Opinion: Some jobs should never be done by kids. Project 2025 sees things differently

Opinion by Veronica Goodman

(CNN) — Working a minimum wage job scooping ice cream or lifeguarding at the local pool is a summer rite of passage for many American kids. A growing number of mostly conservative officials and activists, however, have a different idea about what constitutes age-appropriate employment for minors.

Across the country, some officials — overwhelmingly Republicans — are looking for ways to usher underage workers into potentially dangerous jobs like factory work, including having them take late-night shifts. The far-right playbook known as Project 2025 goes so far as to propose that the Department of Labor roll back regulations restricting underage workers from taking “regulated jobs” in “dangerous fields.”

On Tuesday, Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025 and a former top adviser in Trump’s administration stepped down amid intense criticism including from the former president, amid intense scrutiny from Democrats and their allies who are harshly critical of the program. Even though the president has publicly disavowed it, Democrats are convinced that elements of the conservative blueprint are likely to become policy in a future Trump administration, given the number of former members of his administration who played a role in drafting it.

The extreme policy agenda proposed  by the conservative Heritage Foundation argues that underage teenagers offer an opportunity to fill labor shortages in these hazardous workplaces. These efforts come after years of lobbying by conservative industry groups across the country.

The authors of Project 2025 say that in an incoming Republican administration, the Department of Labor should “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” In short, those revisions would allow  teens to work in hazardous jobs. Project 2025’s workforce development proposals directly contradict years of legislation ensuring  that some jobs are simply never performed by minors.

America’s federal child labor laws were passed nearly a century ago. Prior to that time, it was not unusual for children as young as preschool age to be sent out to help support their families, many of them losing limbs on factory assembly lines or contracting respiratory illnesses in mines.

The goal of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was to put an end to the rampant injuries and deaths among child workers. It created protections for minors including common sense restrictions on when, where and how they would be permitted to work — including limits on the number of hours minors could work, the types of jobs they could take and the machinery they could operate.

Research shows that working adult jobs can cause serious health issues for children and impede their education. The effort to weaken child labor laws is part of an alarming — and overwhelmingly conservative — lobbying effort.

There is one notable case of New Jersey passing a law increasing the number of hours minors could work, but other than that most of the recent examples are the work of legislatures controlled by Republicans. And the New Jersey example does not go below the floor for minimum hours set by the Fair Labor Standards Act, but just reduces it to that federal standard.

Iowa is the most extreme example of a state increasing the hours in which minors are allowed to work — a measure which only Republicans voted for and passed. Fourteen-year-olds in the Hawkeye State now perform assembly work in factories and meatpacking facilities as part of training programs in direct violation of federal child labor laws.

Meanwhile in Arkansas, Republican lawmakers have removed age verification requirements for hiring children. Republican lawmakers in Florida have proposed allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to work longer hours on school nights. As recent cases around the country have shown, working late while in high school can lead to lost sleep, missed school days and students falling behind on their schoolwork.

So, while we’ve come a long way in discouraging child labor over the past century, recent years have seen some alarming reversals in those values. A growing number of Republican politicians seem intent on dragging the nation backwards to an era when children performing dangerous and backbreaking labor was nothing out of the ordinary.

In fact, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, since 2021, 31 states have introduced legislation to weaken existing child labor laws, and nearly half of those have successfully passed them. These laws include alarming provisions that would extend the number of hours minors can work; lift restrictions on children doing hazardous work; eliminate parental permission and work certification requirements; and even allow underage children to serve alcohol.

And some employers are not even waiting for the passage of laws loosening restrictions on employing minors. Since 2019, there has been an 88% increase in cases in which children were found to be employed in violation of child labor laws. Last year alone, the Department of Labor assessed more than $8 million in penalties, an 83% increase from the prior year.

We’ve recently seen the dangers of children illegally performing hazardous work around the country, in some instances leading to their deaths at sawmills and slaughterhouses, while others have lost their lives while working with industrial equipment. These are the sorts of outrageous cases — often leading to tragedy — that would likely become even more common if Republicans continue to weaken protections for working minors.

So what’s causing this race to the bottom by the right to erase decades of hard-fought labor protections for our most vulnerable Americans? It seems to be linked to our historically low unemployment rates and, consequently, our tighter labor supply.

Some proposals by legislators have even come in direct response to lobbying by industries like restaurants and hospitality, as more employers report difficulties finding workers in a booming economy. But to state the obvious, caving to special interests geared at getting more kids working longer hours or in dangerous jobs is a terrible, even immoral, approach to workforce development.

Democrats have responded to this alarming rise in demand for child workers, including the increase in child labor violations by introducing counter measures that would modernize our labor laws to better protect young workers.

Proposed bills like the federal CHILD Labor Act would go a long way toward ensuring companies that violate the law are appropriately penalized, that there is more transparency and accountability across supply chains. In some states, lawsuits against employers can be filed by the parents or guardians of children seriously injured on the job.

Republicans who are genuinely interested in providing minors the opportunity to work without putting them in harm’s way should look at the ways some states are investing in their workforce through education and training. There are other options available to policymakers to help boost workforce participation in the short term without risking children’s health and safety. Examples include investing more in federal workforce development programs and expanding access to education and training services across state workforce systems.

Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania is making major investments in career pathways, pre-apprenticeships and registered apprenticeships. Some other states are helping students navigate career options and pursue educational opportunities, exposing them to the skills necessary to enter and thrive in the workforce. These are safer and more constructive ways to prepare young people for job opportunities.

It should go without saying that children don’t belong in dangerous factories or working overnight shifts. They deserve to be safe and protected, including when they become old enough to legally work. Instead of exploiting the labor of minors to appease business interests, policymakers should look at the ways responsible leaders are making sound choices to develop and expand the pool of trained workers.

For decades, having children perform dangerous tasks in unsafe settings has been understood to be an egregious moral, societal failure. It’s appalling that so many Republican politicians want to take us back there.

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