Those of us who follow the labour beat closely are accustomed to bad news. But I doubt even keen observers were fully prepared for the shocking wave of regressive state-level legislation proposed or enacted over the past year or so in the United States. Across the country, state legislatures are gutting child labour protections and making it easier for companies to employ youth — mostly immigrant youth — in extremely dangerous jobs.
A new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that the employment of children in violation of federal child labour laws has increased by 37 per cent in the last year and 283 per cent over 2015, while at least 10 states have introduced or passed legislation rolling back state-level child labour protections in the past two years.
This year alone, seven bills weakening child labour protections have been introduced across six Midwestern states. In one of the most provocative and dangerous cases, Arkansas’ HB1410 removes the requirement that employers verify that children seeking employment are at least 16 years old or have parental consent to work. A spokesperson for governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump’s former press secretary, described age verification requirements as “burdensome and obsolete.”
In June, Iowa passed a sweeping rewrite of the state’s child labour legislation. The bill, SF 167: allows employers to hire teens as young as 14 to work in hazardous jobs; extends maximum working hours, including for night work;...
A man waits to enter the Safeworks supervised consumption site at the Sheldon M. Chumir Health Centre in Calgary in this August 2021 file photo. The Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions is bru...