No rollbacks on child labor

  

(This column by Lida Shepherd was published today in the Charleston Gazette-Mail)

Welch, WV, September 1908 

A quick peak into the National Archives you can find photographs by Lewis Hine when he was hired by the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) in the early 1900s to take photos of children working.  Hine’s photos were a part of a national campaign at the time to advance laws regulating child labor, which eventually paved the way for labor laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act.  

Prior to FLSA, injuries and deaths of children were common.  Many of the children photographed by Hine were working to help support their families living in extreme poverty.  Some of these young kids in the photos worked in places like coal mines in Welch and the glass factory in Grafton.

A 1920 NCLC poster features Hine’s photos and reads: “Work that Deadens: These Children Are Working so that Their Employer May Make Money.” 

The famed labor rights attorney Clarence Darrow said, “History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history.”  To his point, the West Virginia legislature has been advancing House Bill 4005 which would weaken child labor laws that many fought so hard over a century ago to enact.   

HB 4005 would eliminate state rules that enumerate which jobs are too dangerous for minors.  Under current state law industries cannot employ children under 18 in jobs like ore reduction works, logging and saw milling occupations, occupations involving exposure to radioactive substances, power-driven hoisting apparatus occupations, and mining, to name a few.   The bill would also remove requirements for direct supervision when children work with hazardous machinery.

Proponents for legislation to roll back longstanding state-level child labor protections say that this is to better align with federal standards.   As the word “standards” implies, federal law under the Fair Labor Standards Act is the floor not the ceiling.  For example, federal child labor standards do not include time and hour restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, establish rest or meal break requirements, or require work permits for youth to be employed.

Proponents also try to paint this bill as expanding apprenticeship programs, however our state’s Youth Apprenticeship Programs already allow 16 and 17-year-olds to safely obtain on-the-job experience.  And while we are on the subject of apprenticeship programs, I have to say that using the apprenticeship program argument for HB 4005 is pretty rich.  

Many of those supporting this bill also pushed to repeal our state’s prevailing wage law in 2016.  Since then, according to a report by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, the number of active registered apprentices has fallen by 28 percent in West Virginia, relative to neighboring states with prevailing wage laws. 

So who are the proponents of HB 4005?  I’m really glad you asked.  HB 4005 and other bills like it are a part of a coordinated national effort led by billionaire-backed groups like the Foundation for Government Accountability, to undermine worker rights and weaken government's role of protecting public safety and the most vulnerable. 

Bills like HB 4005 are straight from the authoritarian playbook of Project 2025 where one of their policy objectives is to “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.”  In simple terms, changing “hazard-order regulations” means letting kids as young as 16 to work in hazardous jobs.  

Project 2025 cynically suggests, “Some young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs. Current rules forbid many young people from working in such jobs. This results in worker shortages in dangerous fields and often discourages otherwise interested young workers from trying the more dangerous job.”

The narrative suggesting that young people everywhere will now have the “opportunity” to gain important job experience could not be farther from the truth when you consider who is impacted by the deregulation of child labor.   Since rollbacks around the country, more and more kids are being mangled or killed.  A 16-year-old boy in Wisconsin died working in a sawmill after he became entangled in a machine, a teenage boy in Pennsylvania died after getting pulled into a woodchipper, and another teenage boy was maimed at a Perdue slaughterhouse in rural Virginia.   

These are a few tragic examples among many, and each one of them underscores the fact that the children most subject to dangerous conditions are not looking for “opportunity” but they are looking to merely survive.  Deregulating child labor laws allows industries unfettered access to a more exploitable workforce. 

According to the Economic Policy Institute, at least sixteen states have now introduced cookie cutter legislation nearly identical to HB 4005.  But take heart.  West Virginia lawmakers have the power to stand up to these efforts to allow corporations to profit on the backs of our kids, even in the most dangerous jobs.   They don’t have to put West Virginia on the race to the bottom where the laws privilege profit over protections for our kids and their families.   

They can be clear-eyed enough to see that HB 4005 is as the Economic Policy Institute says is part of “a massive and generational project to remake the economy into one that gives corporations license to extract exorbitant profits from increasingly unregulated and dangerous child labor.”

Lewis Hine wrote in 1908 about his experience taking photos of children working, "There is work that profits children, and there is work that brings profit only to employers.”

If our legislators truly prioritize the safety and well-being of our kids, they’ll find the political will to leave our child labor laws alone, and prevent history from repeating itself.

Bring back child labor?

I used to think that I should devote my few remaining days on this earth to the noble cause of changing West Virginia's state motto from "Mountaineers Are Always Free," which doesn't really fit anymore, to "You can't make this **** up."

I'm starting to think that may need to be done for the nation instead. We are, after all having pluribus troubles with our unum.

Here's one example, which is particularly ironic or sad for those familiar with labor history. From the earliest days of the republic, a major demand of working people and the labor movement has been for free public education. Another key demand from long ago was the abolition of child labor. So it's just peachy that the Trump administration's pick for education secretary is someone devoted to torpedoing public education though vouchers and privatization. AND she's served on the board of an organization that celebrates the virtue of child labor.

