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12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

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Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#101

Post by jonfw »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #81
stolenmerch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Iowa kid, I detasseled corn every summer from when I was 12 to 16. 10 hour days, 5 or 6 days a week, in the Iowa heat and humidity. Not saying every ag job for kids is like mine or José Velásquez Castellano's, but it's not that cruel. I'm not sure if I was supplementing my family's income or not, but I sure was paying for things that other more well-off kids had their parents pay for. I'm not arguing for "child…

You missed out on career opportunities typical upper middle class inner city/suburban kids had access to. Outside of software engineering and a few other specific verticals, most high earning careers would require some sort of preparation from high school. There is a massive opportunity cost for kids when it comes to working in the fields. People wonder how some public figures can just fail upwards, this sort of succ…

You think these farm kids are going to be groomed to be the next Gates if they're not working farms?

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#102

Post by danShumway »

dahfizz wrote: post #73
danShumway wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, Castellano is a sophomore at Tufts University. But when he worked, he felt "this sense that working in those fields was going to be the rest of my life, that I had nothing else going for me." [...] > He worked alongside other kids with one of North Carolina's most valuable crops. Some of them worked in the summer and went to school the rest of the year, like him. Some didn't go to school at all. ---- How are…

OP literally said: > The issue is when this starts being less of a learning experience and more of an actual full time job. Sending 12 year olds out to earn a living clearly isn’t right. You are straw manning. Nobody here wants kids working full time.

> OP literally said:

The comment I'm replying to literally does not say that, you're referencing an upstream comment by a different person. Did you mean to reply in a different thread?

I didn't take hahamrfunnyguy's comment in the way you seem to be taking it, but I'd be happy to learn that they don't support full-time labor for 12 year olds.

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#103

Post by jleyank »

flandish wrote: post #92
hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of those twelve-year-olds that worked in the fields to save money for an education. We actually started when I was about 10 or 11. My sister and I grew pumpkins to sell at our roadside farm stand and grew vegetables that were sold to a local grocery chain through a program run by 4H/Cooperative Extension. It was hard work, but a great experience. There were some 10-12 hour days when we were planting, and it…

> encouraged If the laborers own the business, sure. But .. when they do not, they are simply exploited for someone else’s profit. Let me ask another way: What is stopping the field/process owner from hiring an adult with minimum wages and attractive benefit packages?

Check out the UK - nobody wants to go muck about in the fields picking food for crap wages. They used to have immigrants for that.

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#104

Post by [deleted] »

psychlops wrote: post #91
mprovost wrote: post #38

I spent my summers from ages 14-18 picking shade tobacco (for cigar wrappers) in Connecticut's Tobacco Valley. I'm not sure if it was state law but you couldn't start until you were 14. This was during summer vacation when school was out - but it used to be such an important local industry that if the crop was late they would delay the start of the school year so kids could keep picking. Boys and girls could both wor…

Few things are more educational than hard work. I did my time on an assembly line and worked like crazy through college so I didn't have to do that for a living.

[deleted]

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#105

Post by dahfizz »

dbspin wrote: post #100
dahfizz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP literally said: > The issue is when this starts being less of a learning experience and more of an actual full time job. Sending 12 year olds out to earn a living clearly isn’t right. You are straw manning. Nobody here wants kids working full time.

Lots of people in the comments are wilfully eliding the distinction between their fond memories of working for a few hours to save for candy and videogames, and the child exploitation being described in the article.

You're being uncharitable.

In response to a comment saying that all 12 year olds should be banned from working:

> This is child labour. It's indefensible.

People are pointing out that working at that age can be safe and beneficial. Nobody is claiming that kids should work full time, and people don't feel the need to add that disclaimer because its not a reasonable position they would need to defend against.

> I enjoyed milk as a kid

> Oh, so you think people should be forced to drink milk? You want every other beverage banned? You are willfully eliding important clarifications.

