‘Dumb and dangerous’: US sees surge in efforts to weaken child labor regulations

This March a bill was reintroduced in the US House and Senate that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work in certain mechanized operations in the logging industry under parental supervision. Timber industry groups have strongly backed the legislation. For Wendy Bostwick, the news was a nightmare.

Bostwick's son Cole, who had just turned 18, died in a logging accident in 2014 on a job site in Washington where his father, Tim Bostwick, was also working.

"Obviously that was a tragic situation, but somebody who does want to get into logging can and should be supervised by their parents," Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, chief sponsor of the Future Logging Careers Act, said in an interview with the local Washington paper the Chronicle. "If a child is going to go into logging, what better way than to start with your family and having your family teach it to you?"

"Bullshit!" Bostwick told the Guardian. "It should open our eyes.

"One of the most dangerous jobs in the world and people want to put their children out there? Kids that age are not emotionally ready for something like this. They don't have the mental faculties to drink alcohol, but they can go out there and make life-and-death decisions? I don't think so. It's dumb and dangerous," she said.

The logging bill is just one of several efforts across the US to roll back child labor protections at a time when many employers are still struggling to fill jobs.

Backed by big business and lobby groups, politicians nationwide are pushing attempts to expand work hours for minors, expand the industries minors are permitted to work in, reduce enforcement and legislate sub-minimum wages for minors. These rollbacks at the federal and state levels are being proposed even as child labor violations have soared in recent years.

The logging industry is one of the most dangerous fields in which to work in the US, consistently leading with the highest workplace fatality rate in the nation.

"If this thing goes through, there are going to be a lot more families out there like ours. It's been almost nine years and we still live it every day. We have to be careful of what music we listen to or what movies we watch, because it reminds us of Cole and the accident. We will never be right again. My whole family still has PTSD issues. My husband and I have been in and out of therapy since it happened," added Bostwick.

"Losing an adult in the family is nothing compared to losing a child. Why, why, why would anyone want a child out there? There are plenty of adults who need those jobs too."

Against this legislative drive, surveys show an already alarming surge in child labor violations. The number of children employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% in the last year and by 283% since 2015, from 1,012 reported cases of children working in violation of child labor laws to 3,876 in 2022, according to a March 2023 report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

"I think what we're seeing in terms of the state push right now should be viewed as the latest multi-industry push to really wipe out regulation of child labor, not in one fell swoop, but that's always sort of the end goal of the various pushes coming all at the same time," said Jennifer Sherer, senior state policy coordinator for the Economic Analysis and Research Network (Earn) Worker Power Project, and author of the EPI report.

The 2023 Death on the Job report by the AFL-CIO labor federation noted that 350 workers in the US under the age of 25 died on the job in 2021, including 24 workers younger than 18 years old.

Ten states have proposed or passed legislation to roll back child labor protections in the past two years, including eight states so far in 2023.

Arkansas passed legislation in 2023 to eliminate age verification and parental or guardian permission requirements.

In Iowa, a bill was passed in 2022 to lower the minimum age of childcare staff and reduce staff-to-child ratios. The state's Republican majority senate also recently passed a broader bill that enables minors to work in hazardous occupations and extends permitted work hours.

"This is part of a nationwide redefinition of childhood in the United States. It's pushing Iowa kids decades into the past and it's really concerning, because I think it's going to take advantage of some of the most economically vulnerable kids in Iowa and around the nation," said the Democratic state senator Liz Bennett.

New Jersey and New Hampshire also passed legislation in 2022 to roll back child labor protections. Missouri recently included an amendment to a house bill (HB188) that would expand work hours for minors. Legislation to relax child labor laws has also been introduced in Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and South Dakota.

In addition to the legislation cited in the report, Nina Mast, an economic analyst at Earn and co-author of the EPI report, noted bills have been introduced in Maine and Virginia to create a sub-minimum wage for workers aged 14 to 17 years old. A bill in Georgia was proposed but failed this year to eliminate work youth permits.

Emails obtained by the Washington Post revealed much of the legislation aimed at rolling back child labor protection was drafted by the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based conservative thinktank that touts parental freedoms in advocating for the bills.

Business lobby groups are also pushing for change. "Could extra teen working hours help restaurants with the labor shortage?" the National Restaurant Association asked last year in a blogpost calling for Congress to pass the Republican-backed Teenagers Earning Everyday Necessary Skills (Teens) Act, which would lift restrictions on when and how much time teenagers can work.

The efforts, backed by business industry groups and conservative thinktanks, often contradict federal child labor law standards. In its report, the EPI argues the goal is to challenge federal standards at the local level in order to weaken or eliminate federal wage and hour standards.

The drive to increase child labor is being accompanied by a push to undermine oversight, said Sherer. She noted that the legislation in Iowa to roll back child labor protections also includes language to relax enforcement of any child labor violations.

"The most immediate problem and consequences, I think, created by the state rollbacks is the message that it's sending, that on top of the already weak enforcement, it's the state officials saying to the business community and to workers that they're not going to be enforcing wage and hour or child labor laws," said Sherer.

Democrats have proposed several federal bills to counter the trend and the Department of Labor and Department of Health and Human Services have proposed policies to strengthen enforcement of child labor violations and increase monetary penalties for violations. Opponents of the bills argue that enforcement is already inadequate and enforcement agencies haven't been adequately staffed or funded to respond to the rise in child labor violations.

If these bills are not stopped, said Sherer, the long-term consequences for many children will be severe.

"There's really extensive research in the public health and education world on why we have developed, over time, restrictions on work hours," she said.

"Teens and high school students that get close to or exceed that 20-hour-a-week mark for paid labor during the school year end up in a higher-risk category, are less likely to complete high school, less likely to be in a position to pursue post-secondary education or training, and that puts young people on a path to fewer job opportunities and lower earnings for a lifetime. It's actually very consequential," said Sherer. "Even those pushes to extend work hours are a really slippery slope, and dangerous in terms of long-term economic outcomes for children and their families."