Its interesting that the takeaway here is that teenagers are too fragile to do a job and must forego learning a new skill. Is the idea really that it's okay to die on the job as long as you are 18 or older?

Roofing companies shouldn't have anyone falling off the roof, there are OSHA regulations for a reason. 16 year olds being bad drivers has nothing to do with their employmwnt status. Using trenchers is dangerous no matter who you are, that isn't age related and if we are collectively concerned with how much damage they can do we should not use the machines.

Protecting and teaching kids is totally reasonable, but how far down the path of trapping them in a bubble do we really want to go?

As a global society we've generally agreed that if you are under the age of 18 you are not grown enough to make decisions that could put yourself or society at risk.

- You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.

- You cannot vote in elections.

- You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)

So the takeaway is that yes, teenagers are too fragile and don't have the risk assessment capacity to work some of these dangerous jobs.

Yes, we have OSHA and other safety regulations. Still the jobs are dangerous. Adults are more likely to call this out or recognize when these regulations are being disregarded, but a 14 year old might not realize that what they are doing is more dangerous than it should be.

> You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.

> You cannot vote in elections.

These two are both linked. In the US, military enrollment age was 20-45 (The Enrollment Act). Around the two world wars it was lowered to 18, primarily because they didn't have enough troops and most kids graduated high school at 18.

The 26th amendment set the voting age to 18 because that's what the draft age was already set to.

Neither had anything directly to do with developmental differences by age. The first followed social norms for schooling age and the second just followed along.

> You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)

There are many studies showing the risks of consuming these chemicals are much higher for people under the age of around 20. I don't know if those data were known before age limits were set, but there is a good reason to keep it today that has nothing to do with teenagers' ability to make decisions. Alternatively, I'd be just as happy seeing these also removed and us better teaching kids what the risks are so they can make their own decisions.

You can sign up for the military in the USA at 17 with parental permission; you can't be sent overseas until you're 19 in that case (IIRC).

> As a global society we've generally agreed that if you are under the age of 18 you are not grown enough to make decisions that could put yourself or society at risk.

What "global society" is this? Most of the world by numbers doesn't seem to have signed on to this agreement. Well-off countries may have made child labor largely illegal, though some of it persists inside their borders, but this just moves most of it offshore. Not that the places where it lands didn't have child labor before, but the scale of their operations grow with exports and industrialization.

Car dependent suburbs where children spend 18 years at home, with no sidewalks to walk on and nowhere to walk to, and no public transport, only the schoolbus or their parents' car: fine.

Children banned from working in sawmills: "how far down the path of trapping them in an overprotective bubble do we really want to go?!".

We could do a lot to let children be more independent, interact more with the world, be able to walk or ride to school or to the shops or to friends' houses or to parks or to get jobs in various places to avoid bubbling them, first. The kind of company wanting to hire a 16 year old for its sawmill seems far more likely to be doing it for cheap labour than for the child's good.

Lots of kids die at school too.

Yes and for this exact reason, many argue for better gun safety regulations. I grew up before mass shootings became a daily occurrence (this is not hyperbole), but I still had at least one classmate in Junior High and HS die every year from gun related deaths. Either being shot and killed intentionally by a friend's parent or from suicide using their parent's gun.

We’re up to three terribly sad anecdotes. Even if we multiply that by a hundred to account for the shadow deaths you mention, we’re still nowhere near a mass epidemic in a country of over 300 million.

The claim, though, was that rolling back labour law has led to the situation deteriorating, so we would need statistics from today, to compare with statistics from the 1970s, 1950s, etc. Are children dying at work at a higher rate today than they did in 1950? 1970?

We don't need death statistics to know that children working with poverty wages to make rich people richer is bad.

Your argument is that unless we have thousands dying, it's fine?

I don't understand why people are even arguing this. Children working is never going to make society better. It might make more money for a few, but that's about it.

I honestly can't believe I'm seeing people arguing against child labor laws. I thought this was the kind of thing that you'd read in books and think "those were crazy times" but never witness it, yet here we are.

Do you think work experience itself has any benefit to young people?

Do you think there's any benefit from the population of "young people with experience" being 16 instead of 20?

Do you think it outweighs those involved having a higher risk of maiming for lower compensation?

No. It's pretty much always a result of another system failing. We're not talking about a kid helping out in their mom and pop's shop. We're talking about kids working in meat plants because it's cheap labor.

If they have to work to help out with money, then our system has failed in providing an adequate environment for a kid to grow up.

If a child wants to learn a craft or pick up specific skills, that should not be done in a work environment that can put them in danger. Again, that's another failure of the system.

Most of us already have to basically work until death since they can't ever properly retire, so I see zero benefits in forcing humans that are still developing into that reality even sooner.

>> I honestly can't believe I'm seeing people arguing against child labor laws.

And where are you seeing these people, exactly?

My argument is that the claim “winding back labour law has caused a rise in workplace deaths involving children in sawmills” is unsupported by any statistical evidence, and very likely false. There are no statistics that support this claim.

False assertions are no way to debate about policy, provided we want good policy that is actually effective at keeping people safe. Such policy must be evidence based, and not vibes and feels based.

You’re battling a strawman of your own creation.

Okay, let's assume then all this thread is about being pedantic, and not because you're actually against child labor laws. My bad.

Still not sure how sending kids to work will increase their safety. You've mentioned evidence but I've never seen any evidence that supports it increases their safety. We've seen evidence it can decrease their safety since some are killed/injured, even if you dismissed it as not statistically relevant.

So in the end, this goes both ways: we don't have evidence that allowing kids to work improves their lives or society, making it a bad policy.

My guess these policies were based on greed, not "vibes". Clearly better, right?

I’m not saying sending kids to work will increase their safety, and - again - I’m honestly not sure how you’re getting that from what I’ve said. I would respectfully suggest reading the posts of others in good faith.

I’m saying there exists no evidence that the number of children dying in sawmills has dramatically increased as a result of changing labour laws. This is important, not pedantic, because it goes to the heart of the claim that modern labour law has changed in a way that harms children. If the data isn’t there, this claim is false. If this claim is false, we shouldn’t be rushing to revise labour law on the basis of it.

One person can claim that modern labour law kills children, another can claim it protects children. Until some statistics come in, all of this is noise.

Labour law exists to protect workers. It is too important to get wrong, such as by rushing into ill considered changes on the basis of vibes or feels. There may well be other reasons to adjust labour law - based on facts and hard evidence that it’s not working in some way.

I don’t understand why you seem to take such umbrage at the view that important safety laws should be made on the basis of actual data, so we can ensure they’re effective.

- Washington: "Washington’s youth employment laws identify prohibited duties for workers under 18 years old. Rotschy had a student learner exemption permitting minors to do some work that is otherwise prohibited, but use of the walk-behind trencher was not part of the exemption."

-Alabama: "The department’s Wage and Hour Division found Apex Roofing illegally employed the teen in violation of a Fair Labor Standards Act child labor hazardous occupation order that prohibits workers under the age of 18 from engaging in dangerous jobs designated by the act, including roofing or construction operations."

-Iowa : I would like to see data that shows the crash rate for teens going to/from work vs general teen driving.

In half of the examples, the company was having the worker do prohibited work. If the company is breaking the law, how does the fact that labor laws were changed affect that?

Children are easier to convince or coerce to do work that is prohibited.

I'm not sure your intentions with trying desperately to convince yourself that it's safe and reasonable to have children work dangerous jobs.

14 year olds can work all sorts of jobs already, they can make money and learn skills.

There is obviously a reason these laws were passed. So the evidence you are so sure does not exist has been around for a century. These laws weren't vibe based.