Minnesota:
How late can my 15-year-old child work?
Children ages 14 and 15 cannot work before 7 a.m., after 9 p.m., more than 40 hours a week or more than eight hours a day. After they reach age 16, they cannot work after 11 p.m. on nights before school or before 5 a.m. on school days. Federal law is more restrictive for children under the age of 16. (See Minnesota Statutes 181A.04.)
I live in a state where one can employ 14 years olds, and it wouldn’t be allowed at all except rural state and farm labor. While the local McDs and so forth will employ 14 year olds, there are legal restrictions on how often they can work, the maximum shift length, what dangerous kitchen equipment they aren’t allowed to operate, etc. I’m totally fine with those restrictions translating to lower pay.
I’m assuming Minnesota is similar and those under-18 employees come with restrictions.
Restrictions are up there ☝️. Not really restrictive.
Those are the shift length restrictions, which are killer for a fast food operation because it means that minors can’t be part of opening/closing staff. I’m assuming there are more restrictions from corporate out of liability concerns in terms of what duties/ what equipment minors are allowed to work with.
I’m all for fighting pure age-based discrimination but I’m just not seeing anything here that seems improper. Employing minors comes with legal restrictions, liability concerns, etc.
See, the way to deal with that is with shift differential pay. Everyone gets the same base pay, and people who work the unpopular shifts get shift differential pay. The difference isn’t in how old you are, it’s in when you are scheduled to work. And this has the advantage of producing volunteers for the bad shifts.
I disagree. American employers want cheap labor, and they’re going to exploit school kids to get it, and most governments are going to go along with it. It may well be business as usual, but that doesn’t make it good.
Sharpe
4184
I believe certain states do allow younger workers a lower minimum wage and typically this is justified as a “training wage” - I’ve never seen a federal age discrimination case on this and don’t know how that would work. The fact that the employer is complying with state law probably goes a long way towards protecting them but it’s not my field.
In any case, the issue here is legislatures in many states allowing this sort of thing.
Here’s the link to the Minnesota minimum wage table.
In CA, the minimum wages apply to all workers regardless of age.
Beside, the time and shift restrictions, 14-15-year-old workers are less valuable, simply because they have less experience and less maturity. They have less experience handling angry customers, or figuring out how to fix the temperamental fryer, or the importance of showing up on time.
Then, magically, when they turn 16, they get better at those things.
KevinC
4187
In Utah we had similar restrictions. I started working at age 14 and was only able to work until 7pm. I think that went to 9pm on the weekends, if I remember right. I was covered under Federal minimum wage laws, though.
No disagreements here. I honestly suspect that shift differential pay is what the restaurant was going for there and it was only phrased like age discrimination because some shift manager made the sign on the office inkjet printer.
It could be, but if the law allows them to pay less for younger kids regardless of shift, I think they’re probably going to pay less for younger kids regardless of shift.
In many cases they’ve been working for a year or two, so not magically, it is called experience.
Even, if they haven’t they are on AVERAGE more mature, and as such make better workers.
Those are new hire pay rates. They’re paying a 16-yr old more than a 15-yr old, on the basis of nothing but age. Maybe the 15-yr-old actually has more experience than the 16-yr-old? I don’t really think a 1-day or 1-month age difference is the big differentiator you seem to think it is.
I wonder if certain demographics being on average “better workers” is a good basis on which to inform hiring practices.
Go ahead and battle this windmill on an internet forum, good luck. Younger workers getting lower wages has been stable of minimum wages laws, for decades and it is true across numerous countries.
Here is a blog from the UK, on why it is considered a best practice.
The fact remains that businesses tend to hire older worker over younger workers (at least in the teenage years) because there’s the expectation that (for example) an 18-year-old will be more mature than a 15-year-old. (I’m sure there are individual exceptions to this, but it’s still a general trend.) To combat this, some states (like Minnesota) have graduated minimum-wage laws, where the minimum wage for someone under 18 is around 85% of the minimum wage for an adult. That way, businesses are incentivized to hire younger kids and give them work experience for later in life.
tl;dr: Do you want it to be unfair that younger kids can’t get hired, or do you want it to be unfair that they have a lower minimum wage?
Sharpe
4196
This is one of those things where I see the right wing constantly screaming what a hellscape CA is for businesses and then when I look at the actual labor laws etc. in various states the opposite seems to be the case. On this particular topic, I think the CA approach (minimum wages apply to ALL workers regardless of age) is the better approach.
On the other hand, this is not a particular hill to die on b/c at least young workers are not permanently trapped in the lower wage slots: they will inevitably age out of them. I consider it one of those “small things that get rounded in favor of The Man” that abound in our society. Of course, when you add those all up, it’s a big deal…
CraigM
4197
I mean $11/hr for a 14 year old is both above the naational minimum (7.25), Minnesota minimum wage (8.42), and the laarge employer minimum wage in Minnesota (10.33)
So getting upset about that is not really worth it. When we talk about things like a living wage and all that, the issue isn’t with 14 and 15 year olds mostly, as mosst of them live with family.
Of all the places to focus frustration with the wages being too low, the rent is too high, etc. this is a very poorly chosen target.
Also I don’t inherently agree with the position that 14 year olds should be paid the same as 18+. Some of the reasons have been articulated above, but there is merit in the notion that they are less valuable as employees and focusing on better pay for adults is more important.
Houngan
4198
It is, but CA is also a very wealthy state, particularly in the inequality factor where the consumers can pass along a lot of wealth to the producers/workers. It gets a lot more complicated when you’re trying to elevate the working class when there isn’t a consumer class as able to absorb the difference.
Sharpe
4199
@Houngan, what’s the basic model for your reasoning? Do you have any numbers to support that position?
