Really can't say much more than W..T..F.. A 12 year old, in a factory, working, I mean, what year is it? I read the article thinking it would be a HS drop out that lied about their age and they...
Really can't say much more than W..T..F.. A 12 year old, in a factory, working, I mean, what year is it? I read the article thinking it would be a HS drop out that lied about their age and they were 17 or something like that. Nope, 12, 13 and 15.
Deep South is really trying it's best to pretend it's the 19th century. So many people struggling to find work and this "staffing agency" decided to throw middle schoolers into a factory for 60...
Deep South is really trying it's best to pretend it's the 19th century. So many people struggling to find work and this "staffing agency" decided to throw middle schoolers into a factory for 60 hours/week. Absurd.
There's been a concerted push by republicans to roll back labor protections for minors, across 16 states. It's simply a matter of maximizing exploitation and driving wages as low as possible.
There's been a concerted push by republicans to roll back labor protections for minors, across 16 states. It's simply a matter of maximizing exploitation and driving wages as low as possible.
While there is obviously a lot of room for blame on Hyundai here due to the obvious lack background checks done, and the implication that they may have even turned a blind eye initially, I find...
A Reuters investigation revealed the widespread and illegal employment of migrant children in Alabama factories
While there is obviously a lot of room for blame on Hyundai here due to the obvious lack background checks done, and the implication that they may have even turned a blind eye initially, I find the broader implications much more upsetting.
This has been a developing story for a couple years now, and I have seen numerous articles placing blame on Hyundai (not that they don’t deserve it) but I have yet to see an article put pressure on Alabama itself.
Laws are only as good as their enforcement. That means there needs to be real penalties for serious violations, and potential offenders need to feel like they have a real chance of being caught. Which in turn means, you have to actually catch businesses and hold them to the law. That all these child labor violations happened in one state is absolutely not a coincidence. I believe the state was complicit in this to some degree, and knew it was going on.
I’d bet money there was some poor state worker out there who knew exactly what was going on and didn’t agree with it, and was haunted by the fact they couldn’t do anything about it. What could have led to that is pure speculation, but it’s not hard to imagine.
Alabama is a fairly regressive state with serious brain drain, lots of small isolated towns and an overall poor state budget that relies on federal revenue to keep it afloat. They may have hamstrung their own regulatory efforts purposefully in order to encourage more business to invest in the state. They may not have wanted to hurt small businesses already helping prop up the economy of poor isolated towns. They may have simply crippled whatever task force would normally be in charge of child labor violations because it wouldn’t fit in the budget.
Whatever actually happened, I do not believe this just was just some big accident that came out of nowhere, and I feel that someone should be held responsible for allowing this to happen.
It is also very possible that the opposite is true. There is a pretty significant portion of the US population that genuinely believe that it would be better for some kids to begin working early...
I’d bet money there was some poor state worker out there who knew exactly what was going on and didn’t agree with it
It is also very possible that the opposite is true. There is a pretty significant portion of the US population that genuinely believe that it would be better for some kids to begin working early and the combination of education and child labor laws hinder progress.
This thought process is lampooned by Parks and Rec with Ron Swanson bragging that he was supervisor of a production line at 15, but there are very real people that idealize this concept. I have talked to some people that think kids could become experts in their business and work their way up the ladder early and understand the business well enough to innovate somehow by the time other kids are getting out of school. Others just don't think that the government should be setting rules on how to parent.
It is extremely possible that there was a state employee that knew about this and hid it or was otherwise just indifferent to it.
Really can't say much more than W..T..F.. A 12 year old, in a factory, working, I mean, what year is it? I read the article thinking it would be a HS drop out that lied about their age and they were 17 or something like that. Nope, 12, 13 and 15.
Deep South is really trying it's best to pretend it's the 19th century. So many people struggling to find work and this "staffing agency" decided to throw middle schoolers into a factory for 60 hours/week. Absurd.
There's been a concerted push by republicans to roll back labor protections for minors, across 16 states. It's simply a matter of maximizing exploitation and driving wages as low as possible.
While there is obviously a lot of room for blame on Hyundai here due to the obvious lack background checks done, and the implication that they may have even turned a blind eye initially, I find the broader implications much more upsetting.
This has been a developing story for a couple years now, and I have seen numerous articles placing blame on Hyundai (not that they don’t deserve it) but I have yet to see an article put pressure on Alabama itself.
Laws are only as good as their enforcement. That means there needs to be real penalties for serious violations, and potential offenders need to feel like they have a real chance of being caught. Which in turn means, you have to actually catch businesses and hold them to the law. That all these child labor violations happened in one state is absolutely not a coincidence. I believe the state was complicit in this to some degree, and knew it was going on.
I’d bet money there was some poor state worker out there who knew exactly what was going on and didn’t agree with it, and was haunted by the fact they couldn’t do anything about it. What could have led to that is pure speculation, but it’s not hard to imagine.
Alabama is a fairly regressive state with serious brain drain, lots of small isolated towns and an overall poor state budget that relies on federal revenue to keep it afloat. They may have hamstrung their own regulatory efforts purposefully in order to encourage more business to invest in the state. They may not have wanted to hurt small businesses already helping prop up the economy of poor isolated towns. They may have simply crippled whatever task force would normally be in charge of child labor violations because it wouldn’t fit in the budget.
Whatever actually happened, I do not believe this just was just some big accident that came out of nowhere, and I feel that someone should be held responsible for allowing this to happen.
It is also very possible that the opposite is true. There is a pretty significant portion of the US population that genuinely believe that it would be better for some kids to begin working early and the combination of education and child labor laws hinder progress.
This thought process is lampooned by Parks and Rec with Ron Swanson bragging that he was supervisor of a production line at 15, but there are very real people that idealize this concept. I have talked to some people that think kids could become experts in their business and work their way up the ladder early and understand the business well enough to innovate somehow by the time other kids are getting out of school. Others just don't think that the government should be setting rules on how to parent.
It is extremely possible that there was a state employee that knew about this and hid it or was otherwise just indifferent to it.