Entries by Reid Maki

Joint Letter by Humanity United, Child Labor Coalition, and Valued Partners: Urgent Action Needed to Protect Children from Labor Exploitation

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May 1, 2023 As organizations working to address human trafficking and labor exploitation, we are appalled by the horrific conditions children experienced after fleeing to the United States for refuge. This series in the New York Times demonstrates our government’s inability, unwillingness, or outright refusal to protect minors from forced labor. This most recent story reveals that the federal government failed to act on multiple warnings and reports about migrant children being forced to work illegal shifts in auto factories, food packing plants, construction sites, and other poorly-regulated jobs. The Times reports that despite hundreds of calls reporting incidents of abuse, neglect, or trafficking, thousands of migrant children have been forced to work illegally within the U.S. The Biden Administration reportedly “treated these as discrete events, not as signs of a mounting problem.” Other recent stories, including the Department of Labor’s own statements, reveal that this is a mounting problem, and one that needs urgent action. Earlier this year, the Labor Department reported that it had seen a nearly 70 percent increase in child labor violations over the last five years, and that in the most recent fiscal year, more than 800 companies were found to have broken child labor laws. Across the globe, businesses capitalize on migrant workers’ vulnerability, specifically targeting them for exploitation. Migrant workers already face language, […]

Iowa’s Child Labor Bill Turns Priorities Upside Down

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By Mike Owen, Common Good Iowa Posted on February 9, 2023 at 12:01 PM by Mike Owen A new proposal in the Iowa Legislature turns Iowa priorities and values upside down. At a time we are doing too little for economic opportunity for children and their families, lawmakers are looking to relax protection for minors in the workplace as an excuse to meet a workforce shortage. The bill, Senate File 167 is one more step down a low road that lets employers off the hook for low wages, and this Legislature off the hook for already poor workplace protections. Worse, it puts young people at risk. Common Good Iowa is registered against the bill, which today passed a Senate subcommittee. For our young people, we should aspire to more than making them tools or pawns in a workforce strategy that will most certainly fail. If we want more people in the workforce, we need to pay them and to protect them. We need to assure them critical access to child care, and to crack down on wage theft. This bill fails on each count. Putting kids to work at longer hours and in potentially risky work assignments isn’t a real answer for a workforce shortage, and it’s rarely going to be an answer for young people as they proceed toward […]

Do Children in America Ever Work in Deplorable, Dangerous, Dickensian Conditions?  The Short Answer is “Yes” — The Child Labor Coalition’s Top Ten U.S. Child Labor Developments in 2022

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By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition   Most Americans are unaware that the U.S. still has child labor, but 2022 made it abundantly clear that we do, and stories in the news exposed conditions that were often downright shocking. Here are 10 child labor stories or developments that indicate child labor in the U.S. is not something in the past and continues to be a serious concern. The  Child Labor Coalition brings together 39 groups to work collectively to reduce international and domestic child labor and to protect working teens from occupational dangers. Our top 2022 U.S. developments: Minors found working illegally in Brazilian-owned JBS meatpacking facilities in Nebraska and Minnesota. Several children suffered caustic chemical burns, including one 13-year-old. The children worked on the killing floor in cleaning crews, toiling long nights in the graveyard shift and used dangerous pressure-washing hoses while they stood in water mixed with animal parts. Initially, the number of children numbered 31 in Nebraska and Minnesota, but U.S. DOL has suggested the number of illegally employed teens in processing plant cleaning crews may be much larger. The CLC has expressed concerns about teens illegally working in meat processing plants since a large immigration raid in Iowa in 2003 found 50 minors working illegally in the plant. Teens found working in an Alabama factory that […]

Reflections on the “5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour” in Durban, South Africa, May 15-20, 2022

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The recently-concluded, week-long “5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour” in Durban, South Africa was convened against the backdrop of the announcement last July of an alarming rise in child labor numbers after two decades of steady and significant declines in global child labor totals. The global conference, which typically comes about every four years, brought together an estimated 1,000 delegates from foreign governments and small number of representatives of NGOs. It also brought together for the first time at one of the quadrennial child labor conferences, dozens of participant youth advocates as well as a number of child labor victims and survivors. The conference had the difficult mission of righting the ship and trying to reverse the rising child labor numbers, which seem destined to rise further as the COVID pandemic’s impact will continue to be felt for years. Sadly, the pandemic threw 1.6 million children out of school, often for prolonged periods and some of those children entered work and may never return to school. We would first like to thank the South Africa government for the herculean task of organizing a global conference during a still raging pandemic, all against a backdrop of devastating floods in April that savaged the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Easter Cape and killed nearly 500 people, destroyed 4,000 homes and […]

Press Release: Child Labor Coalition Welcomes the Reintroduction of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety 2022 (CARE Act)

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For immediate release: March 31, 2022 Contact: Reid Maki, (202) 207-2820, reidm@nclnet.org Washington, D.C.—The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing 38 groups engaged in the fight against domestic and global child labor, applauds Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) for introducing the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE). The legislation, introduced on Cesar Chavez Day, would close long-standing loopholes that permit children in agriculture to work for wages when they are only age 12. The bill would also ban jobs on farms labeled “hazardous” by the U.S. Department of Labor if workers are under the age of 18. The children of farm owners, working on their parents’ farms, would not be impacted by the CARE Act.   “Today, I am re-introducing the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety (CARE Act) with my friend and co-lead Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva to protect the rights, safety, and future of [children who work on farms],” said Congresswoman Roybal-Allard, Thursday.    “I’m proud to co-lead this important legislation with Rep. Roybal-Allard to protect the children of farmworkers. Farmworkers remain some of the most exploited, underpaid, and unprotected laborers in our nation. They and their children deserve legal protections, better working conditions, and higher workplace standards to protect their health and safety. It’s past time we updated our antiquated labor laws to […]

