Since the Sanitation Services Inc employed by the slaughterhouses got fined for this, Arkansas under Huckabee signed a law removing requirements to verify ages of anyone working under 16. Aka no one is liable if children are working in slaughterhouses and getting chemical burns.
Here’s a picture of one of the kids.
absolute silence from the fascist right wing ‘protect the children’ people.
Do you have some sauce for this? Not saying you’re making it up, but I need to understand this better.
I’m not sure if I entirely follow. So they don’t need to verify (effectively legalizing child labour), but why would that remove liability for injuries?
The wording could be better, it’s meant that they’re not liable for hiring kids since they can say that they didn’t know, are not responsible for knowing.
Yeah, that’s the child labour bit. But you don’t suddenly turn immune to chemical burns once you’re 16, so why would they not be liable for injuries? Even if they claim their workers to be 16, somebody still got hurt. I’m not familiar with the US legal system here, so forgive my ignorance.
Liable for hiring children, I thought the OP meant.
But there is an issue with liability for injury. Securing a legal remedy requires knowing one’s rights, knowing how to express those rights, and knowing how to start the litigation process. Children are unlikely to know any of these, considering most adults don’t, either. And a state that allows child labour is unlikely to set up any mechanisms to provide that knowledge or make the litigation procedure easier to navigate. So even if the employer could technically be liable for workplace injuries, the chances of being sued successfully are slim.
In February, the labor department fined PSSI $1.5m for employing at least 102 children ages 13 to 17 across 13 meat-packing plants in eight states. The fine amounts to $15,138 for each child, the maximum penalty under federal law.
No one went to jail. Cool country.
