GOP attacks child labor laws

[RyanPsych]

The right wing's widespread attack on workers has a new target: the nation's youth. Currently the number of youth who are unemployed, especially youth of color, has risen to a level not seen in the last 60 years. It is estimated that only one in four youth who are looking for summer jobs this year will find one.

At the same time, Republican lawmakers in Maine and Missouri are proposing legislation to repeal child labor laws, which would allow children to begin work at an earlier age, for longer hours, for less than the minimum wage. Already state Sen. Jane Cunningham in Missouri and Gov. Paul LePage in Maine are using the argument that putting children to work in sub-human conditions will somehow be a solution to the nation's economic crisis.

Exploiting young people not only ignores the need to hold corporations accountable for skyrocketing poverty levels in the U.S., but perhaps even more importantly threatens the generation of people who will determine the economic stability of the nation for the next century.Especially for working class youth, finding stable employment at an appropriate age is imperative in the process of securing economic well-being. However, it has become increasingly difficult for youth to find stable employment, both while they are still in school and upon completing their education.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the share of young people who were employed in July 2010 was 48.9 percent, the lowest July rate on record since the bureau began tracking this number in 1948. This summer's overall youth employment rate is expected to plummet even further.A recent Reuters article projected that the unemployment rate amongst African American youth between ages 16 and 19 in Chicago could reach 90 percent this summer. Hispanic youth face similarly staggering unemployment numbers. The National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce estimated this past February that the overall unemployment rate among U.S. Latino youth was 24 percent, while for African Americans it was 32 percent.


keep reading at: http://www.peoplesworld.org/right-wing-pushes-shocking-child-labor-measures/

[saras]

1. WTF is next?

I suppose that after legal murder and mandatory child molesting that there isn't much farther to go? I guess we're not impaling heads on spikes at the town gate - yet.

[Citizen Worker]

2. I would guess that abolishing the minimum wage is on the radar screen of the vicious right.