U.S. child labor: An old problem pops up again

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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Hard as it is to believe, child labor is again on the rise in this country, as harsh and exploitative as ever.

Employment of minors, of course, remains illegal with a few exceptions. But it is no longer possible to deny that more and more companies are employing them to work in conditions and occupations that violate U.S. labor law, sometimes brazenly.

Minnesota is among those states that have seen an uptick in child labor, and no, we're not talking about children who help out on the family farm. Late last year, slaughterhouses in Worthington and Marshall were found to be using a sanitation service that was employing underaged workers in dangerous positions.

The federal government later filed a lawsuit against Packers Sanitation Services Inc. in three states, including Minnesota. At the time, Charlotte Garden, a University of Minnesota law professor, told the Star Tribune that "The specific allegations here are just so shocking, in part because of how they compound each other. It's hard to think of a worse set of child-labor violations than very young kids working overnight in a hazardous environment."

More recently, an explosive and detailed New York Times investigation of child labor across the country found 14-year-old construction workers, 13-year-old day laborers, factories filled with minors laboring to manipulate hazardous machinery, and a 15-year-old girl sealing Cheerios cereal bags on the graveyard shift.

It would not be until 1938 that Congress would pass the sweeping restrictions found in the Fair Labor Standards Act. The reasons driving reform were many. Children were getting injured, maimed and even killed. Working often kept them out of school, missing out on the education that could have propelled them to better jobs and higher wages.

Those same reasons are as valid today as they were in the 1930s.

That is not to say teens should not work if reasonable precautions are taken. Teens make up a veritable army that staff fast-food and retail workplaces. Those jobs are valuable for building a strong work ethic, the satisfaction of a job well done and monetary compensation. They learn how to handle the more stringent demands of a workplace and how to deal with expectations of bosses and co-workers.

But as a society, we should draw a firm line at the kind of violations that have begun to crop up all too frequently. Reprehensibly, some of the worse violations occur among the most vulnerable group possible: underage migrants.

The New York Times investigation found that such minors have become part of a "new economy of exploitation" and end up in "some of the most punishing jobs in the country." Incredibly, reporters found 12-year-olds roofing in Florida and Tennessee, underage slaughterhouse workers in Mississippi and North Carolina, and children handling dangerous saws on graveyard shifts in South Dakota.

The Biden administration earlier this week said it is creating a new task force to crack down on the rapid increase in child labor. The Labor Department has reported a 69% increase in the illegal employment of minors since 2018, with hundreds of companies large and small employing nearly 4,000 children in violation of U.S. labor laws.

"It's a serious problem all over the country, including Minnesota," Attorney General Keith Ellison told an editorial writer. "We need to strengthen our laws, both federally and here in Minnesota, to protect kids." The incidents in Worthington and Marshall "make it very clear this problem is far from solved."

One option at the state level would be to increase fines dramatically. In one of the tightest labor markets in the country, companies may be incentivized to look the other way at a suspiciously youthful applicant. Stricter laws and fines could also help dry up demand for underage workers, many of whom have traveled from Central America and are pressured to send money back to their families.

Another option would be to empower the attorney general's office to initiate investigations into potential violators. Right now, Ellison said, authority rests with the state Department of Labor and Industry, which has too few staff and too many other obligations to provide oversight.

"They do what they can," Ellison said. "But we need more eyes on the problem." If DLI finds a potential violation, it can turn to the AG's office to file a lawsuit, he said, "but there is no independent, investigative action that we can initiate."