lol. That said, when I chuckled at orphan crushing machine memes, I didn't expect them to gradually materialize in the waking world.
Yeah and none of us actually expected Idiocracy to become reality either, yet here we are.
I mean, at least President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho actually listened to people smarter than him in an attempt to fix the issues plaguing the country that he governed, even when it went against enormous corporate interests. So, arguably Idiocracy is actually a step up from where we're at.
To be fair, he only enlisted help from outsiders when it was apparent Brawndo was not, in fact, what plants craved.
This is what sickens me about America.
This country knows full well, what the right solutions are. We prop them on it's table every damn day. What does America do? Always going the opposite direction.
We worried about AI taking over jobs. It's happened and continues to happen, so we propped up UBI. America? "Naw, nah...no, you don't need that! Here, little Jack over there? Your boy right? Why, he's got too much time on his hands and plays too much video games. Now he needs to have a job. You'll let him get a job, won't you? If we lighten child labor laws some."
Fucking sickening, this country.
This country knows full well
This is the paradox. Are you sure this country knows? Why is the overwhelming majority in favor of capitalistic approaches which lead us exactly here? I don't think the country does know. Not really.
Who exactly is the country? The people who live here or the few at the top making the decisions? Because the people who live here know the answer the people making the decisions do t or at least predentend they don't
It seems strange to me that the framing of this is all about child labor laws--no one should have died working at any of these jobs, regardless of age--and OSHA is investigating all three incidents
They are framing it about child labor because a child died.
Who/What agency is investigating the death is not relevant to the fact that a child died while working in an industrial setting.
They are framing it the way they are because they do not think that children, or teens, should be legally able to work in these kinds of settings.
AND 2 other people have been killed at that same damn plant since 2020! How is OSHA not up their ass before this even happened.
How is OSHA not up their ass before this even happened.
They're wildly underfunded and understaffed.
And when they DO actually try to enforce, there's generally pressure from the top to "go light" and give the company a chance to amend their procedure (at least until after the next inspection) rather than charging them with manslaughter or whatever.
Part of the reason it that they died is probably related to being young, dumb and inexperienced.
The article points out:
The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.
Adults tend to be less reckless around dangerous equipment, yet companies are increasingly breaking the law hiring underage workers leading to these types of accidents. The article highlights the trend of these inexperienced teenagers being hired to work jobs that have danger closer than they expect, loosening child labour laws a factor among that.
Everyone who works in any kind of hazardous environment should watch this. Don't shake hands with danger folks. You have the right to refuse to do something you feel unsafe doing. Your life and limb are not worth it. Take your safety protocols seriously and don't let stupid people teach you to be complacent. Call out others. Turn those assholes in to OSHA, underfunded as they are.
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Thank you for sharing. Unfortunately, a child's prefrontal cortex (the rational, decision-making center of the brain) isn't fully developed until around age 25. Therefore, they physically lack the ability to fully comprehend the consequences of their actions — hence labor laws. Again, I appreciate you sharing this information; however, it works counter to the science and may perpetuate a potentially dangerous culture of "why didn't they just call OSHA" instead of a "why are they hiring children."
I entirely agree with you, but a part of safety culture is to protect yourself and others. To be clear, no child should ever be hired or near these kinds of environments. Child labor, period, is a travesty and doubly so in an industrial or hazardous environment. These environments are barely suitable for adults, especially in the protein industry. If you are working in a place like this where children are hired, don't be a bystander and let it happen. Speak up and hang these assholes out to dry. Complacency and indifference needs to stop, naive a goal as it is.
Based on the teams I have worked with in the past, people in their twenties are definitely just as bad as teenagers. Even people who are far old enough to know better still play stupid games and win stupid prizes.
More safety PSA:
The one thing I at least try and make sure those under and around me understand is they don't have to say yes. It doesn't even occur to them that they can refuse. Workers are told to shut up and take it enough at it is, no matter the job. Workers are told to work 12-16 hour shifts and be glad they have a job at all. We live in a shitty world and if this comment prevents even one person getting hurt, no matter their age, that is enough for me.
Final point is there are plenty of tasks that can be done with appropriate safety measures, but if you are still not comfortable, just don't do it. Nobody can force you to get in a lift or climb that high ladder. Can you potentially lose your job? Maybe, but better than you getting hurt or hurting someone else.
I work for a woke-as-fuck sustainable packaging company, and it's ridiculous to me how some manufacturers work.
It is totally possible to make large profits and not put people at undue risk. I have no pity for companies that don't have even that basic respect for their employees.
I work at the corporate headquarters of an industrial contract service company. We have some plants that have been accident-free for close to a decade and others that can't make it 30 days. It's absolutely jarring!
That's the nice part about my job at the corporate office. I build reports and dashboards to help bring attention to problems site level management raises to the upper levels of management allowing actual action to occur. Just a couple of days ago I built a report to help bring attention to safety issues that the plant operator is dragging their feet about fixing so that upper management can apply the kind of pressure that plant-level folks in our company can't.
But mostly my job is nice because I've got a super cushy job as far as local tech work goes
Red states have been using chopping education as a budget fixer for decades. These people are never taught, period.
They now have people stupid enough to want a dictatorship AND child slavery back on the menu.
I don't even think they're doing it to fix the budget, that's just the only palatable way they could think to present cutting education to the masses. The real reason is your second paragraph
For the dam time the gop does not care about protecting kids. It has never been about the kids it has always and will always be about hating the lgbtq community and non-whites.
For the last dam time part 2 electric boogaloo there is no shortage of people wanting to work. There is a shortage of pay! You pay people a real living wage and healthcare and you will have tons of people will be lining up to work.
And yet somehow corporations and their lapdogs (both the GOP and democrats) are making more money than ever. I'm still dumbfounded by it, i don't think it'll ever make sense.
Also, they hate women and the plebs trying to attain higher education just as much as the LGBTQ+ and POC communities, as evidenced by the lovely recent SC(R)OTU(M)S rulings.
A lot of republicans consider dying in a farm accident at the age of 14 to be a rite of passage into adulthood.
Look, we know that people die in industrial accidents. Much more people die in them than these 3 every year. But not letting children work is kind of when Nazis segregated the Jews and made them poor. Maybe if we had industrial accident prevention in our schools this wouldn't happen.
This is what degeneracy looks like.
Geriatric cucks permitting kids working for the holy profit... FEMA camps staffed by Obama death panels...
I'm assuming this is what they are talking about... https://www.politifact.com/article/2009/dec/18/politifact-lie-year-death-panels/
Great article.
I always wonder where these old, repeated lies come from. It's nice to have the source, and why it was always false, broken down.
They said:
This is what degeneracy looks like.
Geriatric cucks permitting kids working for the holy profit... FEMA camps staffed by Obama death panels...
You're being downvoted for being snarky, but it's actually kinda handy after their comment was removed. Just being able to marvel at the strangeness that once existed.
Health insurance companies are the death panels.
I have heard from libertarians and conservatives since the 80's about FEMA camps. Got some vhs tapes in my attic from the mid 80's detailing the insanity. These people are the terrorists
Yeah, it’s weird how Obama was trying to end the insurance death panel by providing a public alternative and they immediately accused him of providing a death panel. It’s like every accusation is an admission with them.
