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Originally posted by Hailey:
http://edmsun.canoe.ca/News/Canada/2005/07/16/1134396-sun.html

I can't believe anyone would hire an underage child. I hope his parents are charged criminally as well as the employer.

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I had no idea that you had to have permits for certain types of jobs...I was working on construction sites, cleaning up debris and clearing brush from the time I was 12...

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Come to think of it, at the stables, all of us kids used to do things that probably would be frowned upon now, e.g. driving a tractor without a rollbar or a safety belt

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Honestly that's inexcusable.

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It's criminal that we expect children to work at all. IMO, 16 should be an absolute minimum working age, except in incredibly rare circumstances, or perhaps in acting and other sorts of employment.

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I agree.

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This is a terrible tragedy.
As far as I am concerned, asking employees to work in dangerous conditions knowing that the employees could be killed is nothing short of first degree murder and should be prosecuted as such.

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Originally posted by arborman:
It's criminal that we expect children to work at all. IMO, 16 should be an absolute minimum working age, except in incredibly rare circumstances, or perhaps in acting and other sorts of employment.

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Where I grew up (farming community) it was (and is) pretty common to have a farmer's kids working on the farm (some pretty long hours and often with hazardous equipment). Telling rural (and very independent-minded rural farm families that minor employment was prohibited wouldn't work too well.

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Originally posted by Hailey:

I'm sure it wouldn't. Charging them criminally when their son loses their arms from being left to work alone on an auger would send a big message. If you don't have the skill set to safelty oversee your children you really need to be held responsible for that.

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But if you're kid who's one year older (18 instead of 17) it's somehow less important if he or she loses an arm?

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Originally posted by fern hill:
Jeez, what about paper routes? My nephew worked at a local vegetable store on Saturdays when he was 12 to 13. He loved it and made some money. I think it would depend on the kid, how responsible he or she was. Of course, I'm not talking about full-time, just part-time.

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Paper routes are different. I had one. They don't take much time, it's relatively easy, and it teaches kids about responsibility. Very few people are advocating that kids shouldn't be doing that. The main issue here is employers who want to use child labour instead of improving conditions for people who work there.

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But if you're kid who's one year older (18 instead of 17) it's somehow less important if he or she loses an arm?

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No it's not less important. Regretfully life isn't exact and we do have to use an arbitrary guideline in terms of distinguishing minors and non-minors. The land of the land is 18.

Children deserve our protection when their parents fail them. Parents putting children in high risk situation for their financial gain are less than admirable.

At 18 young adults are expected to show some independence of thought in terms of their ability to assess risk. That's probably blurred when family relationships are involved and a lifetime of doing that work but I can't effectively address those issues.

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I just think that in the context of farm families, a fixed (and arbitrary) age may not be the best thing. Many farms would go under (and the livelihood of the family disappear) if the whole family didn't work together.

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Since when is it a moral or ethical thing to set up a business that requires minor members of your family to dedicate, willingly or unwillingly, uncompensated hours of their time determined by another person and to work in violation of basic safety standards?

Who gives birth to children so that they can be worker bees in the family business?

If I couldn't make a go of something without using my children as free labour I'd have to re-evaluate my employment.

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I also think it's important to be careful not to impose an urban (or suburban) view of the world on the rural community. Whole families working on farms has been the tradition since agriculture started. I think it would be like imposing a no-child-workers ban on First Canadians, a group of cultures that had families working as units as well.

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I think it's far more important to not impose on children a view of parents that their business requires unpaid, uncompensated, unregulated work from minor children for their own purposes.

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And as for farm families? If they are negligent, and one of their children is injured or killed because of negligence, I don't care what the farmers think, that family should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law in that situation. There's no reason to be softer on farmers who expose their children to danger than we would be if they hired an adult worker.

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http://vancouver.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=bc_building-deaths20050725
"The number of workers killed on the job is up dramatically in B.C., with 58 people dying in workplace accidents so far this year. That's an increase of nearly 50 per cent over the same time last year.

The province in the midst of a major building boom with about $62 billion in major construction planned over the next decade.

And some critics say the government is not doing enough to ensure workplaces are safe – and that cutbacks at the Workers' Compensation Board mean that inspectors don't always know what's going on.