The following transcript comes from our webinar, “Backsliding on Child Protections: The Return of Child Labor in the US,” hosted by the Economic Opportunities Program on November 19, 2025. For more information, including video, audio, speaker bios, and additional resources, click here.

Matt Helmer  01:57

Welcome everyone. My name is Matt Helmer, and I’m the Director of Job Quality and Worker Well Being at the Economic Opportunities Program at the Aspen Institute.  It’s my pleasure to welcome you to today’s conversation titled Backsliding on Child Protections: The Return of Child Labor in the United States. This conversation is part of our Opportunity in America series. During this series, we try to bring a variety of different people together, from researchers to practitioners to advocates to organized labor to workers and businesses and many more, to talk about the changing economic landscape in our country and how we can make sure that we try to build an economy that works for everyone. For those of you who joined early, before the event started, you saw a display of photographs, and those were curated by my colleague, Nora Heffernan, that represent images of child labor from the last century. Most of those photos came from a collection by Louis Wicks Hein, who was a sociologist and photographer at that time who documented child labor his photographs for the National Child Labor Committee really were key in exposing the harsh realities of child labor during that time, and they really helped spark national reform and remain some iconic symbols of that time period and of social change. Those photos were donated to the Library of Congress. Where they remain today, I think they’re a reminder of where we’ve been and kind of where we are in some respects, but they’re also a reminder of the power of art in changing how we think about and view the world, and a reminder of how art can lead us to change and reform as well. We’ll be coming back to those in just a minute, but before we get started, just a quick review of our technology. Everyone’s muted. Please use that Q and A button at the bottom of your screen to submit and upvote questions. We’ll try to get to as many of those as we can. Share your resources, your perspective, your ideas, your opinions in the chat. If you want to post about this on social media, our hashtag is talk opportunity. If you run into any issues during today’s event, you can message us in the chat or email us at EOP dot program, Aspen institute.org, we are recording this event, and you will get a copy of the recording emailed to you once it’s available. Finally, Closed Captions are available for the discussion. Just click that CC button at the bottom of your screen to activate them. Now to today’s event, this is the first conversation in a two part series that we’re titling exploring the past, present and future of youth at work, I think in the United States, you know, one’s first job is kind of a rite of passage in some respects, right? And some of us who are older, maybe carry images of what work looks like for a young person. You know, kids delivering newspapers to the extent newspapers are still still around in that form. Maybe mowing lawns, working a few hours after school, at a family restaurant, bagging groceries, maybe helping on the family farm. Yeah, there’s kind of a mythology, I think, around these experiences about learning responsibility, you know, earning your money to buy your first car, save for college, developing a work ethic. And, you know, part of that is all still true, that still does happen, and it is possible, I think, to design good, meaningful and safe jobs for age appropriate youth. And many youth do need to work, right? They do need to save for college, or they do need to support their family. Help support their families. In many respects, they think good jobs for youth have become somewhat of the exception as well, and what we know about work for youth today, I think, often falls well short of some of those, you know, kind of nostalgic images we have in our minds. 

Matt Helmer  05:45

So in this series, we’re looking at kind of two related, overlapping, interconnected issues. Today, we’re going to focus on an array of child labor issues and violations. So kids too young to work, kids working in dangerous jobs and in places they have no business working in, and kids working longer hours than allowed by law. Are some of the things we’re going to talk about. And the second conversation that we’ll have in 2026 we’re going to shift focus a little bit to think about what good work looks like for age appropriate youth. How do we create work experiences that genuine, genuinely benefit young people, what protections and supports do they need? What does a good job look like again for an age appropriate youth that will come in 2026 but beginning with the images the issues of child labor today, where we’re going to focus. You know, I think those images that we showed before the events with from Louis wicks Hein, they’re from the distant past, but some of those same types of horrors continue more than more than 100 years later today, many of us have heard the terrible stories over the last couple of years of young children being severely harmed or killed on farms and meat processing plants and construction sites. We’ve heard about 11 and 12 year olds working overnight cleaning the floors of slaughterhouses, children on tobacco farms being exposed to really noxious and dangerous chemicals. These tragedies are, you know, pretty hard to fathom. From my perspective, they’re impossible to excuse, and I think, represent yet another example of us failing to live up to, I think what we, many of us, hold as a sacred commitment to protect our children. So they’re really kind of unbecoming, I think, of who we say we are as a country now, alongside these really big horrors and tragedies, are a number of other common child violations, child labor law violations that we’re going to talk about today. So again, kids working too many hours, late in the night at the grocery store, fast food restaurants, underage kids working that shouldn’t be, kids operating dangerous machinery, and kids really having their childhood education and their lives kind of stolen from underneath it as these tragedies have unfolded. And what we’re going to explore today too is we’ve seen states working, weakening child labor laws, allowing even younger children to work, expanding permissible hours, reducing restrictions on hazardous occupations. We some. We’ve seen some states strengthen protections too, though we’ll talk about that a bit as well. You know, our kids, all of our kids, whether they’re born in the US or they’ve traveled here from elsewhere, looking for a better life. You know, this is, this is a really urgent issue, and I think we need immediate action around it. We need an economy where this type of exploitation of children and of workers in general is not just illegal, but it’s really kind of unthinkable. 

