It's appalling that this is even a question. Children don't need better terms for working at the abattoir, the garbage dump or the sawmill; they need not to be working in those places.
That it's still third world shit perpetuates our tolerance of it at all. Our manufacturing industries shouldn't br able to move factories offshore to developing countries where they can hire workers for pennies.
The need for capital to find ever cheaper labor to exploit, accelerated by Republicans. I was trying to avoid loaded terms like "civilized" and "third world", but it does not make the USA look good at all.
They should allow children to work to get money, if that is the only way to get money. Of course, it would be preferable that no one has to work to survive. Or do you think the government should provide free money only to children?
Before I left reddit I was shut down for expressing the option that children shouldnt even be laboring to sell cookies, popcorn, or candy bars. It's all exploitative. Some people think this is character building.
I've seen the opinion before, in community college. I was assigned to read something, and it laid out a damn good argument for why working a register never taught anyone "life skills."
That's not entirely accurate. My first customer service jobs in high school taught me invaluable lessons about how douchey people can be to a kid slinging popcorn at a movie theater. I learned a great deal about how to deal with assholes with an inflated sense of importance. Above all I learned that I would never be like those assholes.
These are skills that I still use in my job today.
With all due respect, fuck that. It would be one thing if they were forced to do that to support their families, but they're not. In 99% of cases they're doing it to support an activity they enjoy. For instance, the girl scouts of America is not a business and their activities are not free. Selling cookies is how they afford to do fun shit.
Do they really need to be selling junk to people to do fun shit? Can't the families and community support them without making them labor to sell some company's junk product for a pittance?
Can’t even get young people to vote, no chance in hell they would ever become organized enough to form a union. Besides, it shouldn’t fall on our young to protect themselves, that should be the role of leaders and we should apply immense pressure to make them do that.
They are prevented from voting due to age discrimination. There's nothing physical or mental preventing most young people from voting, only cultural and legal.
Of course under 18 can’t vote in the US, I’m just saying that even those over 18 (~25) who can, don’t. They have the means to influence change and they can’t be bothered to do so, therefore how can we expect even less mature youth to organize something as complex as unified labor?
🤦♂️ Any company found abusing children should be immediately shut down permanently. No fines. No discussions. No deals. No second chances. Just immediately put out of business, all assets seized and sold off with the money distributed to the out of work employees.
Punish the people in addition to the business. Anyone who knew, or would have any reason to know, the age of the child should be fined if they are given prohibited duties and jailed if any harm comes to the child while tasked with prohibited duties.
Nothing will happen if a business is put out of business, rich people will just scoop up the resources and continue on with a small cost of doing business. All corporate and business practices that harm people (employees or the public) need to have the chance of jail time for business leadership to discourage it in the future. It doesn't even need to be draconian, just consistently enforced at the individual level.