State Child Labor Penalties Expand in Pushback on Relaxed Limits

A countermovement is emerging among certain state lawmakers to strengthen enforcement of child labor laws and increase penalties against businesses that violate them, even as bills to loosen these protections in other states continue to advance.

Colorado in particular is set to tighten its child labor restrictions for a second straight year. A bill on its way to Gov. Jared Polis (D) aims to encourage underage employees to report illegal working conditions to the state by banning employer retaliation, eliminating potential criminal liability for their parents or guardians from Colorado law, and making final orders of a company’s violations public.

That bill, passed by the state’s legislators May 7, is perhaps the broadest effort against child labor of 2024 thus far. Lawmakers from Oregon to Virginia also have pushed back on what’s been a source of heated legislative debate in other states.

In Florida, a new law eases work-schedule restrictions for minors, while a bill awaiting Alabama’s governor would end youth work permit requirements.

The legislative activity coincides with increased findings of violations around the country and reports of egregious cases such as young teens working overnight to clean meatpacking plants, prompting federal investigations of Tyson Foods Inc. and Perdue Farms Inc.

Advocates for tighter child labor restrictions say legislation like Colorado’s is necessary to crack down on violators.

“If I were a minor suffering an egregious or any violation of child labor laws, I would have no reason under current Colorado law to come forward,” said Nina DiSalvo, policy director at Towards Justice, a Denver-based advocacy group that pushed for the bill. “I would lose my job, and my parent or guardian could be found guilty of a crime.”

That’s especially problematic because the Colorado labor department’s enforcement of child labor laws is largely driven by citizen complaints, as is the case in most states.

Under current law, the state receives only a handful of complaints each year and issues few citations, DiSalvo said.

The legislation also clarifies that employers could be ordered to pay damages to underage workers. Those damages would be on top of civil penalties paid to the state, a maximum of $4,000 per violation or $10,000 for willful violations.

In 2023, Colorado enacted legislation that lets underage workers who are injured while working in illegal conditions sue the employer for damages, rather than be limited to filing a worker’s compensation claim like most workers who suffer on-the-job injuries.

Industry-Led Push

Business groups primarily in the construction, hotel, restaurant, and retail industries, which complain of worker shortages, are helping drive state legislative proposals to relax child labor restrictions.

States should make it easier for teenagers to gain work experience while they’re still in high school by eliminating red tape such as work permits, conservative groups including the Foundation for Government Accountability say.

“The data show teenagers who have age-appropriate work opportunities thrive in post-secondary education and end up making more as adults, which is a really good thing as we see the cost of living continue to rise,” Haley Holik, senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, said in an emailed statement. “Our reform proposals concentrate on removing barriers to work opportunities for teenagers, making it easier for parents and teens to pick job opportunities that work for them.”

In that vein, the Missouri House passed a proposal May 7 to eliminate work permit requirements for underage workers, similar to Alabama’s bill. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) vetoed a similar measure in April.

Indiana also enacted a measure this year relaxing limits on employment of minors, including the restrictions on hours they can work.

And Iowa made international headlines in 2023 with a new law that eliminates a list of hazardous job restrictions for underage workers if they’re part of a state-approved apprenticeship program.

US Labor Department officials told state lawmakers some parts of the legislation conflict with federal child labor limits under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Those include allowing underage teens to operate forklifts or “power-driven bakery machines, to manufacture brick, tile, or related products, and to work in wrecking, demolition, or ship breaking operations,” according to an August 2023 letter from DOL.

Joint Employer Liability

A key part of combating illegal child labor is holding the right parties accountable, said Terri Gerstein, director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative. That means ensuring state and federal agencies can penalize companies at the top of a supply chain for violations even when a subcontractor or smaller business partner is the employer of record for the underage workers.

State legislatures have rarely if ever tackled this question in the child labor context. A few have enacted laws imposing joint liability in other areas of employment law, such as wage theft in the construction industry.

Existing statutes such as the federal FLSA allow for potential joint employer liability, but the case law that has evolved over the years makes it hard for regulatory agencies to win against a large company that argues a subcontractor or franchisee instead is the employer, she said.

The US DOL’s pursuit of Perdue and Tyson is an unusual case of the federal agency pressing the joint employer issue in a child labor case, in which the companies’ subcontractors are accused of illegally employing underage workers in the meat companies’ plants.

“It should be less of a legal burden to be able to go up the chain and hold that entity liable,” Gerstein said.

“The way the law works now is it looks at the very specific details of the work situation,” such as who has hiring and firing authority, or who sets the workers’ schedules, she said. “It’s a very miserly and narrow way of understanding all the relationships.”