Matt Helmer  08:42

I’ll close by saying in a recent conversation I had with someone in the UK who was asking about what we had kind of coming up in terms of events and discussions, I said, we’re going to do something on child labor. And he said child labor really in the United States, like he was just so shocked and appalled and like flabbergasted that this was still an issue in the United States. And I think the hard truth is that while this issue has been rising in recent years and getting a little bit more attention, again, it’s kind of an issue that’s that’s never left us, right? We’ve made a lot of progress since where we were 100 years ago, but these types of tragedies still still happen. We’ve gotten better at hiding them, maybe pretending that they don’t exist. And I think one of the hard truths is sometimes we may not care as much, because some of the kids that are being harmed and killed in this work, most frequently, are kids that have brown skin, and that’s just a harsh reality that existed 100 years ago, and is one that is carrying through till today. So I think this is kind of where we are. It’s where we’ve been. But you know, it doesn’t have to be where we go, right? So, so how do we build a better future for the kids that are our future, as we often say, is what we’re going to talk about today, we have a great. Panel that’s going to dive more into this, but I’m going to introduce our first opening speaker, Yesenia Cuello. Yesenia is the co founder and executive director of NC field, a nonprofit that works with families in rural North Carolina to improve their health, livelihoods and working conditions. Yesenia, I’ll turn it over to you. 

Yesenia Cuello  10:20

Hello. Good afternoon or good morning, depending on people are watching from. My name is Yesenia, and I’m so glad to be here. Children working beside their parents, build character. Early mornings in the fields, teach discipline. Protecting the American farm means protecting a way of life, a cherished, wholesome piece of American culture. It’s a compelling story. It’s comforting, and if you listen to those who defend child labor and agriculture today, you’ll hear it repeated again and again, as if the entire future of American farming depends on children learning the family business by performing the work my family did while the ones who supervised sat in their air conditioned trucks tractors, or rode around in rows on their ATVs and golf carts. In all my years working in tobacco, I never worked alongside a farmer’s daughter or son. I never met the white, non Hispanic children whose right to learn to farm supposedly requires the preservation of child labor exemptions. Those children aren’t in the rows at five in the morning. They aren’t the ones absorbing nicotine equivalents to smoking an entire pack of cigarettes through their skin or working inside a poultry or hog operation. The children in America’s fields are immigrant children and children of color, so brown children, black children, poor children, children whose families are held hostage by systems that were never designed for them to move upward. So if we’re going to talk about legacy, we need to be honest about which legacies are actually being protected. There is a legacy we say we are preserving the nostalgic image of a small family farm. And then there’s a legacy we’re actually preserving, the one rooted in slavery, exploitation and the belief that certain farm workers, including children, belong to those who profit from their labor. In our experience, emergency responders have told us that if a worker calls for help, or if there’s a hurricane evacuation order, they call the grower first, not the worker, not the family, because unspoken assumption is that workers on the farm are part of the growers property, part of the operation, part of asset. This is normalized plantation logic repackaged for the modern day. 

Yesenia Cuello  12:30

And growing up, I heard the same messages that every farm worker child hears, that because our skin color is darker, we can withstand the sun longer, that we don’t need as much water, that drinking cold water will make us sick, that thirst is normal, exhaustion is normal and the pain is normal. These aren’t harmless myths. They are the everyday instructions for humans expected to work in conditions that are unimaginable to most people in this nation. When I talk about child labor in this country, I’m not reaching back through history books, I’m reaching back to the rows of tobacco where I and so many others grew up. At 14, I stood in fields that fell endless, wrapped in a trash bag I thought would keep me dry, never knowing, it would trap the nicotine and pesticides against my skin. By noon, my head spun from dehydration. My stomach twisted from the chemicals absorbed through my skin, my hands were sticky with tar. This wasn’t 1910. This wasn’t a story from some distant past. This was eastern North Carolina. I was like and it’s happening today and it’s going to happen again tomorrow. We find children in poultry barns. We find them in hog farms, inhaling ammonia strong enough to choke an adult, we find them gently but quickly, harvesting our Mother’s Day flowers, harvesting the blueberries, kale and cabbage that show up washed and beautiful in grocery stores. People want to believe our experiences are accidents, gaps, oversights, cracks in the system, but these aren’t cracks. It is the system, a system that relies on extreme poverty, a system that relies on families who can’t afford a car, even if they had the right to drive, parents who are so busy surviving by ensuring our food supply that there’s no time to learn English, who don’t understand the bureaucratic maze required to access health care or school services or wage protections, a system designed so that mobility is impossible, so that children’s labor often becomes the only buffer between survival and collapse. We inherited an agricultural framework exempt from the farm and labor standards, an exemption powerful enough that no advocacy campaign has ever defeated it, and because that exemption exists, children, mostly immigrants, mostly brown and black, mostly invisible, are still working today in conditions that routinely cause irreversible organ damage, heat strokes and death. That’s not a loophole. It’s the caste system, a legacy not inherently noble, is simply that we’ve repeated it so long we’ve repeated it long enough to stop questioning its sanity. Slavery is also part of that American farm legacy. So it’s racism, disenfranchised. Advisement and the quiet comforts with which this country assigns hardship to certain communities while preserving opportunities for others. If we want to change the trajectory of the American store, we have to start by telling the truth about the systems we inherited, and then we must be bold enough to build the systems no one has yet imagined. That requires asking different questions. Not how do we reduce violations, but how do we ensure no child’s labor is required for their family to eat? Not, how do we expand the labor supply, but what would this country look like if every worker, including farm workers, had rights, protections and dignity? Not, how do we tweak the framework, but how do we redesign it so that no community is left invisible and protected or without the dignity of healthy, food, opportunity and safety. That work requires more than policy expertise. It requires moral clarity. This is about justice, and justice means censoring the people closest to the pain, not as stories to be told, but as architects of its solutions. There is another American legacy we need to acknowledge, the persistent message that children like me belong in fields, but not in the future, that we are perfect for harvesting this nation’s food, but we’re never meant to contribute to rooms where people are debating outcomes to shape our very lives. 

