How states can fight child labor

Since the recent re-emergence of U.S. child labor came to light, the stories have been unrelenting: children working as roofers, at factories making car parts and in food processing plants. The latest case involved two dozen children as young as 13 and 14 working overnight shifts in slaughterhouses in Virginia and Iowa, with duties that included cleaning “kill floor equipment” like head splitters and meat band saws. 

The causes of resurgent child labor are complex: The worst cases often involve migrant children, sometimes unaccompanied, fleeing countries with violence and poverty. How can this problem be remedied without solving major geopolitical challenges that have existed for decades? 

Viewed another way, though, it’s quite simple: If employers didn’t hire children for dangerous and prohibited work, we wouldn’t have a child labor problem. So how do we get employers to stop? 

This challenge is not like boiling the ocean or colonizing Jupiter. It’s achievable, but only if we increase both the likelihood that violators will be caught and the consequences when that happens. Our current system fails on both fronts. Federal and state labor departments are underfunded, decreasing the likelihood violators will be detected. As for the consequences of being caught, federal child labor penalties top off just over $15,000 per violation, while state penalties are typically a fraction of that, sometimes pitifully low. In South Carolina, first-time violators can get away with a written warning. (That’ll show them.) 

Clearly, penalties should be increased to deter violations and convey the gravity of what’s at stake. But this is a five-alarm fire; penalties alone won’t do the trick. And the federal government alone is unlikely to be the answer. After Senate hearings last year on the subject, several bipartisan bills were proposed, but the House is likely to be more of a challenge. 

Just as states led the way in passing the original child labor laws over a century ago, they have a crucial role to play today. Fortunately, a host of precedents in existing laws can be deployed to halt the distressing trend. A recent report that I authored, issued by the Economic Policy Institute and NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, highlights a range of options.

For starters, child labor enforcement agencies could be granted authority to issue “stop work orders” requiring cessation of operations at worksites where there is an active, ongoing child labor violation. Stop work orders may currently be issued under a range of state and local laws, from building or fire code violations, to workplace infractions related to workers’ compensation, minimum wage or tax violations. 

Lawmakers could also create a private right of action, with damages for violations, thereby enabling child labor victims to file a lawsuit against their employer. This would bring child labor in line with many other workplace laws, like minimum wage and anti-discrimination statutes, which allow for private lawsuits and damages. Monetary restitution could incentivize reporting of violations and would help affected children; it could even be the beginning of a system of remediation for child labor victims. (Remediation in child labor cases is currently nonexistent: penalties go to the public coffers, so when an employer is caught, minors simply lose their jobs.) 

A private right of action would also expand the pool of potential enforcers, because government would not be the only avenue for addressing violations. Better still, lawmakers could also pass whistleblower laws, which would further help child labor cases come to light. 

States could amend their workers’ compensation laws to allow personal injury lawsuits when children are injured or killed on the job amid child labor violations. Usually, when workers are hurt or killed on the job, the victims (or their survivors) are limited to what is known as the “exclusive remedy” of workers’ compensation: With very narrow exceptions, they can’t file a lawsuit against their employer. But several states allow for personal injury lawsuits by minors or their survivors when there are injuries or deaths and child labor laws have been broken. This approach will better serve child victims and their families, and it can also deter violations by significantly increasing an employer’s worst-case-scenario financial exposure. 

And then there’s the problem of large corporations atop supply chains passing the buck to their contractors or suppliers to avoid responsibility for children working on their premises, on their products or with their equipment. Many multinational corporations, including some involved in some of the extreme child labor cases, use a “fissured” business model, with subcontractors and staffing agencies insulating them from liability. Over half a dozen states have laws creating general contractor responsibility for subcontractor wage violations on construction projects; these laws could serve as a model in the child labor context. 

Government can exercise the power of the purse, by preventing corporations with widespread or unremedied child labor violations (either themselves or in their supply chains) from receiving government contracts. This approach would build on policies of numerous localities that have ordinances blocking procurement from companies with a history of certain workplace violations. 

Of course, along with the above measures, most of which are revenue-neutral or low-cost,  government must also do something it hasn’t done for a long time: adequately fund labor enforcement agencies. Child labor investigations are complex. They require advance surveillance, language skills, on-site inspections interviewing reluctant witnesses late at night, considerable review of documents and follow-up interviews, and much more. There is simply no way to enforce child labor laws without an adequate legion of boots on the ground. 

It should go without saying, but the exact wrong approach is to roll back child labor laws, as some conservative states are unbelievably seeking to do. In addition to fighting these grotesque and morally obtuse rollbacks, advocates can press for measures to deter violations. After all, states should still enforce the regrettably weakened child labor protections that remain. 

No silver bullet can immediately stop the exploitation of children at work. But the moment calls for bold creativity and political will. An arsenal of policies—not fantastical, pie-in-the-sky policies, but laws already in effect—could significantly heighten the consequences for employers, deter violations and help keep children safe.

Terri Gerstein is the director of New York University’s Wagner Labor Initiative in the NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.