The children yearn for the mines
The children yearn for the mines
131 comments
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Wow did not realise that three of our states don't have a minimum working age - NSW, Tasmania and South Australia.
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What? Source?
Edit: So there isn't.
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that is so fucked up
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Not as fucked up as it sounds. Federally, the minimum working age is 16 and parents are legally required to keep their kids in school until they're 16. Most Aussies believe you need to be 14 and 9 months to get a job (beyond the family business), as that was an older minimum schooling requirement (decades ago).
Combined with the high quality of living, low poverty rate, high immigration (suppressing wages), and high minimum wage, this functionally meant that there was never any reason for the states to mandate a minimum working age — businesses didn't seek to employ them.
Obviously now that capitalism has corrupted most governments and abandoned the social contract, we need to rethink all norms of modern society.
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Wait is this an Australian news story? I just assumed it was about somewhere here in the US
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Oh we've been doing this shit too don't worry
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Same. On second glance, though, the site in the tweet is a .net.au.
Not a guarantee, but certainly ups the odds.
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If it weren't for the comment, I would haven't just not noticed. I assumed the same. That's fucked.
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Nope, this is indeed from Australia. I assumed it would've been the US too tbh. But you can tell because our ABC (capitalised) has a different logo to your abc (lower case), and the domain ends in .au (the internet country code for Australia)
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As someone who grew up in NSW it's 14 and 9 months. Exceptions might exist for family businesses etc. but your 8-year-old can't apply for a job at Woolies.
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Apparently it used to be that, but now there is no limit: https://www.industrialrelations.nsw.gov.au/new-to-work/essential-information-for-people-new-to-work/new-to-work-faq/#:~:text=How%20old%20must%20I%20be,may%20apply%20relating%20to%20age.
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Wait is this an Australian news story? I just assumed it was about somewhere here in the US
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Child poverty is a big issue but people seem to forget that work is the best thing again poverty /s
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Really? I'm over here in Texas and we seem to have found a completely different solution to childhood poverty. And childhood...
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Guns and building schools across the street from poorly regulated fertilizer factories.
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Where you work, but you’re still poor?
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Some people would rather be poor in a house than poor on the streets. This ain't getting fixed in our lifetime make the best of your life you're able to
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Yes. Hence the little known technical term "again poverty" in that post.
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In that case, it's your fault. Source: it's always your fault, never blame the system. Only lazy people blame the system.
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Some facts to consider:
- This happened in New South Wales, in a very rural area. People are not going to commute out to this remote location for minimum wage.
- Kids volunteer on the weekends and parents sign off on it.
- Some of the kids like it because they don't have anything else to do, they learn a job skill, and they make a little money.
That said, I don't agree with it. Hire adults and do what everyone else does by having a "bring your child to work day/week" if you want to teach kids. Or make a field trip. Let's not go backwards in society to benefit companies.
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Kids volunteer on the weekends and parents sign off on it.
I grew up in a poor rural area, and we had a bunch of child labor due to agriculture exceptions.
Most of it wasn't kids earning a "life skill" or pocket money. It was poor kids who had to work. And usually their parents worked there too.
And they only need to be 12 for it to be legal.
The families need the kids to work, but the kids working inflates the labor pool and keeps wages low.
If a kids like 16 and wants to pick up a part time job, cool.
But little kids shouldn't be holding down jobs.
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Having partially grown up with this shit, I would say these asshole can absolutely get fucked and do the work themselves. They good enough to count beans, they good enough to clear the land, plant em, take care of them, harvest them, and sell 'em all before they get to do beancounting duties. You count the beans you bring to market by the sweat of your own brows, no exceptions
Might help them realize why Protestant work ethic shit is garbage exploiter nonsense
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I made this exact argument yesterday on the shit hole formerly known as Reddit, and of course got nothing but backlash from angry neck beards who think everyone should be allowed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps at the age of 11.
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"minimum wage" <- thars yer prooblem
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“Well if we pay much more than that, it will dip into OUR profit! What are we supposed to do, just make less money?!”
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Can't spell "minimum wage" without "minimum age!"
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They might commute if it was easy and cheaper than what they're paid. You want workers, make it worth their while.
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Oh, well then, it's perfectly fine...
NO. WTF?!?
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How many hours. If it's 2 or less per week I'm fine with it.
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Wow, i swear they're about to write "jam factory help solve poverty by hiring child."
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Jam factory solves lack of red-coloured blobby ingredients being forced through high-speed machinery by hiring children.
