Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/28/indiana-seems-an-unsafe-place-to-be-a-child.html
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The 19th century is here again, it’s just not evenly distributed.
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Newt Gingrich must be shedding tears of joy. Re-establishing child labour is one of the fondest dreams of movement conservatism.
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I don’t think it was evenly distributed in the 19th century, either. We are, once again, in a gilded age. 
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It’s also unsafe to be an adult here, but yes, Indiana keeps doubling down on how to kill, maim, or at least control as many Hoosiers as possible.
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It occurs to me that federal labor laws already have exceptions that allow children as young as 12 to do farm work for up to 12 hours a day at less than minimum wage, without the safety standards required of any other workplace. (It’s a Jim Crow era capitulation to Southern States.) The US relies, to an alarming degree, on child labor in agriculture. Every time people try to change it, the argument is always made that it’s necessary for family farms, except that children whose parents own farms can work at any age - the labor laws in question have always been about hired workers, currently the children of immigrants.
Indiana’s previous labor laws, allowing 14 year olds to work, but with work hour limits (which is the only thing changing here) was actually relatively quite progressive. Even though this is a step backwards, that they’re only allowing 14 year olds to work 40 hour weeks still puts them well ahead of much of the country, including, in some ways, California (where you can have 12 year old farm workers and 16 year olds working 48 hour weeks with hazardous materials/equipment). Child labor in agriculture is a national shame.
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And to add to that, “family farms”, at least in the areas I know in Indiana, are 3 generations of a family all working or going to school AT LEAST full time, and then working the family farm with the few hours they have left.
Except for the many Amish communities, where school stops at age 11 or 12 anyway, because the kids all work full time after that.
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Indiana’s minimum wage is $7.25/hour. This just gives an excuse not to raise that wage in order to make poor families so desperate they force their children to drop out of school to provide labor.
Federal min wage needs to be raised to stop this fuckery.
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