Fabian Anzures-Flores

Child Labor: A Stagnant Problem

By Fabian Anzures-Flores

Child labor has been a point of contention for many years now. Companies still illegally employ children to their job sites despite government efforts to prevent it. And it isn’t just companies that are fueling the use of child labor, but also people in power in the United States Government that don’t mind if young children work too. It is very disheartening and unfortunate that there are still people willing to place children in a position that could put them in danger, or worse. Now more so because children should be going to school and using their free time to enjoy the childhood they will only ever have once.  However, it was not always illegal for children to start working at a very young age and it was a very common practice before the twenty-first century. These children mainly worked for the survival of their families because their conditions were not the most ideal, especially with a government who was not willing to pay attention to their hardships. One would think that child labor views and prevention have improved, and they have, but an analysis of today’s environment shows that the situation is all too close in similarity. The biggest difference is the scale because certainly there would not be any illegal child labor practices shown in plain sight by employers. Thus, child labor has simply scaled down but the challenges of young children who do work are all but the same to the lives of child workers pre-twenty-first century in the United States. Specifically, migrant children in the United States.

Let’s start at the beginning, when child labor was all but the norm for the time. During the Puritan Age, the whole family needed each other in order to survive, and that of course needed the use of children to do hard manual labor. There was no specification as to which gender did what in this time because each child practically did the same tasks. Children would churn the butter, do farmwork, and housework for the survival of the family (1).  Hence, there really was not much choice for children to have free time or much time to play because all hands were on deck. However, these children had to work for the survival of their family but as the decades passed, children will soon be working for employers, not the family. In the nineteenth century, industrialization increased and this led to the employment of children in factories and mills. In fact, between 1870 and 1900, one in five children were working (2). The story is the same for working children, they have to work in order to survive. The biggest difference now is that the children used to work for the family but now they must work for an employer to support their family. These employers cared little for the children and instead saw them as investments and tools to be used. As Shcuman states it, “children too young to work were viewed as an investment…Oftentimes, contractual arrangements with the head of the household bound the family to provide [child] labor.” So it was common for these children to be seen as objects used to line the pockets of owners who employed them. 

Today, migrant children are subject to the same kinds of treatment faced by children workers in the nineteenth and twentieth century. As of recently, the economic climate has made employers look towards the use of illegal child labor to manufacture their products (3). Migrant children especially take these jobs because their family needs the financial support from them. This is eerily similar to the child workers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Migrant children and children of the past centuries must work to survive and to do that, they must face the exploitative practices of employers who wish to use them for their benefit. Policies that try to tackle these child labor problems often backfire and the barring of social programs puts migrant children at risk (3). It is astonishing that there is still no concrete solution to the exploitative practices against children that are being used in a country like the United States, a place that is proud of its freedoms. 

An example of the exploitation of young children in America came in the form of Packers Sanitation Services Inc. It was recently discovered that they hired more than 100 teenagers between thirteen and seventeen to work overnight and use hazardous chemicals to clean meat processing equipment (4). Perhaps the company needed workers, cheap ones at that, for these kinds of jobs due to the economic climate as mentioned by Bergantino in their article, but the line should have been drawn at hiring children illegally. 

In addition, Wiesnner mentions that hazardous chemicals were being used by these young teenagers in an already unsafe environment. Unfortunately, this mirrors the conditions mentioned in Hansan’s article regarding child laborers of the past. In it, it says that children were exposed to hazards and employed because they were manageable and cheaper (5). Bergantino does not explicitly state that the children were employed because they were cheap, but there is a possibility that they were, as mentioned by Bergantino and Hansan. 

Astonishingly, just like how large amounts of children in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would work in factories, migrant children are heavily exploited in the agricultural industry. So much so that it is reported that an estimated 30,000 to 79,325 children ages between ten and seventeen are working in farms in the United States (6). Thus, the child labor crisis is not just a small group of children that are being exploited, it is instead an extensive problem in the United States. Remember, this is just the amount of exploited children in one industry and who knows about other illegally hired children in other areas. Volz notably includes that the regulations in place today are weak and outdated and do not provide great protection for children. As a result, employers get away with the dangerous conditions they provide with child workers. Just like the employers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they simply see child workers as objects and expendable. These are not the kinds of sentiments no one should endure, especially children. Additionally, Volz says that the United States used to be a country where children were needed to support the family, like the Puritans, but that is simply not the case anymore and that there should be reliable regulations that reflect this change. It is saddening that there seems to have been so much progress for child labor restrictions, but the reality is that these children are experiencing the same conditions as the child workers in the past centuries. 

