Kids Should Be Seen … And Not Worked

In 1890, my Irish grandmother came to America with my newly widowed great-grandmother and four young siblings. She was five. She recounted the story of how she stayed in their tiny New York City apartment minding the two youngest (one of whom was loosely tied to a bedpost for “safety”) while her mother and the older (not by much) kids worked in a factory. It was a typical immigrant story.

For centuries, kids worked on farms, in coal mines, or factories. They were a source of cheap labor, working punishing hours, and risking their health. Kids lost fingers and teeth, developed lung disease and other ailments. Naturally, they received little or no education.

In the early 1900s, a serious push to regulate child labor began to limit when and how long they could work, and at what age. Laws were written to prioritize their education. But it seems that “child labor” of the kind favored during the gritty Industrial Age is making a comeback. GOP governors have been loosening regulations, allowing kids to work with fewer (if any) limits. 

Federal law currently says that 14 and 15-year-olds can’t work for more than three hours on school nights, and not past 7 pm. However, in 2023, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed the Youth Hiring Act. This allows kids under 16 to work without the previously required documentation meant to keep them from being exploited. Iowa and Minnesota are now allowing teenagers to work in meatpacking plants and construction. A proposal in Florida would allow kids of 16 and up to work over 30 hours a week, and would provide fewer of the breaks that are currently mandatory.

Since 2019, violations of child labor laws have increased by 88 percent. Among the most vulnerable are migrant kids who find work in dangerous places like on construction sites and in meatpacking plants. A poultry processing plant in Mississippi was just fined over $200K after a 16-year old Guatemalan boy on the cleaning crew died after being pulled into a piece of machinery.

In Kentucky, two 10-year-olds were found working in a McDonald’s at 2 in the morning. In fact, when it comes to illegally employing kids, fast food companies are the worst offenders.

Sadly, there are simply not enough inspectors to monitor employers and hold them accountable. Several Democratic Senators have drafted a bill meant to strengthen existing child labor laws. One measure significantly increases financial penalties by many thousands of dollars. These fines would not just target the individual business but would also apply to any contractors and subcontractors of that business.

While most of us had part-time jobs growing up, we were likely able to juggle them with school. The loosening of child labor laws isn’t only physically dangerous, it eats into kids’ potential as their schoolwork and attendance suffers. 

Because of her immigrant circumstances, my grandmother’s own education was extremely limited. She spent the rest of her life trying to make up for it, reading voraciously and circling words in the dictionary each day. Let’s not return to the time when kids were nothing more than commodities, denied their very best future. That’s hardly “the American dream.”

Cindy Grogan is a writer, lover of history and "Star Trek" (TOS), and hardcore politics junkie. There was that one time she campaigned for Gerald Ford (yikes), but ever since, she's been devoted to Democratic and progressive policies.