"[W]hether children should work more hours in dangerous jobs appears to be settling in as a partisan issue."
Writes Helaine Olen, in "Expanding child labor is exactly what America’s kids don’t need" (WaPo).
Republicans in statehouses nationwide are racing to make it easier for companies to hire youngsters.... In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has signed legislation doing away with regulations demanding 14- and 15-year-old teens receive a work permit before taking on paid employment. A bill in Ohio seeks to allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work until 9 p.m. during the school year, in defiance of federal law. In Minnesota, a Republican legislator introduced legislation to let the construction industry recruit 16- and 17-year-old workers. In Iowa, a bill in the state’s House of Representatives would make it easier to employ 14-year-olds in the meatpacking industry. Unfortunately, yes. A bill co-sponsored by Sens. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) and Angus King (I-Maine) and Maine House Democrats Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree would allow parents who own logging operations to employ their 16- and 17-year-old children to operate mechanized equipment — under supervision....
Let’s be clear: We’re not talking about kids babysitting, getting a summer job, or working at the mall for a few hours after school, all of which are perfectly legal. We’re talking about teenagers working long and late hours year-round in often dangerous occupations, endangering their health, rest, safety and future....
If there are concerns about a labor shortage, expand the number of legal immigrants, help teens get work permits to do safe after-school jobs — or simply raise wages. What doesn’t make sense is for one party to be more concerned about the imaginary threat of drag queen story hours than about jobs for children that could cause irreversible harm to their life prospects.
Oh! I was not expecting drag queens to make a late-breaking appearance in this column. There's always some issue that's more important than some other issue and you can always call out your antagonists with a charge that they're more interested in one thing than another. And we can argue forever about where all the various threats appear on the continuum of real to imaginary.
What's at issue here is teenagers working — 14 to 17 year olds. How much do we want to protect them from work? We're not talking about the government requiring them to work. The government does require them to attend school — at least until they reach the "dropout age." But what jobs are available to them if they choose to work? Why does this break down into a partisan issue? The WaPo columnist would have us believe it's that old problem of Republicans lacking what Democrats brim with: empathy.
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