By Terri Gerstein | For The New York Times
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas signed a bill last month rolling back the state’s child labor protections, making it easier for employers to hire children under 16. Elsewhere, bills to allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work in meatpacking plants and other dangerous jobs in Iowa as part of training programs and 16- and 17-year-olds to take jobs at construction sites in Minnesota are under consideration.
These enacted and potential rollbacks are happening just when the country is experiencing a surge of child labor violations on a scale and of a type that we hadn’t heard about for many years. Laws in the United States prohibit certain very dangerous work for minors, but recent investigative reporting by The New York Times and Reuters has exposed migrant children as young as 12 working at car factories, meat processors and construction sites; household-name companies generally avoid liability through the use of sometimes sketchy subcontractors and staffing agencies.
Labor agency data released in February showed spikes in the number of children being employed illegally by companies. The U.S. Labor Department said last month that it saw a 69 percent increase since 2018; it found that in the last fiscal year, 835 companies employed more than 3,800 children in violation of federal labor laws. Child labor violations include not only situations involving...
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