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Call it what it is: child exploitation
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I see red hats and reflexively cringe.
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But fezzes are cool!
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Fezzes are the sole exception, methinks. Iconic shape, could never be confused for a silly baseball cap.
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As a 49ers fan I hate them just that little bit more for making red caps their thing.
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Should this be cross posted to uplifting news? Seems about their speed.
Done, with some changes. https://mander.xyz/post/10393242
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Update, they do not like it
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Extra Update, they pulled it for not being "uplisfting" enough.
"admin Removed Post Great news for jam lovers! reason: Not uplisfting"
I do find it odd since they still have a lot of the same posts as here and orphan crushing machine.
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Also, orphancrushing orphancrushing@lemmy.world
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Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !orphancrushing@lemmy.world
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This is slavery
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I imagine this was a field trip or something like that and it has been evolving to be more rage inducing since that picture was taken.
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Reminds me of the story about a school field trip to a cotton farm and they got the kids to go out in the fields to pick cotton and at the end of the day they didn't get to keep the cotton they picked, the farm kept it.
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Like the fake treasure in the cave from South Park
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I'm also thinking this is the case, especially since the kid's hat still has a tag on it. I imagine that would be a gift shop purchase.
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He has to return it each shift otherwise they take it out of his paycheck.
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I don't think that is the price tag. It looks to be the tag on the hat with what materials it is made of and washing instructions.
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Res hats have just been ruined
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If a school kid wants to work and earn money, let it be. There is nothing wrong with that.
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This sucks and should be illegal. This should fucking onion article not for real. But goddammit our government just shurgs tells us how great the economy is. Biden and Democrats should be ashamed that under their watch they sold out to billionaire class allowing this to happen.
Hell they don't even call it out.
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1- That's in Australia
2- As far as the US goes, Republicans are responsible for eliminating child labor protection laws. Just look at Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/08/politics/sarah-huckabee-sanders-arkansas-child-labor/index.html
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What does Biden and Democrats (assuming from the US) have to do with an Australian company?
Article says it’s from an entirely different country….
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abc.net.au.....
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shurgs
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God forbid their parents be paid well enough that these children are allowed to have a childhood before having to work 40+ years until they die chasing retirement. Kids are already in school for like 35 hours per week plus they have homework and chores. When are they supposed to play with toys, see friends, go outside, or participate in clubs or team sports or whatever they might be interested in?
Only a few decades ago it was normal for a single income to provide for a family, including owning a home and taking vacations. Then both parents started having to work. Now it's rare for a couple even without kids to be able to buy a house. And you're seriously defending the normalization of working parents sending their kids to work?! Fuck that. This is third world country shit that we used to adopt refugee children from, and now we're doing it to our own kids.
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We should all want and hope for better for our kids.
Giving them the ability to go to work at younger and younger ages is not making life better for kids. You can argue that it allows them to make good money and enable them to become good consumers, and sure, you're not wrong. But you have to realize that you're willingly siding with the capitalist machine here. When you start justifying things like child labor because labor shortages, you can easily start justifying things like 6 day work weeks, relaxed safety laws, longer working hours, etc. In 5-10 years, odds are they will push kids to work in other jobs than just "hospitality...or washing dishes" due to the "success" of it using the same argument of "labor shortage".
You have to understand that there are very good reasons why there are labor shortage at these places, and almost every single one of them is because companies do not want to pay their employees a living wage or offer any sort of benefits. It's the same reason there are lobbyists in Washington pushing to not increase the minimum wage.
Don't support laws like this
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Even if the jobs are safe, those kids need to be focusing on school. Kids also need unstructured play time to help their development. Kids this young who are in extra curricular activities every day often have decreased mental health and academic performance. And I highly doubt employers are going to appreciate an employee who only works for an hour or two on weekends.
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Hey, is it true you want children in the workforce so you can sexually harass them to help prepare them for the real world? I'm not accusing you, I'm just asking the question.
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131 comments
…solves the low-wage problem by hiring kids who don’t know better.
Then we'll just have to organise and unionise the kids too!
Or better yet, we should enact laws that protect children from the workforce. Maybe we can call them "child labor laws"
Be great if the kids learned to unionize early
Kids being able to form their own unions in schools have never been a bad idea - but for some reason nobody on the left has ever spoken about this (as far as I can tell.)
And they're at work instead of school so they don't learn better.
It's on the weekends, they wouldn't go to school anyway
Well we all know the undereducated love voting republicunt against their own best interests