Arkansas is rolling back some child labor protections after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders this week signed a new law to make it easier for children under 16 to get hired.Â
The new law is part of a push by some states to loosen child labor rules at a time the job market remains tight, with the lowest jobless rate since 1969. In Minnesota, a bill would allow 16- and 17-year olds to get work in the construction industry, while Iowa lawmakers are considering legislation that would permit 14- and 15-year-olds to work in freezers and meat coolers, which is currently prohibited.
The Arkansas law, called the Youth Hiring Act, eliminates a requirement that children under 16 obtain an employment certificate before getting hired — a document that proves the child’s age, describes the work they will undertake, and gives written consent from the child’s parent or guardian, according to CBS affiliate KNOE.
The rollback comes less than a month after the Department of Labor fined a company for employing children as young as 13 to clean “razor-sharp saws” with “caustic chemicals,” including at two Arkansas meat-packing plants.
Sanders “believes protecting kids is most important, but doing so with arbitrary burdens on parents to get permission from the government for their child to get a job is burdensome and obsolete,” a spokeswoman for the governor said in an email to CBS MoneyWatch.
She added, “All child labor laws will still apply and we expect businesses to comply just as they are required to do now.”
Child advocates argue that eliminating the requirement could open the door to abuses such as the underage hiring cited by the Labor Department.Â
Currently, getting an employment certificate requires minimal effort and a few days to secure approval from the the state’s department of labor, said Laura Kellams, the Northwest Arkansas director with Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, while speaking at a recent state committee hearing on the issue, according to KNOE.
“This is not red tape, so who is it a burden to?” Kellams said. “It’s a burden to companies who are illegally hiring minors beyond the allowable hours and in conditions that aren’t allowed.”
The U.S. Labor Department said in February that over the past five years it had seen a 70% increase in the number of children illegally employed by companies. In the government’s 2022 fiscal year, the department found that 3,800 children had been employed by more than 800 companies in violation of child labor laws. Officials are overseeing roughly 600 probes into potential child labor exploitation.
The Biden administration is moving to create a task force led by the Labor Department to crack down on illegal child labor.
