Tag Archive for: hazardous child labor

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75-plus Organizations Endorse “Children Don’t Belong on Tobacco Farms”, H.R. 3335, Legislation

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In the U.S., you must be 21 years old to buy cigarettes, but exemptions to child labor laws allow 12-year-olds to harvest toxic tobacco.

Even the tobacco industry acknowledges that children under 16 should not harvest this toxic crop. In 2015, they negotiated a compromise with former DOL Secretary Tom Perez in which they pledged to ask farmers not to hire teens under 16 to harvest the crop. That compromise is not working and is unenforceable, preventing DOL Wage and Hour investigators from protecting child farmworkers.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s Children Don’t Belong on Tobacco Farms Act  is a simple bill that bans minors from working on this dangerous crop, which often makes farmworkers sick. Symptoms of Green Tobacco Sickness include headaches, dizziness, nausea, fainting, and vomiting. Increasingly, researchers believe there may be long-term health impacts.

The Child Labor Coalition, consisting of 38 organizations, endorses the bill.

More than 75 organizations, including the AFL-CIO, Human Rights Watch, the American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous farmworker and faith-based groups have endorsed this bill

 

Child Labor Coalition
Action on Smoking and Health
AFL-CIO
Alianza Nacional de Campesinas
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Federation of Teachers
Amnesty International USA
Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs
Beyond Pesticides
California Church Impact
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids
Campaign to End US Child Labor
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Children’s Advocacy Institute (Univ. of San Diego School of Law)
Coffee Watch
Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, U.S. Provinces
Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL)
Cumberland Presbyterian Church (Global Denomination)
Child Welfare League of America
Economic Policy Institute
End Child Labor in Tobacco (ECLT)
Fair Labor Association
Farmworker Association of Florida
Farmworker Justice
Farm Worker Ministry Northwest
First Focus Campaign for Children
Farm Labor Organizing Committee — FLOC
Food Empowerment Project
Global Campaign for Education — US
Global March Against Child Labour
GoodWeave
Green America
Healthy Work Campaign, Center for Social Epidemiology (California)
HKM Employment Attorneys LLP
Human Rights Watch
Human Trafficking Legal Center
Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef – California)
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
International Initiative to End Child Labor (IIECL)
International Rights Advocates
Jewish Labor Committee
Justice and Advocacy Coalition of Montgomery County (Maryland)
Marylanders for Food and Farmworker Protection Coalition
Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety & Health
Media Voices for Children
Migrant Legal Action Program
Migrant Justice (Vermont)
National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd
National Consumers League
National Council for Occupational Safety and Health
National Education Association
National Employment Law Project
National Farm Worker Ministry
National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association
NC Field (North Carolina)
NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
North Carolina Council of Churches
North Carolina Justice Center
PhilaPOSH
Protect All Children from Trafficking (PACT)
Responsible Sourcing Network
Reclamation FARMacy (North Carolina)
Rural Coalition
SafeWork Washington (Washington State
Shriver Center on Poverty and Law
The United Nations Association, National Capital Area
Toxic Free North Carolina
Transparentem
UNICEF-USA
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice
United Farm Workers of America (UFW)
United Church of Christ
Urban Community AgriNomics (UCAN)
Verité
Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
Winrock International
Workers United — SEIU

 

 

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Child Labor Injuries and Deaths in the U.S. 2023–2024

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By Logan Baker, National Consumers League Intern

Child labor laws exist, in part, to protect children from work hazards. Below is a list of documented cases of minors who were injured or killed due to inadequate labor protections and enforcement between 2023 and 2024.  

2023 

  • A 16-year-old boy, Michael Schuls, was killed in June 2023 while working at Florence Hardwoods, a sawmill in northern Wisconsin. He became trapped in a wood-stacking machine while attempting to clear a jam and died two days later from traumatic asphyxiation. Despite his age, Schuls had been working late hours in violation of federal child labor laws.
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/20/republican-child-labor-law-death 
  • In February 2023, Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), a Wisconsin-based company providing sanitation services to meatpacking plants, was found illegally employing over 100 minors, some as young as 13, in hazardous jobs. These minors were assigned to clean up dangerous equipment such as back saws and head splitters using caustic chemicals during overnight shifts at 13 meatpacking facilities across eight states, including Nebraska, Minnesota, and Kansas. Investigators found that at least 3 children were injured.
    https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/17/business/packers-sanitation-child-labor 
  • “After 14-year-old Marcos was hurt at Perdue, bosses reported a severe injury to OSHA. But officials let the company do a self-inspection and never visited. They closed the case before Marcos was even out of the hospital, with no fines and without realizing the worker was a child.”
    https://x.com/hannahdreier/status/1704238596310319369 

