Three 16 year old boys died in the past 5 weeks while working with big machinery.

One company explained that “the child ‘should not have been hired’ and that his age and identity were misrepresented on his hiring paperwork with an outside staffing company.” You don’t say. How innocent the company is acting? We were lied to and this poor unfortunate 16 year shouldn’t have been hired, we wouldn’t have hired him if only we had known his correct age.

For some reason I don’t believe it. Every employee has to provide proper documentation in order to work. The company has a responsibility to examine this documentation for validity. This is standard practice in place for some years. I used to do it in the 1980’s. HR departments should have this down. But OK, mistakes happen, perhaps a 16 year old was able to get a hold of a convincing fake document but a quick glance at the prospective employee might have set off some alarms. Somehow these boys with peach fuzz as beards were able to pass themselves off as older. Even if you accept that they are telling the truth, there is a frightening level of incompetence within the management of the company.

But I think this more than just an accident. One of the more illuminating giveaways that this is something more nefarious, is that it happened 3 teenagers at different companies and in different parts of the company met the same fate. This also might explain why Republican governors and legislatures, those champions of the working class, are loosening child labor laws. Companies are complaining that they are having trouble filling their open positions. Something must be done, so teenage labor is the solution to their problem.

Unfortunately, teenagers are banned from hazardous labor. No problem. These companies did a risk assessment about hiring underage employees. They figured out how much potential fines would be and then compared this to the price of raising wages and decided that paying the fines was the better deal. Higher wages are a sure thing while fines need only be paid if they get caught. Now that is a risk worth taking. They would probably have gotten away with it if nothing had gone wrong. This suggests that fines are too low. Fines should discourage companies from breaking the law, not be a factor in whether they are going to break the law or not.

But, saying that they can’t attract workers is misleading. These companies are having problems filling positions at the wage they want to pay. The wage isn’t enough to attract adults to perform an obviously hazardous job. When labor is scarce and the job is hazardous, the company needs to pay wages that attract the best workers. It is basic capitalism. They can’t just expect workers to risk life and limb for nothing. But, of course, these companies do.

What I find particularly irksome here is that these so called Capitalists only like Capitalism when it is to their advantage. When it isn’t, they moan to government for help — make the laws easier so we can hire people who will take the jobs at the rate we want to pay. Let in qualified immigrants who will take the lower wage. Hire teenagers who will take the lower wage. Boo hoo. Whatever they are, they aren’t good Capitalists.