> The children can't consent. That's essentially child slave labor.
Minors can totally consent to labor; it's pretty common too (see: child actors). The issue with children working in factories is a (1) safety and (2) exploitation issue, not a consent issue—in fact even adult parents (who can presumably consent) aren't allowed to get exemptions for their children in some high-risk situations either. There are lots of exemptions for child labor though, especially in areas where safety and exploitation risks are deemed to be lower. Worth reading: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/exemptionsflsa
Edit to clarify (since some people seem to be reading this different): this isn't my opinion, support, or opposition on what I believe children can or should consent to; I'm just discussing labor laws here.
Can you cite the part where the law says that a minor can consent to labor? Every mention of "consent" in the link you gave only mentions "consent by the [minor's] parent or guardian" or similar phrasing.
It's different across states. You can find a list (probably non-exhaustive) of where parental consent is required here, like the night before a school day in some states for example: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/child-labor
This is the opposite of what you claimed. Can you find a single instance of a state where parental consent is not required? i.e. the child can consent for themselves as you claimed?
> In Texas, minors aged 14 and older can work without parental consent. If an employer chooses to do so, he or she may require the youth to submit a “Certificate of Age” form.
> Now minors [in New Jersey] will no longer need parental consent or anything from the school district to secure a work permit. Instead, the state Labor Department will create a centralized database for teens to register for work permits, which will be accessible to employers when interviewing potential employees.
Instead of posting more links I will just summarize what I am finding... Instead of parental consent most states require a work permit which is more formal documentation than just a parent saying ok. Obtaining a work permit includes a review process, and require the submission of various materials which sometimes includes written permission from a parent, for some age groups.
If you want something more explicit than "whatever is not prohibited is implicitly allowed", a search phrase that'll get you there is "work without parental consent". If you Google that, you'll immediately find examples in agriculture, Texas, etc.
> This is the opposite of what you claimed. Can you find a single instance of a state where parental consent is not required? i.e. the child can consent for themselves as you claimed?
Very unluikely in the US, but it also varies by Industry; when I cooked and interviewed for dishwashers/prep/line cooks I often had more than one 18 year old kid from the rural US say they had 4+ years of experience.
I'd ask them to describe how that was possible and they'd cite having exemption that allowed them to begin working from 13 onward. They often had extreme poverty circumstances and were from states like Montana, Kentucky, Wyoming, Ohio or Missouri whose parent's had been disabled or injured (addiction was a big one) or something along those lines, so rather than just put them and their siblings into foster care this was the best possible solution were parent's kept custody and a child could work on school days before the age of 16 under a basic work permit.
In farming it's even younger than that, the youngest I've seen being pre-K, and yes this is in the EU and in even in Switzerland. They admittedly couldn't' do much but perhaps like feed the animals or attach the the suction to the utters of a cow or sheep (both of which could easily maim their small bodies) or put seeds in a starer plant or water the plants, wrap electrical posts, harvesting fruit/veg etc...
I still laugh thinking about being in a convoy of tractors heading into the the citys city center in Bern that had cows in-tow headed to the Swiss Alps and was behind a few 12 year old kids with a coupe of seasons under their belts.
I come from a family of restaurateurs in CA, where it was typical to see the kids help out in the kitchen peeling/cutting vegetables, carrying products, manning a register or simply washing dishes or bussing tables at very young ages (think 10 onward) but this was high contentious and likely illegal, practice.
But every time I went to my grantparents home their were hardly any pictures of my grandparents, aunts or uncles and cousins where they, even as children, weren't doing the aforementioned in at least half of their pictures.
Also, it's worth noting that all of these pearl-clutching FAANG workers like to pretend their aren't minors working at Foxxcon making the iphones, or sweatshops in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc... making name brand clothing items that they wear.
The sad truth is child labour laws are only applicable to those who can't afford the legal team to make it anything more than just a fine.
This isn't whataboutism, but it goes to show that their is a heterodoxy when it comes to exploiting the poor and young alike in both the East and West. Sadly, I fear this will remain the norm and will likely increase in my lifetime before it gets better since things like labour laws and unions mean less as Megacorps consolidate and acquire more small businesses and increase market share.
> what in the world does this have to do with faang employees?
Hypocrisy, gross negligence? I guess from all but Netflix they have all close affiliation to these practices and business models, than not.
Again, what I'm underscoring is that this is wide-spread and isn't limited to just an isolated few, but rather a systemic issue, one in which a certain sector sits atop of the wealth distribution model which makes them complicit of this very issue.
ok... as luck would have it, i'm not in the "FAANG worker" category, but i am in the "VC-funded-startup worker" category, so I was just checking to see if my sorry ass is on the line to get faulted for exploited children.
an exemption from a child labor prohibition doesn't equal consent
the Department of Labor has an exemption for children working in their parents business because that's the only way they could get the prohibitions passed, since children cannot speak for themselves on the matter after recognizing that children can't legally consent to anything which is why there are prohibitions on the matter.
what you are writing is a wild distortion of the concept of consent, that many people consider dangerous to harbor.
there is legal consent restrictions (ie. even if someone says okay, its not valid), as well as societal consent recognitions such as when power dynamics are not in someone's favor and some extremes of that we don't allow to happen.
even for things they are allowed to do autonomously, there are age restrictions on that.
I'm not sure what resource to share on understanding the topic of consent and mapping that to daily interactions that are seen as normal but shouldn't be. I can see the need for it.
> The point of saying children can't consent, is that they can't do it alone.
Yes they can, for some jobs. Not every job. I don't have a full list of which ones allow it and which ones don't, but it's not difficult to infer this if you look up the relevant laws and regulations, since they sometimes explicitly mention things like "minors working until 11 p.m. on nights before a school day are required to have written parental permission" [1], for instance.
Minors can totally consent to labor; it's pretty common too (see: child actors). The issue with children working in factories is a (1) safety and (2) exploitation issue, not a consent issue—in fact even adult parents (who can presumably consent) aren't allowed to get exemptions for their children in some high-risk situations either. There are lots of exemptions for child labor though, especially in areas where safety and exploitation risks are deemed to be lower. Worth reading: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/youthlabor/exemptionsflsa
Edit to clarify (since some people seem to be reading this different): this isn't my opinion, support, or opposition on what I believe children can or should consent to; I'm just discussing labor laws here.