Trump's Labor Department is planning a rollback of teen labor laws, allowing kids to work in "hazardous" jobs

[RedFury]

The horse has been out of the barn for awhile. Teenagers drop out of school to work full-time in construction as a matter-of-course. The kids next door shingle roofs and run concrete in their family’s ‘business’, if being paid cash as a sub-contractor can be called a ‘business’.

[Tamsin_Bailey]

No news, fake or otherwise, from the Fake “Sport” man?
Yep, that’s a puzzler…

[cepheus42]

Here, here! Let’s all join hands and sing together…

“We shall over-snark some day…”

[stinkinbadgers]

@doctorow

allowed to train on machines like chainsaws and meat-slicers

Wait, wat? Meat slicers in the same category as a chainsaw? Surely they jest. I worked as a teenager, as many did and assumed do, in a pizza restaurant/deli where using a meat slicer was an everyday fact of life. Are they suddenly dangerous now?

[MadLibrarian]

The problem is that now an employer can simply tell a 17 y.o. to fire up that meat slicer without supervision or, apparently, much training. “Here ya go – a chainsaw for you, and for you, and a wood chipper for you, good buddy!”

[jyoti]

Sure, give people with impulse control issues and not-yet-fully-formed brains unfettered access to incredibly dangerous tools etc. What could possibly go wrong?

[comedian]

[Gyrofrog]

@stinkinbadgers

I worked as a teenager, as many did and assumed do, in a pizza restaurant/deli where using a meat slicer was an everyday fact of life.

I worked in a Schlotzsky’s and wasn’t allowed/supposed to use the meat slicer until I was 18. (Probably just as well after I cut my thumb with the bread knife, which I was allowed to use.) Don’t know if that was the law, or just company policy, but FWIW this was during the Reagan era.

[anothernewbbaccount]

Being Trumpty’s son is hazardous enough!

[nungesser]

@Gyrofrog

I worked in a Schlotzsky’s and wasn’t allowed/supposed to use the meat slicer until I was 18.

I worked at a Kmart at 16 and wasn’t allowed to sell hunting equipment or use the meat slicer until I as 18. But it was 100% okay to have me use the deadly box crusher and to be responsible for carrying televisions up a set of rickety stairs into the attic where we kept the layaway items.

[stinkinbadgers]

Yeah, this was Reagan era as well. And the only person I heard of hurting themselves on the slicer was someone well over 18. I think this is one of those things like sex, driving, or voting that is hard to make a blanket law because different people have different maturity levels. I’ve known 16 year olds that I’d trust with a chainsaw, and 30 year olds I’d barely trust with a sharp pencil.