signalmankenneth
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“It’s a disgrace,” former President Donald Trump said, “that child labor violations have more than doubled since 2021.
When I was president, violations averaged 2,594 per year. Under Biden, they average 4,162 per year. What sort of country allows this to happen? We’re talking about children!”
The foregoing is made up. Trump never spoke these words and probably never will. That isn’t because the ever-worsening epidemic of child labor violations is what the forty-fifth president likes to call fake news. It’s all too real.
Rather, it’s because, as I’ve noted before, the GOP has positioned itself bizarrely as the party of child labor.
Labor Department statistics released last week show that federal fines for violating child labor laws have zoomed upward from $3,579,571 during Trump’s last year in office to more than $8 million in the fiscal year that ended September 30. New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier, who in 2019 won a Pulitzer for Pro Publica writing about the teenage gang MS-13, deserves a second one next year for her shocking Times stories (in collaboration with other Times reporters) documenting how a tight labor market and a rise in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border greatly increased the number of underage workers toiling away at dangerous jobs, working overnight shifts, and in many instances, doing both, in violation of federal law.
One particularly wrenching story Dreier published last month in the Times Magazine related the story of a 14-year-old Guatemalan immigrant named Marcos Cux who, working the night shift in a Purdue chicken slaughterhouse on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, got his left arm mutilated in machinery. The slaughterhouse notified Virginia’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as required by law, and the agency assigned the case to a compliance officer.* The compliance officer invited the slaughterhouse to do a self-inspection. The case was then closed with no citations.
Crucially, the slaughterhouse never told the compliance officer Cux’s age, and apparently, the compliance officer never asked. By the end of the story, Cux was back working there. Only after the Times story was published did the Labor Department initiate a real investigation.
The problem didn’t begin with Biden; the increase in violations started under Trump—who, not incidentally, tried unsuccessfully to kill a Labor Department regulation barring 16- and 17-year-olds from operating patient-lifting devices. Trump pondered other child labor rollbacks as well. That’s why Republicans aren’t making much of a stink.
For a decade after the Great Recession, funding was essentially flat for the Wage and Hour Division and the Office of the Solicitor, the two Labor Department agencies that enforce child labor laws. These departments have seen modest funding increases under Biden, but Congress cut about $100 million from their combined budget request in the fiscal year just ended.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/umm-gop-did-become-pro-100000003.html
When I was president, violations averaged 2,594 per year. Under Biden, they average 4,162 per year. What sort of country allows this to happen? We’re talking about children!”
The foregoing is made up. Trump never spoke these words and probably never will. That isn’t because the ever-worsening epidemic of child labor violations is what the forty-fifth president likes to call fake news. It’s all too real.
Rather, it’s because, as I’ve noted before, the GOP has positioned itself bizarrely as the party of child labor.
Labor Department statistics released last week show that federal fines for violating child labor laws have zoomed upward from $3,579,571 during Trump’s last year in office to more than $8 million in the fiscal year that ended September 30. New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier, who in 2019 won a Pulitzer for Pro Publica writing about the teenage gang MS-13, deserves a second one next year for her shocking Times stories (in collaboration with other Times reporters) documenting how a tight labor market and a rise in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border greatly increased the number of underage workers toiling away at dangerous jobs, working overnight shifts, and in many instances, doing both, in violation of federal law.
One particularly wrenching story Dreier published last month in the Times Magazine related the story of a 14-year-old Guatemalan immigrant named Marcos Cux who, working the night shift in a Purdue chicken slaughterhouse on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, got his left arm mutilated in machinery. The slaughterhouse notified Virginia’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as required by law, and the agency assigned the case to a compliance officer.* The compliance officer invited the slaughterhouse to do a self-inspection. The case was then closed with no citations.
Crucially, the slaughterhouse never told the compliance officer Cux’s age, and apparently, the compliance officer never asked. By the end of the story, Cux was back working there. Only after the Times story was published did the Labor Department initiate a real investigation.
The problem didn’t begin with Biden; the increase in violations started under Trump—who, not incidentally, tried unsuccessfully to kill a Labor Department regulation barring 16- and 17-year-olds from operating patient-lifting devices. Trump pondered other child labor rollbacks as well. That’s why Republicans aren’t making much of a stink.
For a decade after the Great Recession, funding was essentially flat for the Wage and Hour Division and the Office of the Solicitor, the two Labor Department agencies that enforce child labor laws. These departments have seen modest funding increases under Biden, but Congress cut about $100 million from their combined budget request in the fiscal year just ended.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/umm-gop-did-become-pro-100000003.html