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#106

Post by mprovost »

arcticbull wrote: post #75
mprovost wrote: post #38

I spent my summers from ages 14-18 picking shade tobacco (for cigar wrappers) in Connecticut's Tobacco Valley. I'm not sure if it was state law but you couldn't start until you were 14. This was during summer vacation when school was out - but it used to be such an important local industry that if the crop was late they would delay the start of the school year so kids could keep picking. Boys and girls could both wor…

Were you paid a full adult salary? With benefits? If not, this is a harmful labor practice because you were undercutting the wages of full adult workers. In the same way that prison labor and undocumented workers undercut pay of adult workers, so too do child laborers. Neither are really able to report labor and safety violations, neither are able to decide not to work, and neither are paid a proper living wage. Neit…

I don't think anyone had any illusions about "teaching" us anything other than the value of hard work. We made minimum wage, no benefits (what does that even mean for a kid, we all had health insurance through our parents). I was able to save up for a few summers and buy myself a new computer (a 486SX!), which ultimately led me to where I am today.

Seasonal agricultural work like this has been done by kids for generations. There's a short time where you need a flexible workforce and then you don't need them the rest of the year. And our hours were totally variable based on the crop and the weather. Some weeks there just wasn't anything to pick and we'd have to wait. You couldn't count on this income as an adult trying to pay the bills or raise a family. There were adults working there of course but they had different jobs (like driving tractors) and more steady income. I don't think we were stealing jobs from adults.

In the end the number of kids willing to work in the fields went down and these days they don't even bother trying to hire locals. They started flying in seasonal workers from Puerto Rico and then Jamaica. You can save up enough money in a few months to go home and live off of for a while (plus any other seasonal work you can find).

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#107

Post by shadowfox »

csdreamer7 wrote: post #98

There are several things in the article I feel people should be discussing. > He sometimes had trouble getting the money he was owed for his labor. At the start of his days, he says, he'd write his name and the hours he'd worked in a notebook and "hope that notebook wouldn't get lost" — which would mean he wouldn't get paid. Unpaid labor. Wage theft is common between adults, how is a child suppose to defend their hou…

Yes indeed! There are so many disturbing bits in that article, but somehow in these comments it is getting conflated with a sort of character-building-by-hard-work and pulling-oneself-up-by-the-bootstrap narrative, which is mostly orthogonal to much of the stuff in the article.

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#108

Post by redeeman »

edent wrote: post #87
redeeman wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and to put context into EU, lets also remember that this is the same legislative body that until a few years ago would have farmers scrap perfectly good cucumbers if their bend is too big. the EU is utterly out of control, and legislates EVERYTHING, most often poorly. They would also tell you how fast you're allowed to vacuum your livingroom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromyth#Straight_bananas and https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_09_...

so... it was a myth, but at the same time, the EU press release says "its ceasing to be in effect now!!" ? and I did say "until some years ago".

in what way is what I said wrong? downvoters are just unhappy that their beloved big daddy government did a baddie

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#109

Post by [deleted] »

dahfizz wrote: post #105
dbspin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people in the comments are wilfully eliding the distinction between their fond memories of working for a few hours to save for candy and videogames, and the child exploitation being described in the article.

You're being uncharitable. In response to a comment saying that all 12 year olds should be banned from working: > This is child labour. It's indefensible. People are pointing out that working at that age can be safe and beneficial. Nobody is claiming that kids should work full time, and people don't feel the need to add that disclaimer because its not a reasonable position they would need to defend against. > I enjoy…

[deleted]

Re: 12-year-olds can't buy cigarettes – but they can work in tobacco fields

#110

Post by nradov »

sneak wrote: post #80
werdnapk wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in strawberry fields during summer months at about 12 years old or younger. I actually enjoyed it and loved the money I made to be able to buy some Nintendo games or candies. More kids should be learning some job skills early and get out of the house.

Doing manual labor in a field isn't "learning some job skills".

Job skills include showing up on time and following directions without mouthing off. Those skills must be learned, they aren't instinctual. Middle class people take those skills for granted but some members of the persistent underclass who grew up on public assistance literally never learned those basics and are now essentially unemployable.
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