A Test to See if You Have a Heart – Child Labor Laws

  The issue for many businesses has been a shortage of unskilled labor for many menial jobs, some rather dangerous – as in those who have to clean factories or slaughterhouses overnight – and even undocumented adult workers are becoming hard to come by with recent immigration backlash policies. As the above chart from Zippia.com illustrates, the weekly hours for children is higher than you might suspect. Safety and educational standards for children also vary for states. But what is a disturbing trend, mostly in red states these days, is the lowering of the ages for those children who can work and lowering some of the workplace standards as well. In the past, employers simply “did it anyway” in a world where state enforcement was lax or non-existent and where federal child labor laws might not apply.

Writing from a blue state perspective, Los Angeles Times columnist, Michael Hiltzik, describes the obvious result of putting increasingly younger children at risk in hazardous work environments: “GOP is bowing to industry even as minors are dying in work accidents… If there is a predictable outcome from the rollback of child labor laws now taking place in red states nationwide, it’s that a flood of injured children is on the way. We are now standing on the edge of the water.

“In recent days, reports of horrific child deaths have come from Mississippi and Wisconsin. In the first case, a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy was killed at a poultry plant in Mississippi. In the second, a 16-year-old boy was killed when he got pinned in a wood-stacking machine at a sawmill.

“What may be most horrifying about these accidents is that the work the children were doing is illegal under the laws of both states. But they happened amid a nationwide push by manufacturer and restaurant lobbies to liberalize child labor laws in those states and elsewhere… In April, I reported on this campaign to bring back what Franklin Roosevelt labeled ‘this ancient atrocity.’… Since then the movement has only advanced.

“Child labor laws are among those most frequently flouted by businesses. The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws in fiscal 2022 increased by 37.5% over the previous year, according to Department of Labor statistics. The number of minors employed in hazardous work in violation of state and federal laws increased by 26% in that period… In the last fiscal year, the federal agency found 835 businesses violating child labor laws. Its fines and penalties averaged about $5,300 each. Do you think that’s stringent enough to dissuade would-be violators? Me neither.

“What’s worse, ‘these numbers represent just a tiny fraction of violations, most of which go unreported and uninvestigated,’ the labor-affiliated Economic Policy Institute observes.

If child labor laws already on the books can be flouted so easily, just imagine what will happen in states that have signaled that they don’t take their own laws seriously…. The prospect of carnage among child workers hasn’t put a dent in the campaign to make them more vulnerable to workplace injuries and death…. The rollbacks are often rationalized by conservative political leaders as promoting ‘parental rights.’

“That’s the argument voiced by spokespeople for Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, who signed a law in March repealing a rule that required children under 16 to verify their age and obtain the written consent of a parent or guardian before obtaining a work certificate…. The Sanders administration defended the law by stating that ‘this permit was an arbitrary burden on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job.

“Another argument emphasizes the virtues of work for teens. On May 26, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa signed a pernicious law allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work as many as six hours a day when schools are in session, to as late as 9 p.m. During school vacations, they could work as late as 11 p.m. … The measure also removes prohibitions against minors working in industrial laundries and in freezers and meat coolers.”

Indeed “parental rights” are the rallying cry behind much of the “culture wars” – against critical race theory, in favor of censorship and editing historical unpleasantries out of high school history books – championed by red states everywhere following the lead of anti-woke Florida Governor and failing presidential candidate Ron DeSantis. That the children most like to find their way into these mega-dangerous jobs are in impoverished family units desperate for money to survive cannot be much of a surprise to anyone. That the bottom of the economic ladder, where children may be forced by their parents into what seem pretty close to slave labor, is heavily populated with children of color and/or recent undocumented immigrants, also should not surprise you. A more stringent federal control over child labor has been drifting around for well over a century as a constitutional amendment… but…

So my list of White Christian nationalist/supremacist buzz words is growing. From the misuse of the words “patriot,” “creeping socialism,” “incenting the job-creators,” “woke,” “right to life” (from folks who favor the death penalty and automatic weapons ownership), “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” “stand your ground,” “hoax,” “witch hunt,” “grooming our children,” “anti-CRT” laws, I now have to move “parental rights” to a new elevated (??) status. Did any of this blog tug at least slightly at your heartstrings?

I’m Peter Dekom, and “no,” Ron DeSantis, I do not want the United States to be modeled on the mess you have made in Florida.