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US company agrees to fine for hiring children to clean slaughterhouses (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

The work included sanitizing dangerous equipment like head splitters, jaw pullers and meat bandsaws in hazardous conditions where animals are killed and rendered.

One 14-year-old was severely injured while cleaning the drumstick packing line belt at the plant in Virginia, the investigation alleged.

This is not just bad hours, it is dangerous working conditions. Putting a group that is characterized as having extremely poor risk assessment skills , struggle to even really understand consequences of actions, and making them work with heavy machinery that is extremely dangerous to life and limb. THAT is egregious neglect of child labor laws.

The labor department has called attention to a growing list of child labor violations across the country, including the fatal mangling of a 16-year-old working at a Mississippi poultry plant, the death of a 16-year-old after an accident at a sawmill in Wisconsin, and last year’s report of more than 100 children illegally employed by Packers Sanitation Services Inc, or PSSI, across 13 meatpacking plants. PSSI paid over $1.5m in civil penalties.

The labor department’s latest statistics indicate the number of children being employed illegally in the US has increased 88% since 2019.

Wtf sorry what????? This is a growing problem in America HOW, WHY???

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Wtf sorry what??? This is a growing problem in America HOW, WHY???

Republicans will always undermine regulations, including regulations on child labor.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/child-labor-is-on-the-rise

In Ohio, where Republican legislators are also proposing weaker laws, a spokesman for the Ohio Restaurant Association testified that extending work hours for minors would cut down on their screen time. (The lawmakers offered a concurrent resolution urging Congress to lower federal child-labor standards to conform with Ohio’s proposed rules.) Arkansas’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, recently signed a law ending a requirement that fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds obtain a parent’s consent and a state permit before starting work. Linking the bill, strangely, to parental rights, the governor’s office called the permit “an arbitrary burden on parents.”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Ooooh wow thank you for that. An arbitrary burden on parents, that's rich.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

They don't like immigrants and US citizens are starting to demand higher wages.

Gotta find new workers to exploit to keep wages low.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Imagine treating your children like this and then saying shit like “America is the greatest country in the world”. Between this and school shooting responses proves that America doesn’t give a fuck about its kids. Fucking mind boggling world we live in

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Oh don't worry, these are likely mostly migrant children, so those people believe America is great because of this.

Also, they were probably separated from their parents at the border and haven't seen them in years so I don't think they're saying that.

Ain't this country grand?