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Labor
In a Harebrained Response to Labor Shortages, Some Lawmakers Want More Child Labor
Bills in Iowa and Minnesota would allow teens as young as 14 to work in dangerous occupations such as meatpacking and construction.
At a time of widespread labor shortages, one might expect policymakers to welcome asylum seekers and economic migrants eager for an opportunity to make a living in the United States. Instead, as the Washington Post reports, legislators in some states have come up with a harebrained proposal for filling those jobs: loosening the restrictions on child labor.
Lawmakers in Wisconsin lifted restrictions on working hours during the school year, but the measure was vetoed by the governor. The Ohio Senate passed a similar bill but it died in the House. Even worse are bills introduced in Iowa and Minnesota that would allow teens as young as 14 to work in dangerous occupations such as meatpacking and construction.
It is unclear whether these legislators are aware that labor activists and social reformers fought for many years in the 19th and early 20th centuries to restrict the exploitation of children in factories, mines, mills and other workplaces. They eventually made progress at the state level, leading to the passage of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.
That law barred young workers from some occupations and limited the hours they could work in others, both for safety reasons and to prevent adverse effects on educational attainment. Adoption of strong child labor laws came to be viewed as one of the hallmarks of a humane society.
Over the past two decades, employers have paid penalties for breaking current child labor protections more than 4,000 times.
While the Fair Labor Standards Act and state regulations eliminated the worst forms of child labor, they did not end abuses entirely. The Violation Tracker run by Good Jobs First documents more than 4,000 cases over the past two decades in which an employer paid a penalty for breaking the rules. The fines imposed in these cases amount to $99 million, or an average of about $24,000 per case — a reflection of the fact that penalty levels are far from harsh.
Most child labor violators are small firms, but some large corporations have also committed the offense. Chipotle Mexican Grill has the highest penalty total, mainly due to a $7.75 million settlement the company reached in 2022 with the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. An audit conducted by the agency of Chipotle outlets had found over 30,000 violations across the state. Two years earlier, Chipotle reached a $1.87 million settlement with the Massachusetts Attorney General over child labor and other wage and hour violations.
Among the other big companies with substantial child labor penalties from multiple cases are: CVS Health ($464,099), Albertsons ($337,790) and Walmart ($317,378).
Most child labor violations are related to potential harm to young workers, but there are also cases in which the harm is real and even deadly. A 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office cited estimates that workers aged 17 and under sustain thousands of injuries each year. That same report included data showing that work-related fatalities for that same age group totaled 452 for the period from 2003 to 2016. The largest numbers of deaths were in agriculture, followed by construction and mining.
The sensible response to all these statistics would be to tighten the rules regarding child labor, not to weaken them. There are better ways to address labor shortages.
Originally published by Dirt Diggers Digest.
