Illegal child labor is on the rise in a tight job market | CNN Business

Child Labor Cases Jump

A 14-year-old boy who cleaned meat cutting machines was “falling asleep in class and missing class as a result and suffering injuries from chemical burns” in Nebraska from 2021 to 2022, according to the Labor Department. Another 13-year-old suffered severe burns from cleaning agents.

Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), one of the largest providers of food safety sanitation in the US, had employed 31 children between the ages of 13 and 17 to work for meat industry monoliths like Cargill and JBS USA across Minnesota and Nebraska, the Department of Labor said last November.

These weren’t isolated cases.

US child labor violations have jumped in recent years. Some well-known companies, consumer-facing name brands, have been caught employing children for grueling work in dangerous conditions. A tight labor market has prompted many employers to search for the cheapest available labor; state legislators are even pushing bills that would limit legal protections for underage workers.

Now, the Department of Labor has announced actions it’s taken so far this year through a new interagency task force on child labor.

“Child labor is an issue that gets to the heart of who we are as a country and who we want to be,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su in a news release Thursday. “Like the President, we believe that any child working in a dangerous or hazardous environment is one child too many.”

In many of these cases, it’s the children of recent migrants working long hours in difficult conditions, said Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration during the Obama administration.

“You’re piling vulnerable on top of vulnerable here,” Barab added.

JBS has said that they do not tolerate child labor and that they would stop using PSSI at every location where the child labor violations were alleged to have occurred. Cargill also said that had zero tolerance of the use of underage labor and ended their contract with PSSI.

Child Labor on the Rise in a Tight Job Market

Unemployment in the United States sits near record lows at 3.6%, and a lack of workers has made it difficult for employers to fill jobs, especially in lower paid work.

“Employers are going to the cheapest and easiest avenue … to find workers,” said Barab.

Officials at the Labor Department emphasized in a press call this week that the increase in child labor violation findings is partially due to “significantly enhanced child labor enforcement efforts” in recent months.

However, there’s often an uptick in child labor when the job market is tight, said David Weil, the former dean at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and former administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the DOL.

Last year, for example, young children were found to be working in dangerous conditions at factories in Alabama that contracted with Hyundai and Kia, a Reuters investigation found. Seeing children in those kinds of jobs, along with the meatpacking work, is unprecedented, Weil said.

“These are jobs that anyone under the age of 18 has been prohibited to work at since 1938,” he said.

The origin of these problems began brewing in the 1970s, said Weil, when companies began focusing more deeply on their core revenue generating work to create larger returns and please shareholders.

Strong human resource departments weren’t helping improve margins, so “a lot of companies started to explore different ways of shedding the messy work of employment to others,” he said. That meant using staffing agencies, subcontractors and third-party management.

Now, 50 years later, some well-known brands are not in direct control of many of the people who work for them. In the cases of child labor at the meatpacking plant and at Hyundai-Kia, the companies used third-party labor suppliers and said they weren’t aware of children working illegally.

“Hyundai wouldn’t want to ever directly hire children,” said Weil. “But when you set up a system like that, and then you go into a labor supply shortage, you get this kind of outcome.”

Hyundai has since divested from one supplier and has required another to verify workers’ ages.

“The use of underage labor at a supplier or any operation is unacceptable, and we are committed to making sure non-compliance never happens again,” said Jaehoon (Jay) Chang, president and CEO of Hyundai, the parent company of Kia, in a statement. “This is a zero tolerance issue. Even though there were issues with third-party staffing agencies that provided false documentation to these suppliers, ultimately, the responsibility is with Hyundai to make sure all our suppliers understand and meet our high global workforce standards.”

McDonald’s, likewise, isn’t in charge of hiring at the majority of its restaurants, which are owned and operated independently.

The Fight to Weaken Child Labor Laws

The Department of Labor on Thursday said its interagency task force on child labor has begun cross-training with other governmental agencies like Health and Human Services and the Office of Refugee Resettlement to identify and report possible incidences of child labor exploitation.

They say they’re also pursuing partnerships with the US Department of Agriculture and leadership from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico to stop the exploitation of migrant children.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, says it plans to issue steeper penalties to companies that illegally employ youth in potentially hazardous conditions.

But at the same time that violations of child labor protections are rising, states across the country are introducing legislation to weaken child labor laws.

At least 10 states have introduced or passed bills in the past two years meant to weaken protections against employing children, according to a March report by the Economic Policy Institute.

This year, bills to weaken the laws have been introduced in Missouri, Ohio, and South Dakota.

One bill proposed in Nebraska would allow youth employees to be paid less than the state’s minimum wage.

A bill in Arkansas that repeals work restrictions for 14- and 15-year-olds has been signed into law and a bill passed in Iowa extended the hours that teens can work and the establishments where they can be employed.

Another in Minnesota could allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work on construction sites. (The bill did not make it out of committee.)

Minnesota State Sen. Rich Draheim, a Republican, co-authored the bill.

He told CNN earlier this year that the bill contained caveats that would keep youth workers on construction sites out

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

• Target 8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labor, end modern slavery and human trafficking, and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labor.
• Indicator 8.7.1: Proportion and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labor, by sex and age group (relevant to child labor cases mentioned in the article).

SDG 4: Quality Education

• Target 4.4: By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship.
• Indicator 4.4.1: Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill (relevant to the need for education and skills development to prevent child labor).

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

• Target 10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.
• Indicator 10.7.1: Recruitment cost borne by employee as a proportion of monthly income earned in country of destination (relevant to the exploitation of migrant children mentioned in the article).

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

• Target 16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children.
• Indicator 16.2.3: Proportion of young women and men aged 18-29 years who experienced sexual violence by age 18 (relevant to the mention of children suffering injuries from chemical burns and severe burns from cleaning agents).

Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Behold! This splendid article springs forth from the wellspring of knowledge, shaped by a wondrous proprietary AI technology that delved into a vast ocean of data, illuminating the path towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Remember that all rights are reserved by SDG Investors LLC, empowering us to champion progress together.

Source: cnn.com

Join us, as fellow seekers of change, on a transformative journey at https://sdgtalks.ai/welcome, where you can become a member and actively contribute to shaping a brighter future.