A new bill rolling back child labor laws in Iowa to allow 14-year-olds to work hazardous jobs in mining, meatpacking, and logging sectors as long as they are done under an approved training program has been harshly criticized by Democrat state senators and labor rights experts.
According to the existing state law, teens under the age of 18 in Iowa are prohibited from doing dangerous jobs such as working in slaughterhouses, operating power-driven metal forming, punching or shearing machines, and being involved in roofing operations and demolition work.
The new bill sponsored by Republican State Senator Jason Schulz—Senate File 167—wants to amend a section of Iowa’s code on child labor to allow teens to work in these prohibited jobs when “participating in work-based learning or a school or employer-administered, work-related program.”
Ah yes, children operating mining equipment, meatpacking machinery, and the various sharp spinny things in the lumber industry. What can go wrong?
And, yeah, while there may be some morally bankrupt folk who’ll say that these are jobs kids that age would have able to work 100+ years ago or whatever, there were also a whole bunch of campaigning to make sure they wouldn’t have to AND I can guarantee that the politicians and their backers who wrote up this bill would never be in a position where their kids would have to decide to take these jobs if they didn’t want to.
Republicans whenever they’re pushing something fascistic, misogynistic, homophobic or transphobic: We’re doing this to PROTECT THE CHILDREN!
Also Republicans: We don’t see any reason why children shouldn’t be used as a cheap and readily available source of labor in jobs where they’ll be forced to operate chainsaws and buzzsaws and be sent down into horrifically unsafe holes in the ground where they might get buried alive