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mojo84 wrote:I stocked gloves and candy during the summer at Strike-It-Rich in Odessa. Was only 9 or 10 but they cut me a check anyway.

Where is the federal government to butt in when you need them to?

Lawbreaker!

Carry-a-Kimber wrote:So if you are a good person or you feel certain laws aren't important or are outdated, they don't have to be acknowledged. I see.

Don't put word in my mouth. What I said in a nutshell is the law, as it stands, is ridiculous. If you want to be the one to phone the Feds about snatchel's job as a yoot, by all means go ahead.

74novaman wrote:

Carry-a-Kimber wrote:
Federal Law:
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) a child 14 or 15 years of age may not work during school hours, may not work more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours during a school week, and may not work more than eight hours on a non-school day or 40 hours during a non-school week. Furthermore, a child 14 or 15 years of age may work only between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. during the school year. Between June 1 and Labor Day, a child may work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Meh. As long as the kid is showing up to school, passing his classes and isn't being FORCED to work 40 hours a week....if they want to do it, I don't think the feds should have any say in the matter.

I understand where the federal law originally comes from: the need to protect little kids from being sent down to work in coal mines because they can fit in the tunnels better than adults, or sacrificing the health of their little bodies to the gods of industry in other ways. There was a time and an age when federal intervention in child labor like that made perfect sense. But, society has evolved, and in all likelihood Americans would never again allow their children to be put to essentially slave labor at high risk with terminal health complications like black lung disease.

However, the pendulum has swung entirely too far in the other direction, and you now have an administration which has publicly, overtly, and as a matter of policy, put the wishes of federal employee unions ahead of the interests of federal taxpayers, and industrial employee unions ahead of the "evil capitalists" which make those jobs possible in the first place.

Really, federal child labor laws exist to prevent children from being forced against their will to go to work for cruel and exploitive industries. But if a kid in high school wants to work to help his family out, keeping them off the public dole while working for a humane employer, that kid's personal industry and work ethic ought to be commended and encouraged, and his employer ought to be affirmed for his contribution to the health and stability of his community, and not castigated for violating some federal law written for a different age and enforced by faceless bureacrats whom the taxpayers will pay more money in 10 years than that poor kid will earn in his lifetime.

Family is everything.

Honestly, I regret my upbringing in some ways. My parents both made decent money as college professors—better money than some of the other parents of the kids I grew up with in our neighborhood. But it wasn't only that, it was also the sort of arrogance they communicated to my brothers and me about what they thought of the careers of the other parents in our neighborhoods. In fact, since most of those parents didn't have a "profession" (i.e. professor, doctor, lawyer, grand poobah), my parents looked down at them. Also, my parents were amond the few liberal democrats in what was back then a mostly conservative republican town.

Harris, the father of Chuck who lived across the street from me and who was one of my constant play companions, operated a giant shovel in a rock quarry in Irwindale, a neighboring town. Harris took Chuck and me and my brothers down into the quarry once to show us this giant machine he operated. I remember that the shovel was so big that it could hold four pickup trucks in two stacks of two each inside the shovel, and as a boy of 10 or 12, I was mightily impressed.

Both Harris and my dad were WW2 combat veterans. I don't remember if Harris was WIA, but my dad was. Harris was in the Army in the ETO, and my dad in the Marines in the Pacific. Both men had a lot in common, but they couldn't have been further apart if they tried. One of the difference between the two families was that my parents enourage the three of us (more or less unsuccessfuly as it turned out) along the path of a career in academia, while Harris and his wife enourage Chuck to get a good paying job. The last I saw Chuck, he was the owner of a pretty successful general contracting business, making a bunch more money than my parents ever made, while my brothers and I didn't get the entrepreneurial bug until much later in life and have struggled harder later in life because of it.

My parents gave us a fair amount of weekly chores to do around the house and in the yard, and they gave us an allowance. The amount of the allowance was not tied to the amount of work we did, and whether or not it was granted to us was dependent upon our obedience, and not on the amount or quality of work we did. We were discouraged from finding jobs to supplement our allowance so that our school work wouldn't suffer. (In my own case, that was a pointless exercise as I was an indifferent student unless I had a teacher who knew how to appeal to my interest.) And, to add insult to injury, we were required to bank our allowance, and punished if we spent any of it. So the lesson learned was that work is overrated, money is meaningless because you can't use it, and the reward of money is disconnected from the amount of effort put in to obtain it.

Chuck, on the other hand, was encouraged to find jobs and make money, which he did with a gusto. No, he did not end up as a professor, but he did have plenty of money to spend....or save or do whatever he wanted to with it. He understood from early on that the amount of money he had at any given time was directly proportional to two things: how hard he worked for it; and whether or not he was a good steward of it. He did successfully graduate from the same high school as I did, a year behind me, where he had been an average student. If I recall correctly, he attended the local JC for two years and got his AA.

I encouraged my own son to have and hold jobs, so long as he kept his grades at an acceptable level, and today he is doing by far much better much earlier in life than I did. He's 22 now, and currently earning what it took me until 38 years old to earn, and already has a firmer understanding of what he wants out of life and his career track than I ever did.

So long as children aren't being exploited in some cruel or dangerous manner, there is nothing wrong with them wanting to work as hard as they want to, and earn as much money as they can, so long as they successfully fulfill their other obligations to school and family. That should be encouraged, not discouraged, and, as always.....

....the federal government be hanged.

OK....not counting odd jobs performed for neighbors, etc., the first REAL job I ever had with a real paycheck was right out of high school. I worked as a warehousman for World Vision Int'l at their old headquarters in Monrovia California. It was the summer of 1970.

Edited to add: I was 17 (not to turn 18 until October of '70), and the pay was the California minimum wage of $1.65/hour. Even back then it seems like California was ahead on the cost curve.