Child labor, a big problem, notably during the Industrial Revolution and in other parts of the global south is all of a sudden becoming a modern-day problem in the current capitalist hellscape here in the United States.
As companies look to squeeze every dollar out of wage laborers to accumulate surplus income, a growing trend among the capitalist class to keep wages down is taping into child labor. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, nearly 5,800 children were employed in violation of the labor laws in the United States marking an 88% increase since 2019. The companies found to be in violation accumulated more than $8 million in penalties, resulting in an 83% increase from the previous year.
According to CBS News, some larger companies are designating the fines as a “cost of doing business” with blame often directed towards staffing agencies who they say send them the underage laborers.
Many of the industries that are employing underage workers include some of the more dangerous occupations in the country including sawmills, meat packing plants, and construction sites where dangerous tools and hazardous chemicals are a norm with little to no safety precautions or training being provided.
Unfortunately, given some of the autonomy states enjoy from any kind of federal regulation, some places like Florida are trying to roll back child labor laws. The Economic Policy Institute noted that 10 states have made efforts to roll back laws in favor of companies employing underage workers.
At a time when serious child labor violations are on the rise in hazardous meatpacking and manufacturing jobs, several state legislatures are weakening—or threatening to weaken—child labor protections. The trend reflects a coordinated multi-industry push to expand employer access to low-wage labor and weaken state child labor laws in ways that contradict federal protections, in pursuit of longer-term industry-backed goals to rewrite federal child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country. Children of families in poverty, and especially Black, brown, and immigrant youth, stand to suffer the most harm from such changes.
Economic Policy Institute
Migrant children are some of the most exploited, even here in the United States where a chicken processing plant in Southern California was found to be employing underaged Guatemalan migrants utilizing staffing agencies to do so. This past October, FBI agents found migrant children also working in a poultry plant in Ohio violating child labor laws.
It’s not just migrant children though. In June, 16-year-old Michael Schuls died at a Wisconsin sawmill he was working at when he was trying to unjam a stick stacker machine at Florence Hardwoods. Additionally, the Labor Department found that three kids ages 15 to 16 suffered injuries at Florence Hardwoods between November 2021 and March 2023. However, at the time Shouls was among nine total minors working at Florence Hardwoods who ranged in the ages of 14 to 17.