Yesenia Cuello  16:12

Look, locally we know this much: you can’t end child labor without replacing the income that child labor currently props up. Otherwise you’re not protecting us or collapsing our families. Before we can remove children from fields, we must replace the income that current systems have stolen from their families, higher adult wages, stable winter income, mobility to train and reach other jobs, market premiums for child free produce and access to small farm enterprise development. These are few examples of the essential economic foundation that makes ending child labor possible. In this room, I’m imagining there are decades of dedication to this effort, people who work tirelessly to influence policies, shape supply chains and form public imagination and hold institutional power. Your presence here is not an accident, it’s a signal, and that signal comes with responsibility. Every person here represents a part of the system. We are trying to transform the choices you make, such as the standards that are enforced will determine whether the next generation of rural children of color spend their summers learning and laughing or standing in a tobacco field wearing a trash bag to keep chemicals off their skin. If we love food, we must love the people who produce it. If we care about children, we must care about the conditions they are growing and working in, and if we care about justice, then silence and nostalgia cannot carry us forward, only courage can we are all planting something, whether we mean to or not. The only question that matters now is, what will your choices grow and who will inherit the world you helped shape. The future I hope for will not arrive on its own. I understand my responsibility to help build it clearly, intentionally and together, so the next generation of children doesn’t have to survive what too many of us continue to endure. Thank you.

Matt Helmer  17:56

Thank you so much. Yesenia, that was wonderful. Thank you for sharing your story. It’s just an honor and a privilege to have you open up this conversation for us. Yesenia is going to stick around, and as we get to audience, Q and A at the end, if you have questions for her, we’ll get them to her and bring her back into the conversation. So now it’s my pleasure to introduce and transition to our panel. We have Reid Maki, who’s the Director of Child Labor Advocacy at the National Consumers League and coordinates the National Child Labor Coalition. You can read more about their bios on the website. By the way, I’m just going to put names and titles to faces. We have Ron Estrada, who’s the CEO of Farm Worker Justice Nina Mast, who’s a Policy and Economic Analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, and Charlie Wishman, President of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, and we’re so grateful to have Kristina Cooke from Reuters here, who was part of a team of journalists who were finalists for a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for their reporting on migrant child labor in the US. So Kristina is the perfect moderator for this conversation. Kristina, I’ll turn it over to you. Thanks for being here.

Kristina Cooke  19:05

Thanks so much for having me, and I’m really looking forward to hearing from the panelists on this important topic. One thing that struck me from our reporting on migrant child labor was just how young some of these children were who were working in these dangerous jobs in the poultry and automotive industry. And you know, as we had just heard from Yesenia in the in the farm worker industry as well, and also just how challenging enforcement was, in part due to limited resources and this ecosystem of labor brokers that muddied accountability. But you know also the the extreme poverty that these families were finding themselves in, that they were making these decisions to send their children to work, as well as Matt said, People don’t usually think of the US when they think about child labor. And you know for us, when we were reporting, it was really eye opening to. See this happening at scale in one of the richest countries in the world. I So, like I said, I really look forward to hearing from the panelists about the current state of play, including how some states are actually loosening restrictions on children working, and how where we are fits into this historical context. I want to make sure this is a free flowing discussion, and so I’m going to try and incorporate questions from the audience as we as we go along. So I’d like to get us started by having each of you introduce yourself your organization, a little bit about the current landscape. Reid, if we could begin with you, if you could introduce yourself and talk to us a little bit about your work and also about the history of child labor in this country. How did we arrive at this moment?

Reid Maki  20:48

Yeah, thank you. Well, I work for the National Consumers League, and we have a storied history. It goes back to 1899 a lot of its work to reduce child labor was very successful. And, you know, and helping to reduce child labor was done by women, great women, Frances Perkins, who later became the Department of Labor Secretary, was one of those women, you know, as a time when child labor was rampant. Kids were working 12 hour days in factories and, you know, mills and coal mines. And a lot of that changed in 1938 when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed, it provided some broad protections for kids. Unfortunately, it exempted agriculture, as you know, as you heard Yesenia say so eloquently, so we’ve been working on that issue for the last 36 years through the child labor Coalition, which has 39 organizational members, includes farmworker justice on the panel here the National Education Association Human Rights Watch. We work closely with Yesenia at NC field and Nina at EPI. Great to be on a panel with them. 

Reid Maki  21:56

We work on both domestic and international issue, and as I, as I indicated, you, know, our focus on domestic issues has been primarily over the last 36 years on agriculture, trying to close those exemptions that that Yesenia talked about, we think there are about 300,000 kids working in US agriculture. It’s a pretty large number. And it’s, it’s, um, it is the one sector that kids are allowed to work in in large numbers that is really quite dangerous. Agriculture has very elevated injury and fatality rates, and we don’t understand, like, if you’re going to make an exemption, why would you do it in agriculture? And as Yesenia indicated, some of those decisions were rooted in racism. So, you know, why are we concerned about kids working on farms for long hours? Because the kids are dropping out. We think we hear from allies in farm worker communities that 80% of kids in some communities are dropping out and they’re just exhausted, you know, and they have educational discontinuities when they travel, and the health injuries that Yesenia mentioned there, there, I’ll just briefly mention a piece of legislation that would broadly deal with this issue. It’s called the Children’s Act for Responsible Employment Farm Safety. And it would raise the age at which kids can work from 12 to 14. And it would raise the age at which kids can do dangerous work from 16 to 18, which is the same as every other sector. You have to be an adult to do dangerous work, unless you’re in agriculture. So in recent years, our focus has had to shift a tiny bit because of the expansion of kids in meat packing plants that Matt mentioned, you know, kids working the night shift doing really dangerous work with caustic chemicals. It got a lot of media attention. It was a grave concern, and, you know, so we have kind of jumped in to do that, and we’ve also been working with Nina on resisting beginning of state law protections. So I’ll stop there for now.

