The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. It must also set aside $1.5 million to help the immigrant minors who were illegally employed.
Immigrant children as young as 14 were found working illegally amid dangerous heavy equipment at a Tennessee firm that makes parts for lawn mowers sold by John Deere and other companies, according to Labor Department officials.
The company, Tuff Torq, was fined nearly $300,000 for hiring 10 children. As part of a consent agreement with the federal government, the company is also required to set aside $1.5 million to help the children who were illegally employed. Ryan Pott, general counsel for Tuff Torq’s majority owner, the Japanese firm Yanmar, acknowledged the violations to NBC News.
$300k is a joke. Every manager should be in prison and the factory should be nationalized. Keep the legit (adult) employees there, and transition the business to worker ownership.
Do that a few times and you’ll see some changes in how businesses behave.
Don’t need to nationalize it. Turn it into a cooperative instead. Every worker owns shares within the company. Profits are shared.
That’s the “transition to worker ownership” part. IANAL but I think that the government taking it over might be a necessary intermediate step if you’re compelling transition to a co-op.
A cool law would be something like “first right to sale” where if a company gets sold or goes public the employees must be given the right to purchase as much % or as many shares at least one penny cheaper than the buyer or banks who are distributing the IPO.
People don’t have a lot of extra money, so its just a first step to shifting the means of production to employees. But it’s a good first step in my opinion.
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to them, turning a business into a co-op is top-tier violence.
Oh sure the rich can profit off child labor but talking about violence is off the table. Just sit and take it. Maybe peacefully protest somewhere that’s not too disruptive.
Great suggestions. Worker ownership would fix a LOT of things in this country.
Wow!
300k is so cheap to commit child labor! What an “affordable fee” to pay children like $5/hr and put them in dangerous situations. Best of all, they don’t know any better and you just lie to them!
Yay thank you America!!!
Sooo … the solution to children workers is … communism?
I don’t think you know what the words “nationalize” or “communism” mean.
Seize the means of production! Power to the people!
Capitalism demands profits, which demand mistreatment, which results in this.
But keep banging your drum, guy. You’re the reason nothing changes.
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Abolition of child labor is one of the traditional demands of the American communist movement. Children should be taught a broad base education and be given time to play and rest and parents shouldn’t feel financial pressure to make their child work
Nothing wrong with a bit of communism. You know unless you like your politics dog whistle simple, in which case i guess you do you.
That’s capitalism. The business is given to its workers, not the state