Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Making child labor great again !!

Ben Penn of Bloomberg Law reported on Tuesday that the Labor Department, led by Trump appointee Alexander Acosta, "will propose relaxing current rules—known as Hazardous Occupations Orders (HOs)—that prohibit 16- and 17-year-old apprentices and student learners from receiving extended, supervised training in certain dangerous jobs. That includes roofing work, as well as operating chainsaws, and various other power-driven machines that federal law recognizes as too dangerous for youth younger than 18," Penn adds, noting that the summary of a draft regulation obtained by Bloomberg Law confirmed his sources' summary of the department's proposals.

With the apparent support of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), President Donald Trump's Labor Department is reportedly moving to roll back longstanding child labor protections that advocacy groups say have been central to the massive reduction in teenage workplace deaths over the past several decades.

Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, told Bloomberg Law, "When I started doing this kind of work 20 years ago, we were losing 70 kids a year at work, and now we are losing usually 20 or less...relaxing any of these standards; I think it would be a tragic mistake and would lead to the death of teenage workers."


Michael Hancock, a former senior official in the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division, said in an interview with Bloomberg Law that the deregulatory plan "stretches credulity."
"When you find 16-year-olds running a meat slicer or a mini grinder or a trash compactor, we know kids are severely injured in those circumstances," Hancock concluded. "That's why the laws exist in the first place."

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