Kristina Cooke  24:03

And Ron, let’s go to you next. You know, child labor is obviously, as we’ve just heard from both Yesenia and Reid, one of the core issues for farm workers, and it’s a core issue that farmworker justice advocates on. You know, if you could introduce yourself and farmworker justice’s work on this issue, and, you know, perhaps just talk a little bit more about how we got to that, to this point where the rules are just that much more permissive for children working in the fields.

Ron Estrada  24:32

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, Kristina, thank you for for having me here. Thank you to my for my other panelists, and for Aspen for really amplifying this very important issue here. So first, let me just say Farmworker Justice is a national nonprofit. We were founded in 1981 to confront the widespread exploitation of farm workers. We originally began by bringing litigation against agricultural employers who who were violating. Basic labor rights, and over time, we’ve expanded our work to include legislative and administrative advocacy. Today, we work to improve wages, strengthen workplace protections, expand access to health care and ensure that farm workers who have been excluded from many federal labor laws have a meaningful voice in shaping the policies that are affect their lives. Now, although progress has been made, many of these conditions we were created to fight still exist, and you heard this from Yesenia and Reed. You know, farm workers continue to face unsafe workplace, workplaces including extreme heat, dangerous pesticide exposure and a lack of protective equipment, and many live in overcrowded housing without adequate ventilation, heating, AC or even reliable electricity. It’s hard to believe this. I’m saying this in today’s day and age, here in 2025 I’m reading this off for folks who are so critical in providing the food we eat and on the job, the workers still experience wage theft, denial of water and rest breaks, and they have limited access to shade and far too often threats of retaliation for speaking up about the abuses as what they encounter. But for decades, FJ or Farmworker Justice, we’ve served as a convener for the farm worker advocacy community. We help to coordinate strategy. We join coalitions and build coalitions like reeds, CLC, child labor coalitions, and we defend critical rules and legislation that impact farm workers and the US food system. 

Ron Estrada  26:36

Now I will say this as Yesenia and Reid previously mentioned, these injustices traced back to the agricultural exceptionalism built into the Fair Labor Standard act, and this is which was passed in the 1930s that’s, that’s, that’s something I know we’re going to continue to talk about, but I wanted to say this, and with this, the reality is clear, children as young As 12 are still legally doing work in the fields that would be illegal anywhere else. FJ is fighting to change that. We’re doing this by pushing for stronger regulations, protecting families and challenging outdated exemptions. We’re working to ensure that every child can grow up safe, healthy and free from exploitation, ending agricultural exceptionalism. It’s not just a policy issue. It’s a moral imperative, and the time for all of us to act as now

Kristina Cooke  27:32

Nina, let’s turn to you next about epi and earns work on child labor. I’m just interested in hearing from you about what you see is what the stakes are for the children and the workers, but also in, you know, in the current environment, if what are you seeing that that you think people should be focused on?

Nina Mast  27:54

Yeah, thank you. So, as Reid mentioned, you know, just to start EPI Economic Policy Institute is a non partisan think tank that has been working for almost 40 years now to center the experiences of low and middle income workers, to center their interest in economic policy discussions, and we work across a range of issues. Child Labor was not historically an issue area that we focused on until early 2023 when staff on the EARN team, which is our economic analysis and research network, this is kind of our state and local policy focused arm of epi we started noticing this trend of multiple states proposing bills to weaken state child labor standards, and that’s when we started reaching out to our network, which is a network of nearly 60 state based research and policy organizations working on a range of economic justice and racial justice issues. We started reaching out to folks to understand what they were seeing how these bills were playing out at the state level, and since that time, we’ve been really working closely with our state based partners to create awareness around bills that seek to roll back child labor standards at the state level, and also encouraging lawmakers to propose strength stronger standards. Because, you know, as we’ve discussed so far in this webinar, child labor is an issue that most people have assumed kind of has gone away in this country, and it’s not. It’s no longer an issue, but states actually have historically played a very strong role in advancing protections for youth workers, and so that is a so those standards are what we’re encouraging lawmakers and our advocates in states to take another look at and see how they can strengthen, as opposed to the trend we have seen to actually weaken those standards in many states. 

Nina Mast  29:53

And I think you know, even though a lot of our partner organizations historically haven’t worked on trial labor, they. Recognize it as connected to a lot of the issues they already focus on, whether that’s immigration, education, other labor standards issues, and they also correctly see it, the issue of child labor, as one part of a multi pronged right wing agenda to limit access to education in this country, to make jobs more precarious in ways that enrich the wealthy and corporations further. And so I think when we think about child labor, we always try to connect the dots for people and show how this is not merely an issue of just Youth Employment Standards. It’s a larger issue about who has access to economic opportunity in this country, education, and you know who is, who is creating the system to limit that opportunity. So I’ll stop there.

Kristina Cooke  30:55

I’m going next to Charlie. Iowa was one of the states that was working very actively on trying to loosen child labor laws, and you were actively advocating against that. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and the Iowa Federation of Labor, and you know why child labor became this issue for you? Well, first

Charlie Wishman  31:14

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I think after everything Yesenia said, I think we can all go home, because we do have an entire look, how long have we been working on this? As I like to say, nothing is ever really settled when it comes to capitalism. So this has never stopped. We’ve never stopped working on it. And look, how did, how do we fight this? Look, read, I wore a turtleneck today because I’m with a lot of you academic folks, but Reid and Nina make us sound smart in interviews. But I’m more happy going up. And if you’re going to come after kids, we will repeatedly, the labor movement in the states will just repeatedly punch you in the face until you stop. And that’s basically, that’s we. I didn’t literally, or nobody literally, punched anyone in the face, but I would have been happy to, and, oh, we’re not supposed to tell you that kind of thing, sorry. So a lot of really, really good, thoughtful organizing a strategy that involves inside and outside, but yeah, the labor movement in the states like, sorry, we settled this about 120 years ago. And I don’t know, we got ourselves banned from parts of the capital, the state capital. I mean, we raised hell all over this state. I think in addition to that, we we we put the Republicans in a really crappy spot here, like, Hey, if you want to vote on whether or not a 16 year old girl can serve beer at Hooters and let’s put the actual in an amendment. Let’s put the the size of the outfit you want to vote on whether or not 16 year olds can wear that at work? Cool. Thanks. Republicans. You want to have that fight do that, or you can actually strip the bill down. 