201 Organizations Endorse Legislation (CARE Act) to Close Child Labor Loopholes that Endanger the Health, Safety and Educational Development of Farmworker Children

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The Child Labor Coalition is reaching out for organizational endorsements of the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety,  which would end exploitative child labor in U.S. agriculture. [The bill was introduced on Cesar Chavez Day, 3/31/2022 in the 117th Congress. We will post a bill number as soon as it is available.] 201 great national, regional, and state-based groups have endorsed this much-needed legislation. We ask organizations to help us advance this vital legislation which would remove the exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act that allow children to work unlimited hours in agriculture at the age of 12; these exemptions also allow child farmworkers to perform hazardous work at the age of 16. A text of the bill can be found here. The educational impact of child labor on U.S. farmworker children has been devastating. We estimate that two out of three children who work in the fields drop out of school. The CLC’s press release explains why there is an urgent need to protect farmworker children and how the bill accomplishes this. Child farmworkers perform back-breaking work for long hours in excessive heat while they are exposed to pesticides and other dangerous agro-chemicals. Organizations that wish to add their names to the list of endorsers, please email reidm@nclnet.org . The 201 groups below have endorsed the […]

The Child Labor Coalition’s letter to Wisconsin Gov. Evers, Urging Him to Veto Legislation that Would Weaken Existing Child Labor Laws

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January 21, 2022   Dear Governor Evers:   The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) based in Washington, D.C., represents 38 groups who work to reduce child labor and the dangers of child work in the U.S. and abroad. We write with concern about legislation, SB 332, which just passed the Wisconsin Assembly yesterday. The legislation would weaken current Wisconsin child labor protections by lengthening the hours 14- and 15-year-old workers would be allowed to work—both on schools days and on non-school days. The CLC fears that lengthening the hours of work will increase student fatigue and increase the likelihood of students dropping out.  Extending school hours makes it harder for kids to perform school work, participate in after-school activities, do homework, and get a good night’s sleep. According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than one quarter of high school students fall asleep in class now. Driving to and from the job is one of the most common ways teen workers are injured or killed. Even if teen workers are being driven by older drivers, fellow co-workers, or parents after 11:00, their chances of dying in a car accident escalate with late hours of work. Drunk driving fatal accidents are four time more likely at night—the later the hour, the more likely the accident is to involve a drunk driver. Currently, […]

Child Labor is Growing: Which Side are the Democracies On?

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CHILD LABOR IS GROWING: WHICH SIDE ARE DEMOCRACIES ON? This is the Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. What can democracies do to make this a reality? By Timothy Ryan | According to the International Labor Organization’s latest report last fall, despite years of declining rates worldwide, child labor is indeed on the rise again. And the increase began before COVID exacerbated the situation. Shortly before Bolsonaro issued his statement, more than a dozen anti-child labor organizations from Central and South America came together in Costa Rica to take stock of the struggle and make plans for 2021, the UN-designated Year for the Elimination of Child Labor. One challenge had become clear: the surge in right-wing authoritarian governments across Latin America has threatened years of progress. “This is particularly worrying,” said Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Global March Against Child Labor, in 2019, “since Latin America has seen some of the most significant progress over the past decade to eliminate child labor.” Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his decades of rescuing tens of thousands of child laborers and advocating for the rights of children. From the viciously anti-civil rights platform of Bolsonaro to the string of authoritarian governments coming to power in Central America, child labor activists in the region feel embattled and under pressure. The forum participants from […]

Keeping Teens Safe at Work — Tips for Parents, Employers, and Teens”

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Tips for parents, employers, and teens: While work plays an important role in the development of teenagers, teens and parents should carefully think about prospective jobs that teens are considering and assess possible workplace dangers that those jobs might possess. Tips for teen workers NCL urges teens to say “no” to jobs that involve: Door-to-door sales, especially out of the youth’s neighborhood; Long-distance traveling away from parental supervision; Extensive driving or being driven; Driving forklifts, tractors, and other potentially dangerous vehicles; The use of dangerous machinery; The use of chemicals; Working in grain storage facilities; and Work on ladders or work that involves heights where there is a risk of falling. Know the legal limits To protect young workers like you, state and federal laws limit the hours you can work and the kinds of work you can do. For state and federal child labor laws, visit Youth Rules. Play it safe Always follow safety training. Working safely and carefully may slow you down, but ignoring safe work procedures is a fast track to injury. There are hazards in every workplace and recognizing and dealing with them correctly may save your life. Ask questions Ask for workplace training—like how to deal with irate customers or how to perform a new task or use a new machine. Tell your supervisor, parent, […]

Child Labor’s Prevalence Perception Problem–What the Consumer Surveys Reveal

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There are a lot of obstacles to ending child labor that the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) and its nearly 40 members confront on a daily basis. Poverty, governmental indifference, educational access issues, and a lack of awareness of the negative, long-term impact of child labor on children are all big factors, but another is lack of knowledge of the scope or prevalence of the problem. The average American consumer doesn’t understand that child labor is a pervasive problem affecting an estimated 152 million children in the world – and that’s an estimate developed before the pandemic started. We think the number has grown significantly since COVID-19 began, throwing hundreds of millions of families into deeper poverty. We became aware of the gap between the public’s perception of the problem and the reality of situation seven years ago when the group Child Fund International commissioned a survey of over 1,000 consumers. Only one percent knew that roughly 150 million children were trapped in child labor globally. That number translates to one in 10 children. It’s staggering to think about. Even more disturbing: 73 percent of survey respondents – essentially three out of four—incorrectly guessed that the global total was less the one million. They were off by a factor of 150! It’s hard to galvanize public and political opinion to confront […]