Iowa businesses and lawmakers ignore warnings on child labor and reap consequences

How Iowa’s child labor law became a catastrophe

Iowa businesses have been openly disregarding federal rules about when and how much children can work, and the federal government has taken notice. Who are the victims?

1. The exploited children.
2. The owners and managers who scheduled the exploited children.

If you picked 2, congratulations! You’ve mastered the increasingly popular art of transforming guilt into grievance.

Enforcement should not have been a surprise. Iowa needs to clean up its mess.

The violations can’t be undone, so the path forward involves making the best of the situation. State government, which helped set the confrontation in motion, needs to take the lead on negotiating with the U.S. Department of Labor to reach broad settlements on the penalties for child labor. With business owners saying fines could put them out of business, it could be appropriate for the state to take responsibility to keep that from happening. Everyone involved needs to follow federal rules. And Iowa’s law will need an update in 2025 so that businesses can’t receive inconsistent directions.

Besides being illegal, Iowa’s law for teenagers doesn’t adequately protect childhood and education

There is room for well-meaning disagreement about whether the federal protections are, in fact, too strict. Advocates of Iowa’s law make a fair point that school-sponsored extracurricular activities keep students out much later than 7 or even 9 p.m. But the reasons for keeping some brakes on younger teens’ work are more compelling. Research frequently ties sleep deprivation with teenagers’ academic, social, and mental health struggles. In the cases of families that are in such a precarious state that a child’s earning potential is vital to their well-being, Iowa would be better off supporting those families more directly. Children should have childhoods.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?

• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?

• SDG 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.
• SDG 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.
• SDG 10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.

3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?

• Indicator for SDG 4.4: Proportion of youth and adults with information and communications technology (ICT) skills, by type of skill.
• Indicator for SDG 8.7: Proportion and number of children aged 5-17 years engaged in child labor, by sex and age group.
• Indicator for SDG 10.7: Number of countries that have implemented well-managed migration policies.

SDGs, Targets, and Indicators

Source: desmoinesregister.com