Charlie Wishman  33:09

So when it comes to this particular issue, I don’t feel really bad about being really tough on people, and at the end of the day, they kind of get it about a minute before this start, the House Minority Leader, or majority leader, who I fought on this for so much, and who actually banned us from the second entire second floor of the Capitol, called me about something so you can move forward on these sorts of things, but you cannot back down. This is not a negotiable issue. And this is something that at the end of the day, between Reid and Nina and Jen and everybody in state, all of our union and affiliates, are everybody that was involved in this fight. And it was a movement fight. I truly believe that in the last two years, at least some parents didn’t have to put their kids six foot in the ground, thanks to the work that folks like Reid and Nina and so on helped us with. So thank you both for that. But this, this isn’t over, and it’s continuing on, and I’ll just probably Shut up right now. I’ve already sounded weird enough talking about punching people, but to my kids, happy to.

Kristina Cooke  34:35

Thanks so much everyone. Reid, if we go back to you, um, you, what are some of the common Wage and Hour violations that you know, that you’ve seen from industries such as fast food and meat packing, or, you know, restaurants, as Charlie was just talking about?

Reid Maki  34:51

Well, yeah, we’ve seen a ton of violations during the Biden administration’s enforcement efforts on fast food. You know, all of the major fast food. Companies were implicated. Most of those concern hour violations, hours violations, you know, with kids working too many hours and that, you know, that may sound innocuous to the public, but it’s really it’s really important, because there is academic research that suggests that when kids work more than 20 hours a week during the school week, that their grades drop and their school completion rates drop. So we’re talking about the futures of these kids, you know, and you when you look at the impact of having a high school degree or a college degree on on young people over the course of their lifetime, it can be millions of dollars. And so we do not want to see kids working long hours, you know, you know, as Matt said, work, work has a place. Teenage work has a place. You know, if it’s, if it’s restricted to, you know, decent hours and doesn’t involve hazardous work, we’re okay with it. But when you know, when it crosses those lines, we’re not okay.

Kristina Cooke  36:04

Ron, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, what child labor in agriculture looks like, but could you touch us a little bit more about some of the federal laws that are there on the books with regards to child labor on farms. I get how, how much more permissive is it?

Ron Estrada  36:27

Well, let me, let me start by setting up some of the, you know, the scenario, because we’ve, we’ve all mentioned FLSA, the Fair Labor Standard acts. And really that is to the core of what we’re kind of anchored to, and that’s also the main issue that we’re all talking about here, is that this has to be modernized. We have to bring this up to speed. And this is, you know, the work from previous to me and all of us here. We’ve been trying so hard to do this. And I think in some ways, Charlie’s right on. It’s like we’ve got to continue to hit hit back, because, again, the way we’ve been working previously. You know, it’s just been, we’ve just been chipping away for this. A lot of this is hidden, and I say hidden under the term family farming. Family farming conceals disgusting truths about our food industry. And when you when, whenever it is benefits the industry to, you know, again, to justify why that there, everyone’s okay with having this current situation, with labor contractors being the buffer and doing all the hiring for the for the workers. And they’re all They’re the only ones at fault for these issues. You know, they hide in their family farm. And again, FLSA was established in the 1930s when there were true family farms there. 

Ron Estrada  37:48

Now, let me just say something here. I was at the organic Trade Association recently. There are some good farms out there. There are some good people out there that want to do well, but I don’t know of any good agribusinesses. And I don’t call them large farms. I call them agribusinesses. I think by using the term farms with them and associating the farms is misleading, and that’s something that feeds into a lot of what we’re seeing here. The reality is, we as the public, or we as our advocates, need to make the public aware of the reality that this still is the companies, these big corporate, corporate entities and agribusinesses, are all about profit. They’re about what is, you know, how much money can we make at whatever cost? And unfortunately, what we’re talking about today, it’s the cost of children. And these are children. It doesn’t matter if they’re undocumented or US citizens, they’re children. And it is our, all of our responsibility as human beings, to stand up and face this.

Charlie Wishman  38:47

Can I follow up on what Ron said there? I think that what you’re talking about, Ron, I think that this really poses a, makes our battles even tougher in farming, traditional farming states, right? So, for example, you know, heck, I grew up on an 80 acre, 80 acre Hereford cattle farm, and I did all kinds of stuff that I probably should have been doing at a really young age, and that’s just the way it was. That doesn’t exist anymore. But the idea that so many people have in their head is, oh, well, I worked on the farm when I was a kid, and it wasn’t that dangerous. My parents watched me or whatever. And there’s this idea that’s very separated from what happened after the farm crisis in the 80s, and then what happened with with corporate agriculture after that, and that we really don’t have family farms anymore, but there still is this very romantic idea in people’s heads, you know, that that’s what it was. And, oh, I and back to this. Oh, I learned these values when I worked on the, you know, when I bailed hay or whatever, when I was a kid, when it’s like, this is really, you know. That’s not what’s going on here. We’re talking about Guatemalan kids who are working on a hog insemination plant and or, yeah, let’s call it a plant in Clarion, Iowa, and showing up to school and falling asleep right away because they’re getting done with work at 5am that’s the reality versus what. But it like in states where you’ve seen a lot of this child labor legislation, Kyle, Iowa, Indiana, and places like that, there is a very romanticized notion of what farming is and was.

Kristina Cooke  40:33

Nina, could you talk us through some of that legislation that’s come up some of the states that have you know, taken these steps towards listening, listening laws? Sure.

