Raw Story :
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday that it was good life experience for children as young as five or six to have a job.
For more than a week, the candidate has been talking about the virtues of child labor, calling current restrictions “truly stupid.”
.....At a meeting with Donald Trump this week, Gingrich announced that the business mogul had agreed to hire 10 poor children as apprentices....
Gingrich, Trump, and anyone that agrees that children should have jobs are insane. There are laws that say that children under a certain age cannot be employed around dangerous machines or in hazardous situations. Why do you think that child labor laws exist? Back in the olden days, children worked in factories for extremely low wages instead of going to school. I realize that fat cats like Gingrich and Trump might want a lower, uneducated class of people, but the rest of the country would be against it.
We know that Republicans are against things like regulations, minimum wage, job safety, equal opportunity, and other things that have helped create the middle class. (Here in Ohio, John Kasich and his GOPers tried to outlaw collective bargaining for public employees!!! The Republicans lost.)
U.S. Department of Labor:
The Department of Labor is the sole federal agency that monitors child labor and enforces child labor laws. The most sweeping federal law that restricts the employment and abuse of child workers is the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Child labor provisions under FLSA are designed to protect the educational opportunities of youth and prohibit their employment in jobs that are detrimental to their health and safety. FLSA restricts the hours that youth under 16 years of age can work and lists hazardous occupations too dangerous for young workers to perform. Enforcement of the FLSA's child labor provisions is handled by the Department's Wage and Hour Division.....
Established law (the Fair Labor Standards Act) and the upholding of that law by the U.S. Supreme Court, makes child labor illegal.
We are not living in a Charles Dickens novel. Children should be in school so that they are prepared to live in an ever changing world.
* Why are the Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives going after Attorney General Eric Holder? Shouldn't they be holding hearings on the cheating and dirty practices of bankers? I guess if the Republicans went after the bankers, that might dry up their campaign contributions. The "Fast and Furious" activity started under the Bush administration. When will the Republicans start questioning members of the Bush administration?