It's the craziest thing. Somehow, Republicans are trying to roll back most of the social progress we've made in the past century. Via the Washington Post:
When Iowa lawmakers voted last week to roll back certain child labor protections, they blended into a growing movement driven largely by a conservative advocacy group.
At 4:52 a.m., Tuesday, the state’s Senate approved a bill to allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15 year-olds on assembly lines. The measure, which still must pass the Iowa House, is among several the Foundation for Government Accountability is maneuvering through state legislatures.
The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. And they are gaining traction at a time the Biden administration is scrambling to enforce existing labor protections for children.
The FGA achieved its biggest victory in March, playing a central role in designing a new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. Its sponsor, state Rep. Rebecca Burkes (R), said in a hearing that the legislation “came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability.”
Let me point out that children die in agriculture jobs all the time! Should we try to get those numbers up? Via Farm Progress:
TRACTORS are often involved in fatal on-farm injuries to children.
About every three days a child on a U.S. farm dies from an agriculture-related incident. Every day some 38 children are injured on a U.S. farm.
Machinery is involved in 25 percent of youth fatalities on a farm. Motor vehicles, including ATVs, account for 17 percent of youth farm fatalities and 16 percent result from drowning. Vehicles and machinery account for 73 percent of the deaths of working youth on farms.
Those grim statistics come from the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety (NCCRAHS), a program of the National Farm Medicine Center and the Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation in Marshfield, Wis.