Nina Mast  40:45

So according to our tracking, you know, we’ve been doing a lot of tracking on child labor legislation over the past three years, and just in the past three years, at least 29 states have introduced bills to roll back state child labor protections, and 10 have enacted those bills. And you know, many of them are Republican controlled states, but some are not. And so I think it’s important to recognize that this is an issue that really cuts across politics too and and that’s something we continue to be concerned about, but in terms of the changes that the bills make, it’s kind of a there’s a big menu, but they often deal with expanding the number of hours that youth can work, you know, per day or per week, often in or sometimes in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, like was the case In Iowa, and is now in the case in Ohio, with a bill that’s currently on Governor Dewine’s desk. So if you have a direct line to the governor, you know, send me an email. But then we also see bills to create new exemptions from state child labor standards, often under the guise of work based learning or career and technical education. So, you know, we have these bona fide programs through which young teenagers can experience have work based learning experiences, but there’s this effort afoot to weaken the regulations around those programs and introduce new sort of unregulated ways to exempt minors from hazardous work protections under state law. And then we’re also seeing efforts to lower the alcohol service age, allowing minors to work in the presence of alcohol, allowing minors to drive vehicles on farms or drive to and from work, as was recently passed again in Iowa. And then I think, yeah, I think that mostly covers the bevy of changes. Oh, the other one I wanted to mention was youth sub minimum wage. So, you know, under state and federal law, minors can often be paid less than the state or federal sub minimum wage based on their occupation or their student status, and we’ve seen efforts in many states to expand those youth sub minimum wages or implement youth sub minimum wages in states that don’t currently have them. And so these are all efforts that we’re working with our partners in many states to combat, to oppose, and we’ve had a lot of success in at least watering down bills where we can’t necessarily block them. And I think, to Charlie’s point, like there are these pervasive economic messages that have been really powerful in some of these states, and it’s been a challenge, but I think to combat those, but I think where we’ve been able to work with community and be able to be out in front of these bills. We have seen some success in opposing them.

Kristina Cooke  43:46

You know, I mean, it’s interesting that all these bills are happening at the same time. Do you have a sense that they’re being coordinated?

Nina Mast  43:55

There’s definitely coordination. You know, foundation for government accountability was the big push behind many of the bills to eliminate Youth Work Permits across multiple states. That’s a change. I forgot to mention, you know, the elimination of youth work permits in many states, and that’s really dangerous, because the Youth Work Permit System is really what is stopping minors from being employed in hazardous or inappropriate jobs in many states. And so they, they were really pushing model legislation in many states to undo those systems. And then we’ve also seen industry groups oppose, or we’ve, we’ve seen industry groups support a lot of these efforts to roll back child labor protections in many states. And so there’s certainly a high level of coordination, I do think that we saw a flurry of legislation coming out of the pandemic, and I think that’s in part due to the fact that low wage workers were finally seeing some modest gains in their wages. And, you know, there was this idea that we were in a tight labor market coming out of the pandemic. And so they were seeking to replace adult workers with minors in many cases. So I think there’s, there’s a bit of that timing element as well with like the broader macroeconomic trends. I think the other thing is that we weren’t necessarily ready for these bills to be, to be coming out in the wake of the covid 19 pandemic. I do think in, you know, maybe in the last year or so, we’ve started to see a little bit fewer of these bills, and that’s definitely a welcome sign, compared to the number of bills that we’ve seen that actually propose stronger protections. And so I think there has been a shift, and that’s been really exciting to see

Kristina Cooke  45:46

Charlie, in Iowa, were there particular arguments that you made that you felt broke through? You know, that that people took on board when you made them about, about the child labor Bill suggestions there?

Charlie Wishman  46:01

Yeah, absolutely off the bat. Well, first of all, they didn’t, they weren’t prepared for us, because we got the bill leaked to us, and we went to the media with it first and framed it and framed them as being crazy for wanting to put kids back into minds, right? Like it’s really easy to make them look terrible over and over and over every single day when you have when it’s again. There’s things like mining in the bill. There’s things like packing houses in the bill that, like Iowans know instinctually there are some really, really big problems with and like, yeah, I was saying earlier, the way to force you, when you have little to no bargaining power in any situation, but using the state legislature and the governor in this particular situation, the only thing you can do, you can ask them very, very nicely, but they do not care. The only thing you can do is in every single way possible, through organizing at the local level, at the state level, and in many, many different ways, make them look like shit so that they feel like they’re not going to get reelected. That’s like the only way you can ever change a politician’s mind. I love if politicians really cared about good arguments and position papers, but they don’t. They have to be afraid that they’re not going to be reelected. That’s the That’s it. And we just did a really, really good job using the research, using the data, using the talking points, and all of the things that were provided to us and that our national partners, some people on this call, like I mentioned, read and and Nina as well. But really, at the end of the day, it’s like, how do you make them look terrible? And they make it really easy when they put some of the stuff in that bill that they did, because it’s pretty much a free for all. It seemed like Iowa Workforce Development The governor got together with a whole bunch of corporations and said, Hey, what do you want? And that’s the other thing right now that works as well. Wherever you fall on the political spectrum, most people are really hating on corporations right now, especially multinational corporations and things like that. And I’ll tell you, like, Tyson Foods makes a really good villain, and so does I mean, I could go down the line, but there’s a bunch of people that make really good villains, and happy to they seem happy to play the role, for some reason, I don’t know, but, yeah, you don’t win the entire thing. But man, again, I think that the work that we did, getting that Bill stripped down to mostly hours changes, which I don’t want to minimize, as being important, but getting most of the hazardous out, hazardous occupations out, was easier to do because they were, they were just egregious and outrageous, and it’s easy to make them look bad doing that. So,

Kristina Cooke  49:09

Charlie you talked earlier about, you know, how they justified some of the farm work, how they justified, you know, having teenagers working at bars. But you know, you the stuff that you were able to get stripped out of the bill, the more hazardous work. How, you know, how did they justify that? What were their reasons for having that in the bill?