2024 

 

 

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Why Teen Driving Protections Save Lives and What Happens Without Them

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By Alyssa Bredefeld

In 2022, teen drivers accounted for 9.1 percent of all motor vehicle accidents, with 3,212 fatal crashes among teens ages 16 to 19. This elevated crash rate is attributed to risky driving behavior, such as speeding, use of handheld cellphones, rapid accelerations, and abrupt braking. These behaviors are further exacerbated by peer pressure. When driving with a peer in the car, the risk of an accident is dramatically increased. According to the American Psychological Association, the teenage brain has a heightened sensitivity to rewards, making teens more likely to engage in risk-taking. Psychiatrist Jay N. Giedd of the National Institutes of Health explains that “brains don’t fully develop until age 25 and that teenagers tend to depend on the part of the brain that mediates fear and other gut reactions, the amygdala, when making decisions.” 

Despite the known dangers of teenage driving, the Department of Labor reports that one of the most common child labor violations is allowing minors to operate or assist with motor vehicles. This type of work is prohibited under Hazardous Occupations Order No. 2 (HO 2). An exception is made for 17-year-olds who may drive on the job if certain criteria are met: driving during daylight hours, holding a valid state license, and spending no more than 20% of their work time behind the wheel. This order is in place to reduce the risk of serious injury or death among working minors. 

With the return of the Trump administration and the appointment of Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor, Project 2025’s proposal to allow minors to engage in hazardous work may become a reality. The initiative stated that teens want to do hazardous jobs and urged the Department of Labor to “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs”. This could lead to the reversal of Order HO 2, allowing teens under the age of 17 to drive at work. Protections that prevent minors from driving at night could also be removed, despite data showing that most teen accidents occur during nighttime hours. Several widely cited studies have indicated that minors who work over 20 hours a week have lower academic performance and an increased risk of dropping out. Removing limits that restrict driving hours could increase driver fatigue and harm educational progress.  

Project 2025 fails to consider that although children may be attracted to dangerous jobs, their understanding of the risks and consequences associated with a job is often skewed. If this order is reversed, we can expect an increase in preventable death and injury among children behind the wheel. 

This push to weaken protections comes at a time when child labor violations are already on the rise and investigators severely understaffed. In 2024, the Department of Labor found 4,030 children employed in violation of labor laws — a number that excludes thousands of violations that go unreported every year. Child labor has a long historical significance in the United States, but since the introduction of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, the country has made improvements in barring children from exploitative labor. If protections are overturned, it will be even more difficult to understand the harm caused by hazardous labor, as these instances will no longer be classified as violations. The U.S. is dangerously close to backsliding into the past. Let’s leave occupational driving to adults and keep our teenagers safe 

Sources  

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2926992/ 

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/insurance/teen-driving-statistics.html 

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/34-child-labor-motor-vehicles 

https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/brain 

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/data 

https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf 

 Alyssa Bredefeld is a 2025 summer intern. She is currently studying Allied Health Sciences and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut. 

 

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NY Times: “Children Risk Their Lives Building America’s Roofs

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More explosive reporting on hazardous child labor from Hannah Dreier and a team of reporters at the NY Times:

 

“The New York Times spoke with more than 100 child roofers in nearly two dozen states, including some who began at elementary-school age. They wake before dawn to be driven to distant job sites, sometimes crossing state lines. They carry heavy bundles of shingles that leave their arms shaking. They work through heat waves on black-tar rooftops that scorch their hands.”

Read the rest of the story here.

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The Guardian: “‘It Should Never Have Happened’: death of boy, 16, at sawmill highlights rise of child labour in US”

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Please read the Nov. 28th, 2023 Guardian piece, which quotes the Child Labor Coalition,  here:

https://tinyurl.com/2cy4yn65

Excerpt:
“One of the problems with this whole debate is that legislators extol the value of teen work, but that’s not really the issue because every state allows teens to work. The issue is whether that work is going to be protected and limited to reasonable amounts that doesn’t harm the kid. At a time when we’re seeing such egregious (child labour) violations, you need to be strengthening protections, not weakening them,” Maki adds.

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Amazing, must-listen podcast….“Why Are States Loosening Child Labor Laws?” –New York Times child labor reporter Hannah Dreier and the CLC’s Norma Flores López on Roy Woods Jr. video podcast, “Beyond the Scenes – The Daily Show”

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Amazing, must-listen podcast….

 

“Why Are States Loosening Child Labor Laws?” —New York Times child labor reporter Hannah Dreier and the CLC’s Norma Flores López on Roy Woods Jr. video podcast, “Beyond the Scenes – The Daily Show”. [Recorded 4/23/23].