Arkansas goes back to the 19th century. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the governor of the state – and former spokesperson for President Trump – signed a law in March that facilitates child labor. Minors under 16 will no longer need to produce an administrative permit with their age, parental authorization and a description of their tasks and schedules. Parents will thus be freed from these “obsolete” and “arbitrary” constraints, assured a state spokesperson. Arkansas, of which Bill Clinton was governor, is not an isolated case. Over the past two years, ten states, mostly in the conservative Midwest, have introduced bills or passed measures that reduce the protections for minors put in place by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938. In Iowa, a new law authorizes children from the age of 14 to work “temporarily” in the cold rooms of slaughterhouses and industrial laundries.
The State can also grant derogations to minors from the age of 16 enrolled in roofing or demolition courses. 14-year-olds can wear themselves out for up to six hours a day after school. In Minnesota, a bill allows 16-17 year olds to be hired on construction sites. Ohio is proposing to extend the workday to nine o’clock at night during the school year. New Jersey allows 50 hours a week during the summer for 16-17 year olds. “It’s a regrettable and worrying trend, observes Reid Maki, of the Child Labor Coalition. These laws will lead to a deterioration of working conditions, and a reduction in controls.”
“We are simply allowing our young people to learn and earn money,” retorted Adrian Dickey, a Republican elected representative from Iowa. Industrial lobbies see it as a way to solve their recruitment problems. “Do we want to compensate for labor shortages on the backs of children? worries Reid Maki. If it is so difficult to recruit for these dangerous jobs, let’s start by increasing wages.” Behind this offensive against children’s rights is, according to the Washington Post, the Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank that wants to dismantle federal regulations. And take advantage of a vulnerable immigrant workforce.
835 companies pinned in 2022
Over the past two years, more than 250,000 Latino minors without parents have arrived in the United States illegally and are ready to do anything to earn a living. The number of offenses relating to the clandestine employment of children has increased by 69% since 2018, calculates the Ministry of Labor. In 2022, inspectors nabbed 835 companies employing more than 3,800 minors. Among them, Packers Sanitation Services, a cleaning company which has assigned more than a hundred young people, some as young as 13, to night shifts to clean slaughterhouses. However, the risk of accidents among adolescents is high, according to statistics. At least a dozen minor migrants have died in the past five years. Journalistic investigations have revealed shocking abuses: 12-year-olds employed by automotive contractors for Hyundai and Kia in Alabama; more than 300 children, some as young as 10, recruited at McDonald’s in Kentucky! Not to mention agriculture, where the law authorizes work from the age of 12 without hour limits, outside of school time. The sector would employ 300,000 children.
“Stories of kids dropping out of school, falling from exhaustion and being mutilated by machines, we expect to find that in a novel by Charles Dickens or Upton Sinclair, but not in 2023 in the United States, “ protested Hillary Scholten, an elected official from Michigan. The Biden administration has promised to strengthen controls, but there is a shortage of labor inspectors. And the fines are ridiculous. Faced with the outcry caused by the law, elected officials in Arkansas have just voted for a measure that increases the amount of penalties…