At least it would appear that it’s okay to employ people under the age of 18 in dangerous conditions so long as you donate to a political party that’s in power. I would imagine that WalMart didn’t start employing kids wielding chainsaws only after the election of G. W. Bush, so placing the blame on an inept federal government isn’t likely correct. A corrupt bureaucracy would likely be the place to look; at both Republicans and Democrats.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer agreed to pay $135,540 to settle federal charges that it violated child labor laws in Connecticut, Arkansas and New Hampshire. As part of the agreement, revealed yesterday after it was secretly signed in January, the Labor Department agreed “to give Wal-Mart 15 days’ notice before the Labor Department investigates any other ‘wage and hour’ accusations, like failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.”

NY Times Story has more;

The agreement states, “Compliance with the child labor laws and regulations will be an important factor in evaluating the performance of managers.”

[...]

Victoria Lipnic, assistant labor secretary for employment standards, called the settlement typical, saying that giving Wal-Mart notice before conducting investigations would encourage the company to correct the problems sooner.

[...]

In the settlement, Wal-Mart agreed not to employ any worker under age 14

So, if your parents warned you that they were going to toss your room looking for drugs a week from tuesday, what would that force you to do? Stop smoking marijuana or hide your stash somewhere else for the day. I have a feeling that some managers will be giving a number of 16 year olds the day off when the inspectors come around. Hiding the problem, and not making it go away. After all, if the managers don’t hide the problem, they’ll get bad reviews. As it is, WalMart has a long history of fines assessed for having minors working too long, too late, and inappropriate situations; I’m sure that THIS time they’ll do better.

Maybe it’s time to think about re-opening up that Coal Mine…

My favourite quote from the comments after the DailyKOS post;

Ford paid his employees enough so that they could buy his products.

Walmart pays their employees so little so that they have to buy their products.

The story at The Labor Blog
Check out the Walmart Fact Checker for some more feel-good WalMart stories.