[maxerickson]

A problem with all of these discussions about child labor laws is the huge status quo bias.

Like if a law isn't working to protect children, it's a good thing to change it! How do we talk about that if every discussion starts with how horrifying it is to change the laws that protect children.

When I looked at the Arkansas change, it didn't really seem like a big deal. Previously parents had to fill out a form and send it to the state and wait for approval. A form isn't going to stop a parent from describing the duties inaccurately or ensure that the employer actually sticks to the description that the parents agreed to. The way things go, the state agency probably felt a lot of pressure to rubber stamp them. And so on.

I'm not sure I analyzed it well, but apparently we can't even talk about it, because change is bad.

[matthewdgreen]

The main purpose of work registration was to allow children under 16 to have part-time jobs while having some mechanism to make it harder for industrial producers to abuse children. We developed these common-sense laws over many decades of horrific labor conditions for children and it worked well. The question I would ask is: why were these laws just fine in many states for decades, and why suddenly now (in the midst of an industrial labor shortage) do they need to be changed?

My guess is that industrial plants are desperate for labor, and have been routinely breaking the law to employ vulnerable (most migrant) child laborers. Since this sort of abuse is precisely what the laws were designed to protect against, these firms couldn’t pass the work permit requirements: and having these laws in place made it easier for state and federal agencies to investigate and hold those companies to account. Now these powerful interests have bought themselves some new laws that protect them from being held accountable.

People should be horrified about this, frankly. There are similar laws advancing in Iowa that also remove these protections for meat plants, and also eliminate liability if children are killed. It reversed decades of human progress, all so a few powerful producers can make a tiny amount of additional profit.

[maxerickson]

The negligence exception is hard to understand. I guess the over the top good faith interpretation is that it is meant to transfer liability to the school? But there's no reason to shield the employer from civil liability in the case of negligence.

The rest of the changes to the Iowa law don't seem particularly egregious:

https://www.legis.iowa.gov/legislation/BillBook?ba=SF167&ga=...

It's hard to read, but it seems like the change related to meat packing allows 14 and 15 years to package meat in a cooler, where before they would have to do it in a room that wasn't a cooler? Like there's a provision in the under 18 section about no work in slaughter, meat packing and rendering, but an exception for assembly.

Like fine, there isn't really that much need to do a nuanced read of how involved a 14 year old should be in packing meat, but the change to the law there doesn't seem very big, essentially updating it to allow for modern practices (with the caveat that I read it in a reasonably correct way, I'm not gonna argue very hard that I did...).

[krapp]

What do you mean we can't talk about it? You're in one of numerous threads talking about it.

And I've seen plenty of people here argue in favor of child labor, so I don't know what you're worried about.