A dive into the agricultural industry helps put child labor really into perspective in modern day America. So much so that Volz references two laws that have been introduced, at the time of this article being written, that addresses child labor concerns in the agriculture sector. H.R. 3865 aims to ban anyone under eighteen to work with tobacco and H.R. 7345 looks to push for heavier fines for employers who willingly employ children under fourteen or do not comply with paperwork to employ certain age groups. The fact that laws still need to be proposed to stop child labor practices speaks volumes to its current situation. It does not help that there has been an uptick of 37% in 2022 in the number of minors being employed that violate the Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA) and in the past decade, a 140% increase (7). It is blatantly clear that employers simply do not respect the law enough for them to care about the children or the legal ramifications. It is as if these employers were living in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries by the way they act. 

However, the DOL also mentions some of the violation fees they gave to employers, and they are not amounts that are substantially large enough for the employer to care about. The DOL reported that they gave a $17,818 penalty to a large restaurant chain called Schlotzsky’s and a $55,440 penalty to a subsidiary of Kroger (9). Overall, not very big penalties for these tow big companies. An idea proposed in order to reduce child labor practices was to increase penalties (3). Perhaps there should be a significant increase in penalties as hiring children for cheap labor allows the employer to earn a bigger profit and to take a bite out of those profits could help sway their mind. 

Of course, this brings up the regulations that helped reduce the use of child labor before the twenty-first century. Lucy Manning, a DOL employee in 1947, brings in several points as to why there should be child labor laws. In her words, “child-labor laws are needed to make sure that boys and girls have sufficient time for schooling…[child labor] will directly affect [children’s] ability, when [they are] grown, to make a living and to take an intelligent part in community life” (11). This is akin to the idea mentioned by the CRS on how child labor prohibits the children from advancing and becoming a contributing adult. There have been effective laws that combat child labor, but it is especially lenient in the agricultural industry as mentioned by John Oliver and Volz. It is strange that the laws, in general, are meant to be protective but the laws related to child labor are obscure. For example, the CRS notes that the FSLA states that youths 16 and older can work for unlimited hours in hazardous conditions in the agricultural industry (10). For a law to allow such exploitative properties that any agricultural employer can take advantage of is heinous. Manning also says that “many boys and girls were working at too young an age, for too long hours, at night, in hazardous jobs or under other undesirable conditions” (11). Although she wrote this document in the late 1940s, advocating for child labor laws, there are still connections to the present. In this case, the situation with Packers Sanitation Services. Manning states, “For these mill children, there was much work and little education” (11). This suggests how children still face the same problems even centuries after, and it is clear that there still needs to be an improvement in child labor laws. So, the child workers of today are the child workers of the past. 

Regrettably, there are lawmakers in the United States who are willing to weaken the child labors in place to protect children. These government officials are the ones who should be fighting the good fight for the betterment and safety of the population. Recently, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Governor of Arkansas, showed she is willing to cross that line. As Sydney Kashiwagi reports the current event, a work certificate would be issued for minors under the age of 16 and get written consent by a guardian, but that requirement is no longer needed for their employment (12). Keep in mind that this bill was signed shortly after Packers Sanitation Services Inc. were charged with employing minors in hazardous conditions. Kashiwagi remarks that the opposition to this bill could especially affect immigrant youth who may not have a guardian and as a result would put them at risk of exploitation (12). It is reasonable to suggest this as many migrant workers may not have a guardian to look over them. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is essentially entrusting employers to choose how to handle minors. In another striking resemblance, this is exactly what mill and factory farmers wanted in the twentieth century simply because it was a “free country” (13). Clearly, progress towards the protection of children has stagnated.

Footnotes

1. Professor Blower, 03/30/2023

2. Shcuman, Michael. "History of Child Labor in the United States, Part 1: Little Children Working"

3. Bergantino, Dawn. "URI Professor Discusses Worsening Child Labor in the United States"

4. Wiessner, Daniel. "U.S. Company Fined for Hiring Kids to Clean Meatpacking Plants"

5. Hansan, J. "Child Labor"

6. Volz, Amy. "It Is Time for the U.S. to Overhaul Its Agricultural Child Labor Laws"

7. Noah, Timothy. "The Shocking, Sickening Reality  of Child Labor in America"

8. LastWeekTonight, "Farmworkers: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (HBO)"

9. U.S. Department of Labor. "Increases in Child Labor Violations, Young Workers' Injuries Prompts Enchanced Outreach, Strong Enforcement by US Department of Labor"

10. CRS. "Child Labor in America: History, Policy, and Legislative Issues"

11. Manning, Lucy. "Why Child Labor Laws?"

12. Kashiwagi, Sydney. "Arkansas Governor Signs Bill Rolling Back Child Labor Protections"

13. Shcuman, Michael. "History of Child Labor in the United States, Part 2: The Reform Movement"

14. Philip DeFranco, "Love is blind Abuse Scandal Exposed A Lot, New Horrifying Child Labor Laws, AI Drake Controversy"

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