On the eve of Labor Day, labor rights activities have been launched across the United States. However, the fact that the number of child workers in the country has surged has not been taken seriously by all walks of life. In particular, many employers illegally employ child labor, involving various exploitation, injury and other criminal acts. However, so far, they cannot control it, which makes the rights and interests People are very sad.
According to USA Today, a Department of Labor investigation found that the number of illegal child laborers (excluding unreported minors) nationwide increased by 472% between 2015 and 2023.
Due to severe labor market shortages in recent years, many employers have turned to hiring minors under the age of 18 to fill manpower, according to legal documents filed by the Department of Labor in 2022, at a local slaughterhouse in Grand Island, Nebraska. Employ minors to perform cleaning duties.
In fact, as early as the early days of industrialization in the 20th century, factories, mines and other industries in urgent need of large numbers of manpower began to employ child labor, resulting in many inhumane and illegal behaviors. Therefore, with the active promotion of the National Consumers League, Congress finally passed the 1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 2018 protects minors’ working hours, reduces opportunities for hazardous work, and prevents them from working during non-essential hours.
However, although child labor is protected by federal law, states have begun to weaken the rights of child labor based on labor demand. According to a report in February this year by the Economic Policy Institute, 28 states across the country have proposed bills to weaken the rights of child labor in the past three years, and some have 12 states passed.
In May of this year, the FBI uncovered a cleaning company in Tennessee that was contracted to clean slaughterhouses and meat plants, employing at least 24 child workers. The operator was subsequently fined nearly $650,000; a 16-year-old also recently died An accident in which a teenager was accidentally electrocuted while being employed to work on a roof.
Therefore, Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers Union and chairman of The Child Labor Coalition, called on Congress to pay attention to the rights and interests of child laborers and formulate supporting laws to severely punish employers who exploit and harm child laborers to safeguard the health, safety and welfare of child laborers. , because minors are important assets for the country’s future development rather than cheap human resources.
