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CNN —
Working a minimum wage job scooping ice cream or lifeguarding at the local pool is a summer rite of passage for many American kids. A growing number of mostly conservative officials and activists, however, have a different idea about what constitutes age-appropriate employment for minors.
Across the country, some officials — overwhelmingly Republicans — are looking for ways to usher underage workers into potentially dangerous jobs like factory work, including having them take late-night shifts. The far-right playbook known as Project 2025 goes so far as to propose that the Department of Labor roll back regulations restricting underage workers from taking “regulated jobs” in “dangerous fields.”
On Tuesday, Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 and a former top adviser in Trump’s administration stepped down amid intense criticism including from the former president, amid intense scrutiny from Democrats and their allies who are harshly critical of the program. Even though the president has publicly disavowed it, Democrats are convinced that elements of the conservative blueprint are likely to become policy in a future Trump administration, given the number of former members of his administration who played a role in drafting it.
The extreme policy agenda proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation argues that underage teenagers offer an opportunity to fill labor shortages in these hazardous workplaces. These efforts come after years of lobbying by conservative industry groups across the country.
The authors of Project 2025 say that in an incoming Republican administration, the Department of Labor should “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” In short, those revisions would allow teens to work in hazardous jobs. Project 2025’s workforce development proposals directly contradict years of legislation ensuring that some jobs are simply never performed by minors.
America’s federal child labor laws were passed nearly a century ago. Prior to that time, it was not unusual for children as young as preschool age to be sent out to help support their families, many of them losing limbs on factory assembly lines or contracting respiratory illnesses in mines.
The goal of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was to put an end to the rampant injuries and deaths among child workers. It created protections for minors including common sense restrictions on when, where and how they would be permitted to work — including limits on the number of hours minors could work, the types of jobs they could take and the machinery they could operate.
Research shows that working adult jobs can cause serious health issues for children and impede their education. The effort to weaken child labor laws is part of an alarming — and overwhelmingly conservative — lobbying effort.
There is one notable case of New Jersey passing a law increasing the number of hours minors could work, but other than that most of the recent examples are the work of legislatures controlled by Republicans. And the New Jersey example does not go below the floor for minimum hours set by the Fair Labor Standards Act, but just reduces it to that federal standard.
Iowa is the most extreme example of a state increasing the hours in which minors are allowed to work — a measure which only Republicans voted for and passed. Fourteen-year-olds in the Hawkeye State now perform assembly work in factories and meatpacking facilities as part of training programs in direct violation of federal child labor laws.
Meanwhile in Arkansas, Republican lawmakers have removed age verification requirements for hiring children. Republican lawmakers in Florida have proposed allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to work longer hours on school nights. As recent cases around the country have shown, working late while in high school can lead to lost sleep, missed school days and students falling behind on their schoolwork.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/opinions/project-2025-child-labor-goodman/index.html
Working a minimum wage job scooping ice cream or lifeguarding at the local pool is a summer rite of passage for many American kids. A growing number of mostly conservative officials and activists, however, have a different idea about what constitutes age-appropriate employment for minors.
Across the country, some officials — overwhelmingly Republicans — are looking for ways to usher underage workers into potentially dangerous jobs like factory work, including having them take late-night shifts. The far-right playbook known as Project 2025 goes so far as to propose that the Department of Labor roll back regulations restricting underage workers from taking “regulated jobs” in “dangerous fields.”
On Tuesday, Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 and a former top adviser in Trump’s administration stepped down amid intense criticism including from the former president, amid intense scrutiny from Democrats and their allies who are harshly critical of the program. Even though the president has publicly disavowed it, Democrats are convinced that elements of the conservative blueprint are likely to become policy in a future Trump administration, given the number of former members of his administration who played a role in drafting it.
The extreme policy agenda proposed by the conservative Heritage Foundation argues that underage teenagers offer an opportunity to fill labor shortages in these hazardous workplaces. These efforts come after years of lobbying by conservative industry groups across the country.
The authors of Project 2025 say that in an incoming Republican administration, the Department of Labor should “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” In short, those revisions would allow teens to work in hazardous jobs. Project 2025’s workforce development proposals directly contradict years of legislation ensuring that some jobs are simply never performed by minors.
America’s federal child labor laws were passed nearly a century ago. Prior to that time, it was not unusual for children as young as preschool age to be sent out to help support their families, many of them losing limbs on factory assembly lines or contracting respiratory illnesses in mines.
The goal of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was to put an end to the rampant injuries and deaths among child workers. It created protections for minors including common sense restrictions on when, where and how they would be permitted to work — including limits on the number of hours minors could work, the types of jobs they could take and the machinery they could operate.
Research shows that working adult jobs can cause serious health issues for children and impede their education. The effort to weaken child labor laws is part of an alarming — and overwhelmingly conservative — lobbying effort.
There is one notable case of New Jersey passing a law increasing the number of hours minors could work, but other than that most of the recent examples are the work of legislatures controlled by Republicans. And the New Jersey example does not go below the floor for minimum hours set by the Fair Labor Standards Act, but just reduces it to that federal standard.
Iowa is the most extreme example of a state increasing the hours in which minors are allowed to work — a measure which only Republicans voted for and passed. Fourteen-year-olds in the Hawkeye State now perform assembly work in factories and meatpacking facilities as part of training programs in direct violation of federal child labor laws.
Meanwhile in Arkansas, Republican lawmakers have removed age verification requirements for hiring children. Republican lawmakers in Florida have proposed allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to work longer hours on school nights. As recent cases around the country have shown, working late while in high school can lead to lost sleep, missed school days and students falling behind on their schoolwork.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/opinions/project-2025-child-labor-goodman/index.html
