Whenever people nowadays see photos of kids working in the mines and factories in the early 20th century, the response is usually disgust. Child labor was a serious issue at that time—but one our nation largely resolved with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which prevented companies from employing children in dangerous jobs. This is one of those laws that I just assumed everyone supported. In fact, most people do support its provisions—except, apparently, Republican lawmakers. Apparently, when confronted with old photos of child laborers, they see only a solution to our current labor shortage.
Over the past few years, child labor has skyrocketed. Since 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor has seen a 69% increase in children being employed illegally by companies. (These figures likely represent only a fraction of the actual violations.) And elected Republicans’ response to this crisis has been to introduce bills and pass legislation—to help out those companies. Since 2021, Republican lawmakers have pushed over 60 bills to dismantle critical protections for child workers. These bills would allow employers to have children work longer hours, to take away child workers’ lunch breaks, and to even permit kids to work jobs previously deemed too dangerous.
Thankfully, in some instances, federal law would still provide some of these protections. But federal law can always be changed. In the leadup to the 2018 midterms, then-President Donald Trump’s administration sought to roll back child protections on roofing work and the operation of industrial equipment. It did not matter if the equipment was power-driven woodworking machines, factory-grade meat grinders, or complex patient lifts in nursing homes. In fact, the nursing home industry’s high injury rates were directly due to those lifts, yet Trump proposed eliminating the safety rules barring children from operating them.
The child labor influx is particularly alarming for child farm laborers, many of whom are immigrants, who face even harsher conditions than in other areas because it is so dependent on immigrant labor. These kids are not going to school, and they don’t have to. Even the Fair Labor Standards Act exempted agriculture, which corporate farms have taken advantage of for decades. In agriculture, it’s possible for children as young as 12 to work unlimited hours as long as the employer has parental consent and the child doesn’t miss school for work.
For Jacquline Aguilar, who was put to work at age 11 for 12-hour shifts in a lettuce field, it was a necessity for her survival since her parents were so poor. Yet her experience was grueling.
“Most days would start with the fields cold and wet with dew,” she wrote in a 2023 blog post for The Child Labor Coalition, a group that seeks to end exploitative child labor. “I was often drenched in mud. By the time the sun rose, it was boiling outside. I would still wear layers of clothes to avoid getting sunburnt and wrap bandanas around my head and neck. There was no cold water available for us during working hours, or even on our lunch break.”
It’s disturbing that young children can harvest crops but are barred from working in air-conditioned buildings to make copies, bag groceries, or sell movie tickets.
This past April, Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly introduced a bill to remove work-permit requirements for children as young as 14. (Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a similar bill into law last year.) Missouri legislators were quick to defend themselves by claiming today’s youth is too lazy:
Republicans would rather roll back laws than tackle the very real crisis before us: Children are getting exploited even under current labor laws. In 2023, the Department of Labor announced that Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., had been caught illegally employing over 100 children aged 13 to 17 in hazardous jobs at its meatpacking facilities. These children, many of whom were unaccompanied migrant youth, endured overnight shifts cleaning dangerous equipment on slaughterhouse floors, with some sustaining injuries from caustic chemicals and other hazards. In Wisconsin, a 16-year-old died while illegally working at a sawmill.
Republicans often respond to this Labor Department oversight by attacking the agency. On July 5, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds demanded the reconsideration of fines against some businesses that violated federal child labor laws. A Labor Department spokesman responded bluntly, saying in a statement, “No child should be working long hours, doing dangerous work, or be employed in unsafe conditions.”
The conservative rollback of child labor protections is being driven by a think tank called the Foundation for Government Accountability, according to The Washington Post. This Florida-based group, funded by Republican mega-donors, designed the law eliminating work permits and age verification in Arkansas, as well as the law in Iowa that allows 14-year-olds to work night shifts and 15-year-olds to work assembly lines. (That bill was so controversial that the Iowa Senate passed the bill before 5 AM on April 18, 2023.) And in Florida, the group worked with lawmakers on a bill to roll back protections from 1913 on the number of hours that children can work.
Going in the opposite direction, however, is California. For instance, children between the ages of 14 and 17 must have completed seventh grade before they are eligible to work during the school year. Additionally, children aged 12 to 13 are prohibited from working on any school day. Moreover, last fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law requiring schools to educate children about workplace safety and child labor laws. Assemblymember Liz Ortega was the bill’s sponsor. “We are seeing headlines about children abused at workplaces across the country―wage theft, violations of labor law, and even serious life-changing injuries,” she said. “As Republicans in other states are working hard to put our children in harm’s way, California is giving kids the tools to stand up for themselves.”
As it turns out, conservatives were right: Children do need protection. However, the real threat doesn’t come from books or the LGBTQ+ community. It comes from Republican lawmakers themselves.
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