Charlie Wishman  49:31

Well, I think it goes to one thing that Nina brought up earlier, is that it’s, oh my God, look, Iowa’s number one export is young people. And so nobody wants to stay here and live and so there’s not like, there’s an of white people, at least there’s not in a growing population whatsoever. And so there’s this idea of like. And so there is a. Workforce issue in general. On, I hate the these terms of middle skill or low skill, whatever, but there is, there is a huge problem when it comes to the the just having enough workers in the state to do some of the things that we need to do. And so, yeah, you’re it does end up. That’s how I believe that they ended up getting into meat packing, how they ended up getting into manufacturing, how it ended up getting into all these sorts of things, is because they just like, I’ll take Firestone here in in Des Moines. Usually they big. They build ag tires. They’re usw 310 steel workers. They’re normally 1200 people. They’re down to they’re about 800 or so, just as one factory. I’m using that as an example of like, well, the ag economy slowed a bit. I could go through the trades. I could go through every single sector. We don’t have enough workers, and so what capitalism usually just turns to who’s the easiest to exploit, and so that’s where we end up with these child labor bills.

Ron Estrada  51:15

Yeah, on that front, Governor DeSantis has explicitly argued that we’re deporting a lot of immigrants. So we need to hire teenagers to do those jobs, you know, these really dangerous, difficult jobs. So it’s a crazy argument.

Kristina Cooke  51:30

Reid, I’d love for you to expand on that a little bit, because it’s kind of impossible to talk about exploitation in these industries without talking about immigrant labor. You know, what have you seen in terms of the people being prepared to come forward, the possible, you know, how, the how you’re, what you’re seeing on enforcement?

Reid Maki  51:55

Well, I think there is a tremendous amount of fear at the moment, you know, because of ice and all of these crazy immigration activities. People are really, really afraid. And, you know, human rights are being abused every day. We, you know, we see it. I, I, you know, I think these are very vulnerable workers. A lot of a lot of the kids that ended up in the meat packing plants for unaccompanied minors, there was a surge in unaccompanied minors over a four year period where, like, 120,000 kids were coming in a year. And these were, these were young kids who, you know, should not have been in meat packing. You know, it’s you have to be 18 to work in those factories. But they were getting in with fake IDs, and the companies were not looking, they kind of look the other way. So incredibly vulnerable kids that you know, are desperate for money, willing to do, you know, almost anything for it. And And now, you know, it’s a little unclear, like ours. You know, are there still large numbers of these kids entering the plants? You know, with the border having been basically shut down. There’s a there’s a lot of uncertainty at the moment, right now, what’s, what’s happening in those plants?

Kristina Cooke  53:10

And you at the farm work from Farmworker Justice perspective, Ron, what are you seeing in terms of, you know how immigration enforcement might be playing into the labor in the field?

Ron Estrada  53:28

Well, just to piggyback off what Reid, fear, there’s fear, and there’s actual, the actual actions of removal. And again, just to be clear, this is not just undocumented. These are they’re actually targeting us farm workers as well, and there’s really very little disregard that that is the case and from the administration here for this. So in any environment, right? You’re going to have folks who are not only afraid to go to work, they’re afraid to go to school, they’re afraid to go to churches, they’re afraid to go to hospitals. And keep in mind that the data, and this is something I can and Nina, I’m sure, could validate, is rural communities rural America are largely based on, you know, the workers from the ag industry and farm workers and immigrant communities and communities of color that are thriving and keeping these communities around. So it certainly is a trickle down effect that when you impact one workforce, such as farm workers, and that impact, again, fear we’re seeing in fear alone is going to have that ripple effect. Now we know of already some farms in Texas, some farms in the Midwest that are actually beginning to not only lose harvest and lose crops, but are seriously thinking about closing down. And one of the things that we’re seeing as in it as some solution currently from the administration, is you hear a lot about H-2A workers. Let’s keep in mind the H-2A guest worker program is was created as a temporary fix, a temporary solution. It was not, it was not created for a permanent solution to what we’re dealing with in terms of workforce stabilization in the US farms. So right now, we are looking at a band aid effect here. And not only we looking at a band aid effect, but because of the rhetoric that we’re seeing that this country is is, you know, it’s coming out of the come out of Washington, we’re starting to see decreasing, decreases in the number of individuals that are looking to apply as a guest worker program. So this is this, folks. This is a potential train work in our food system that we’re seeing as a result of of how the immigrants in this community are being treated. 

Ron Estrada  55:48

Now, one of the things I want to, want to take this back down to child labor here, is one of the roots of child labor that we’re seeing is, obviously, is the economic status of the families. So when they stop going to work, there’s the revenue and money start. You know, stops, stops flowing into the families they in fact, there’s a need for, in some cases there, there’s a there’s this need and and for the children to come in and help support the families here. But what we started, what we fight constantly for, and have been for decades, is that some type of legal status in federal legislation be included. In fact, there is a bill, farm workforce Modernization Act been introduced four times bipartisan support. It’s had bipartisan support, it’s actually passed the house a couple times. It is something that, if you look at the supporters, these are folks who are familiar with, AG, familiar with industry and the importance of having a stable workforce. But again, I go back to you know, the industry, and those players that you know that are controlling industry and that are halting or stopping this type of legislation, which this country solely needs, you know, in addition to really address the child labor, but to provide food on our tables. So this is something that is, you know, we’re not going to hear the last of it. This is going to continue. And lastly, I would say it’s real time for us, for Farmworker Justice. We’re working with other farm worker advocates on the interim final rule that was put out by the Department of Labor. We’re leading some comments to really again, to re educate and create awareness and these concerns that I’ve just shared. And there’s another concurrent issue going on, the adverse effect wage rate, which is basically looking to at a time, and we’re looking to supposedly increase and support us, the US workforce. We’re going backwards. We are looking by by decreasing wages for H to a guest workers, we’re conversely decreasing the wages for US workers. So again, it’s just a lot going on here, and this is something that we will continue to continue to fight for.