Here's another cheer for child labor from a similar think tank that talks about how exciting mining can be for kids.

The picture above comes from the 1907 Monongah mine disaster, one of many that occurred in West Virginia. The official death toll was over 360, but nobody knows for sure. In the absence of child labor laws, it was customary for some miners to bring their boys to work with them. We'll never know how many children died in the disaster.

I guess some people find that exciting.

In the spirit of fair play

I've spent a good bit of time here taking swipes at right wing Whackadoodleism. In an effort to transcend the bitter polarization of our time, the spirit of fair play prompts me to state for the record that Whackadoodleism is not the monopoly of any political tendency (although these days it seems to tilt more in one direction).

Here's one example of Whackadoodlery on the left that is pertinent to the sporadic series of posts here about human evolution and social life. The great biologist E. O. Wilson is widely admired today for his scientific work on topics ranging from ants to ecology to biophilia as well as his advocacy for dealing with climate change.

It wasn't always that way. In the mid 1970s, Wilson wrote a book titled Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which discussed genetically inherited behavior patterns of various animals. None of that was particularly controversial for people who were paying attention. But Wilson had the temerity to extend his analysis to humans and to suggest that we had some evolutionary baggage of our own.

Left wing ideologues somehow took this to mean that Wilson was suggesting that war, racism, imperialism, etc. were biologically inevitable. (He wasn't, by the way.) At a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, activists chanted "Racist Wilson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide" and poured ice water on his head as he prepared to give a speech.

(Genocide for writing a book? Really? And Sociobiology didn't discuss the issues of race.)

He gave the speech anyway.

For the record, I'm not endorsing all of his ideas on human evolution and our genetic legacy. Wilson himself has long accepted as valid some critiques of that formulation. But it there is a growing sense in the biological and social sciences that we are animals after all. Biology isn't destiny, but it is...well, biology.

(Plus, living around roosters has taught me a lot about human males.)

That doesn't spell the end of efforts to work for greater social justice, but it might be time to retire a cherished radical myth that human nature is a blank slate or some kind of silly putty that can be moulded into any shape we want.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Labor Day has come and gone, but labor woes are still with us.

WHAT HE SAID. This op-ed by a friend of mine suggests ways West Virginia can strengthen its unemployment insurance program.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS. Here is a review of several recent books on the politically pivotal decade of the 1970s.

LOOSE WITH THE TRUTH. Here's another look at misinformation on health care reform. We're probably going to see a lot more of that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The end of the world as we know it (revisited)

El Cabrero has always thought that there is a good kind of conservatism and a reactionary kind. The good kind respects traditions and has a cautious approach to change. The reactionary kind tends to view any kind of legislation or policy change that might benefit disadvantaged people as leading to the apocalypse.

The nice people at The New Republic have come up with some great (and bi-partisan) examples of the second variety.

Here are a few of my favorites:

ON WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE:

“Woman suffrage would give to the wives and daughters of the poor a new opportunity to gratify their envy and mistrust of the rich. Meantime these new voters would become either the purchased or cajoled victims of plausible political manipulators, or the intimidated and helpless voting vassals of imperious employers.”

—Former President Grover Cleveland, 1905

ON ABOLISHING CHILD LABOR:

“[T]he child will become a very dominant factor in the household and might refuse perhaps to do chores before six a.m. or after seven p.m. or to perform any labor.”

—Senator Weldon Heyburn (R-ID), in 1908

ON THE PERILS OF SOCIAL SECURITY:

“I fear it may end the progress of a great country and bring its people to the level of the average European. It will furnish delicious food and add great strength to the political demagogue. It will assist in driving worthy and courageous men from public life. It will discourage and defeat the American trait of thrift. It will go a long way toward destroying American initiative and courage.”

—Senator Daniel O. Hastings (R-DE), 1935

ON THE EVILS OF MINIMUM WAGE AND MANDATORY OVERTIME PAY:

“[The Act represents] a step in the direction of Communism, bolshevism, fascism, and Nazism.”

—The National Association of Manufacturers, 1938

ON DEMON MEDICARE:

“It is socialism. It moves the country in a direction which is not good for anyone, whether they be young or old. It charts a course from which there will be no turning back.”

—Senator Carl Curtis (R-NE), 1965

The list could go on and on, but you get the idea. Meanwhile, here's some other stuff to check out:

SPEAKING OF THE END OF THE WORLD, Coal Tattoo yesterday reported that a new study of the damaging effects of mountaintop removal mining is likely to get another coal industry hissy fit going. Here's more from Dot Earth and the Gazette.

BANK ON IT. Here's Krugman on financial reform.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. Here is a piece on some recent positive innovations that could make the future a little better.

IS IT RAINING IGUANAS IN FLORIDA? Not exactly, but almost. Apparently, when it gets cold, they kind of shut down and fall from trees, but are usually OK when they warm up.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED