Maybe Child Labor Cures Cancer, Too?
Here’s the latest Republican justification for child labor: It prevents obesity.
Hat tip to Laura Clawson at DailyKos, who spotted this one: Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, worried that the Department of
Labor wants to limit child labor on family farms, said:
It’s interesting that this child labor bill goes against Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity initiative. How can kids be active if they are limited by this law?
Gee, I don’t know. Maybe they could…play?
Trump Joins Gingrich in Call to Put Poor Kids to Work
Newt Gingrich, who says child labor laws are “truly stupid” and wants to put low-income children in poor neighborhoods to work cleaning schools after he fires “all the unionized janitors,” has found an acolyte—Donald Trump.
Billionaire Trump—who most Republican presidential candidates are genuflecting before in hopes of a laying on of hands—endorsed Gingrich’s call to put poor kids to work. He told reporters, “I thought it was a good idea” and suggested they also work for him—as “apprenti.”
Gingrich apparently thinks all poor kids are lazy and says his plan will “get them into the habit of showing up and realizing that effort gets rewarded and that America is all about the work ethic.”
Last week he also inferred that low-income kids are crooks. He said, “They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
Gingrich: Poor Kids Only Work at Illegal Jobs
It wasn’t enough for presidential wanna-be Newt Gingrich to push child labor by proposing that poor kids clean schools. Now he says children from low-income families only work when the “job” is illegal. This from CBS News:
“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” the former House speaker said at a campaign event at the Nationwide Insurance offices. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
As talk show host Stephanie Miller said last night on ”The Ed Schultz Show,” the corporate media has focused a lot on Gingrich’s odious personal behavior. But what hasn’t been given enough attention—and what clearly needs to be—is Gingrich’s extremist policy agenda, one that includes child labor.
Teaching Children About Child Labor
Around the world, some 215 million children—nearly one in seven—go to jobs or labor at home rather than attend school. American history, too, is rife with the stories of children made to work in factories and mines.
Even as one presidential candidate is making the case for a return to child labor, the story of child labor, present and past, and labor’s role in addressing it, is only half-told in the nation’s textbooks in schools.
To help teachers educate their students on the current scourge of child labor, as well as its oft-forgotten chapter in the story of America, the American Labor Studies Center (ALSC) and its AFT Child Labor Project offer a cache of teaching resources on its website, ranging from a Read the rest of this entry »
Maine Labor Mural Gets Rebirth at Maryland Arts Center
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While Maine Gov. Paul LePage continues to hold hostage a mural depicting the state’s labor history that he ordered removed from state property in March, the Maine AFL-CIO and artist Judy Taylor arranged for a reproduction of the mural to be displayed at Rockville, Md.’s nonprofit arts center, VisArts.
As part of the center’s “Celebrate Labor: Where Art Meets Politics” display that runs through Sept. 20, the 11-panel mural depicts the state’s labor history, including a 1986 paper mill strike, “Rosie the Riveter” at the Bath Iron Works and the enactment of child labor laws.
LePage, who supports “right to work” for less laws and pushed to weaken child labor laws, claimed the mural was akin to North Korean propaganda. But Mount Holyoke College President Lynn Pasquerella put LePage’s actions into proper perspective when she said they conjure “thoughts of rewriting history prevalent in totalitarian regimes.”
Taylor will speak at the VisArts gallery on Sept. 10 at 3 p.m. A panel discussion featuring professors, artists and other figures is scheduled for Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. For more information, click here.
Labor Department Seeking Nominations for Anti-Child Labor Award
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Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani carpet weaver who was sold into slavery at age four. After escaping from his servitude at 12, he became an outspoken advocate against child slavery.
He told the world of his plight when he received the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1994. He was tragically killed a year later at the age of 13 in his native Pakistan.
Now the U.S. Labor Department is seeking nominations for its annual award named for Masih to honor those who have made extraordinary efforts to combat the worst forms of child labor internationally and raise awareness about child labor.
Global Unions Condemn Child Labor
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The global union movement is calling for governments, employers and workers to take action to halt the exploitation of child labor around the world, and especially in Uzbekistan.
During the month of June, global unions and governments are focusing on the issue of child labor. June 12 was World Day Against Child Labor, but events are ongoing around the world all month.
At a recent conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO), workers and employers reported that millions of children were forced to leave school to do hazardous work in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields.
Unions estimate that in the 2010 harvest alone in Uzbekistan, up to 2 million children between 10 and 16 years old were forced to work in hazardous conditions, with heavy lifting, exposure to pesticides and incidences of rashes and respiratory diseases and cases of meningitis and hepatitis.
Maine Rolls Back Child Labor Laws. 1 Down, 1 to Go in ‘Right to Work’ Fight
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R)—the same LePage who was so incensed about a labor history mural that included a depiction of the fight for strong child labor laws that he ordered it taken down—signed a bill yesterday that weakens Maine’s child labor laws.
The bill allows business owners to work teenagers longer hours each day and later into the night. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds can now work six hours a day and until 10:15 p.m. on school nights. But counting weekends and short school weeks, employers could have teenage workers on the clock for as many as 50 hours a week.
The Maine Restaurant Association, Maine Innkeepers Association and other business groups backed the child labor law rollback. Says Rep. Timothy Driscoll (D):
I think this bill should be more rightly titled an act to exploit our children for the financial benefit of the restaurant and the hospitality industry.
Only Known Video/Audio of Mother Jones
Wow. I’m blown away. The only-known video and audio recording of Mary Harris ”Mother” Jones is in the clip at left. Recorded in 1930, on what possibly was her 100th birthday (historians aren’t sure of her year of birth), it shows even at an advanced age, she hadn’t lost any of the spark that fueled her life-long activism on behalf of improving the lot of workers.
After much personal tragedy, Mother Jones went on to become a union organizer, and was so effective, the Mine Workers (UMWA) sent her into the coalfields to sign up miners. She was banished from more towns and was held incommunicado in more jails in more states than any other union leader of the time. In 1912, she was even charged with a capital offense by a military tribunal in West Virginia and held under house arrest for weeks until popular outrage and national attention forced the governor to release her.
Maine Now Second State to Push Child Labor
Why is it that some Republican lawmakers really want to see the return of child labor?
State legislative sessions have been brutal enough for working families this year, but Republicans, first in Missouri and now in Maine, want to go even further—by “relaxing” laws preventing children from being exploited. As Amanda Terkel reports:
The minimum wage in Maine is $7.50 an hour, and there is no training or subminimum wage for students. But under a new piece of legislation introduced in the state’s House of Representatives, employers would be able to pay anyone under the age of 20 as little as $5.25 an hour for their first 180 days on the job.
The bill, LD 1346, also eliminates the maximum number of hours a minor 16 years of age or older can work on a school day and allows a minor under the age of 16 to work up to four hours on a school day during hours when school is not in session.
This move works well with Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s unilateral removal of an 11-panel mural from the Dept. of Labor. The mural depicted the history of working people and their struggles for improvements at the workplace. Improvements like the elimination of child labor, say. As Joseph McCartin, associate professor of History at Georgetown University writes today about Lepage’s actions:
The effort to erase this past is dangerous. More than a mere exercise in political score settling, it is an effort to rewrite the nation’s history, erasing unions from it.
