Maybe We Should Legalize Child Labor After All

…the law prohibits most young people from working in the first place. This makes young people financially dependent on their parents, even though they’re forced to work one job without pay: their own schooling.

While child labor laws were designed to protect young people from being exploited by businesses and parents, they keep young people from obtaining money legally without their parents’ help. It is usually assumed that, if youth were given the freedom to seek jobs, they would be coerced into working inhumane factory jobs like they were in the early 20th century. However, that happened as a result of the authority parents have over their children: parents essentially sold their children out to factories so they could use the money the youth brought home. The youth did not get a say in the matter. Still, in the family businesses and farms where children below 16 are allowed to work, their labor is exploited by parents who treat them like capital.

If young people had legally recognized autonomous rights, a parents’ power to force their children into an abusive work environment would be limited by the youth’s ability to pack up and find work elsewhere, or to simply refuse. If youth were given equal rights to adults, they would have more options available to them to improve their situation. Furthermore, a society which treats education and career credentials in an open and flexible manner could even allow youth to earn liveable wages without being constrained by the rigidity of the current system. With these changes, youth would be able to choose jobs themselves and would not be exploited any more than adult workers…

Even when youth are allowed to work, the number of hours they can work is often limited so that it’s still a challenge for them to earn enough income to live independently.”

“Trouble finding work isn’t just a reality of the working world, it is partly the fault of discrimination against younger workers.  The concept of “passing” is widely studied in the context of race, gender and other social groups, where those of a disenfranchised minority adjust their appearance or demeanor to “pass” as a member of a favored group.  While generally seen as demeaning and a symptom of pervasive discrimination when other groups do it, it is accepted as common place and common sense for youth to pass as older.  Young people going to job interviews will wear glasses, grow beards, change their makeup and make other attempts to appear older than they are.  Youth is clearly a disadvantage when it comes to finding a job, so successful applicants do their best to distance themselves from their younger age.  The phenomena of passing and the terrible reality of unemployment among young people are clear signs that age discrimination is rampant in the work place, and a serious problem affecting our nation…

Younger workers find themselves routinely being passed up for promotions, given less responsibility, and talked down to because of their age.  Such ageism not only has tangible effects: it can create a hostile work environment and drive younger workers away.”

“Younger workers face overt age discrimination in both laws and corporate policies.  The first form of discrimination they may encounter is often from the minimum wage itself.  The first minimum wages were set 100 years ago partly out of concern for young people working in sweat shops for extremely low wages.  Today however, the minimum wage explicitly supports much lower wages for young workers.  The Federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour contains an exception – an exception for youth.  Workers under the age of 20 can be legally paid only $4.25 an hour for the same work.  Even with a significant boost to the overall minimum wage, this “sub-minimum” wage has not changed since 1996. It has not even kept up with inflation.”

“Typically, very young workers start out relatively unproductive, as they are new to the job, but their value to the company rises rapidly.  Before long they hit their maximum level of productivity and plateau there for the next few decades of their working life.  Eventually though, as workers age, their productivity begins to decline.  If your pay was tied to how much value you provide your employer you would see pay follow this general trajectory.  However all workers start their careers being paid little and seeing their compensation gradually increase over time even past the point of peak productivity.  This results in older workers being paid more than they are worth at the expense of younger workers. This is unjust discrimination…

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We believe the massive age inequalities in pay are not only bad for young workers, but bad for older workers and companies as well.  We all take for granted that entry level pay will be low and increase over time, but there is no reasonable justification for this.  Numerous studies demonstrate that young workers are severely undercompensated for their labor and older workers are overcompensated for theirs.  Often this delayed-compensation arrangement is seen as a way to buy loyalty and continued productivity over the life of a worker, however we believe this structure is out of step with the changing world of work and flatly discriminatory.

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Workers today are less likely to remain with a single employer for their lifespan.  Delayed-compensation models are out of step with these new expectations and norms.  Such pay structures are less flexible than the work force they seek to reward and unsuited to the task.  By paying older workers so much more than they contribute to the company, employers are much less likely to hire older workers and when seeking budget cuts, more likely to let them go.  Considering the greater value young workers provide, this is understandable, though harmful to all involved.

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Companies that adopt a flatter, more equitable pay structure will find their compensation better matches up with the productivity of their workers, find themselves better able to compete for talented young workers, and also not have a disincentive to hire older workers.  Such a system would be better for older workers, younger workers and companies themselves.”