Kristina Cooke  58:08

This might be one for Charlie as an audience question. Are the arguments that proponents of weaker standards use? Do messages of parents rights play into this?

Charlie Wishman  58:23

Well, sure, that is one of the main talking points here. I think on the other side, I think that, you know, as far as the actual debate goes, you know, my my responses to that always had to do with you’re right. It is about parents rights. This bill was written or these bills are written by corporations, and quite honestly, the manager at Chili’s does not give a crap if your kid has their homework done, but the but the parents actually do so, the parents aren’t really able to control whether or not that their kids are getting scheduled till nine o’clock, and then they have to drive 45 minutes home, and then they might get to doing their homework at 10, but we know that that’s probably not the case. So, yeah, there’s a big you know, that was the way I think that that we always came back at that, but it is a very, very strong argument, as we’re with you know, parental rights is always going to be a very strong argument, but it’s like, you’re right. It parents, not corporations, know what’s best for for their kids.

Kristina Cooke  59:40

So another audience question maybe for Reid was asking for insight, specifically for the three PL industry. So warehousing and transportation, what are you seeing there and where?

Reid Maki  59:58

Well, I haven’t seen specific child Labor allegations against the warehouse warehouses, I don’t know, but maybe Nina has, she’s been monitoring activities in the States, but I haven’t really seen much, much child labor activity with those facilities. But you know, certainly, yeah, go ahead, Nina.

Nina Mast  1:00:19

Oh, I was just gonna say I haven’t either, but I think, I think to the extent that warehousing and transportation are two highly fissured industries, you know, where the workplace, the workplace structure, is governed by layers and layers of contracting and subcontracting. That is a key risk factor for child labor violations, because you have kind of this diffusion of responsibility across the employer, and no one is necessarily checking to make sure that there’s no child labor across the supply chain. And when violations are found many times the you know, the corporate, the corporation that is in charge of the entire supply chain is at the top, can’t avoid responsibility because they weren’t the direct employer. And, you know, we so. So as we see our economy become more efficient across many types of industries, including warehousing and transportation, I think that will necessarily lead to more child labor violations. And unfortunately, even at the federal level, we still don’t have a great way of dealing with that because of the issues related to joint employer standards. And the Biden administration did make some strides on enforcement of these types of situations, but there’s still a long way to go.

Charlie Wishman  1:01:35

And I just look, I just want to Nina made such a great point, because child labor, wage theft, misclassification and independent contracting are all such interrelated issues, especially when it comes to construction, specifically kids working on roads and where we see so Many really, really dangerous situations. But General Contractor subs out the work to a random sub that you don’t know, and you cannot track them down later, and poof, they’re gone, you know. And nobody’s responsible ever. And that’s that always happens. It happens around so not only do kids get exploited, put in dangerous positions, don’t have any work comp on them, no unemployment, anything like that. But if there is something that happens where they fall off the roof, they’re pretty much left high and dry and have no medical coverage at that point, other than to sometimes the subcontractor will just take the kid to the ER and drop him off there and leave.

Ron Estrada  1:02:43

Yeah, if I can add Kristina just to Charlie’s point. And for the very few, very, very few that somehow may get caught, the fine that they have to deal with is so low, it’s actually a line item budget. So they budget the growers and owners, and this case, farms budget to pay that. And it’s really has no deterrent at all to to have them change or not. And I, and I just wanted to add that to that, because that’s that’s worth, worth sharing.

Kristina Cooke  1:03:18

There’s another audience question about how we can improve and expand valid sources of data on child labor in order to continue to expose the situation. Maybe that’s one for Nina.

Nina Mast  1:03:32

Yeah, I can take a shot at this, and I welcome others to also weigh in, but I mean, data availability is definitely a huge problem in the child labor context. I mean, we don’t even have data on employment at the national level for minors under 15. The Bureau of Labor Statistics simply does not collect it. And so that’s a major limitation, especially because in agriculture, you have minors working at much lower ages, and in work that’s maybe more informal, it’s harder to reach them. And so I think agriculture data, agricultural data is particularly difficult to come by, and that’s really a problem, because agriculture is the most dangerous industry for youth workers. And so I think, you know, there were efforts that were begun under the Biden administration. I know that the Government Accountability Office was looking into updating a 2018 report on working children that I participated in their initial information gathering. I’m not sure what has become of that report. I think it’s safe to say that the Trump administration does not have the, you know, the respect for data and the work that goes into collecting and disseminating these large public surveys. So it’s a problem that we certainly haven’t addressed, but I think I absolutely agree that, you know, we need better data to be able to fully understand the scope of this problem and to be able to provide solutions that really center the. The workers that are most impacted by these violations.

Reid Maki  1:05:05

And the Trump administration has decided to cancel the National Agricultural Worker survey, which has been a real great data source for farm worker advocates for over 30 years, and they just decided it wasn’t necessary anymore. It’s kind of a ridiculous decision, and it’s going to really hurt. It’s going to hurt efforts, efforts to, you know, to help that population.

Ron Estrada  1:05:27

Exactly, yeah, that’s, I was going to add that to through that read. It’s like, not only do we need data, we almost need to stop those from, you know, removing the data, the points that we and, you know, gathering that we have. And that was FLS is certainly one of them in in I mean, we, we’ve got to work. We’re track and see what NAS, what happens to NAS as well. But again, there’s the data, and then there’s also, once we have the data, is just, you know, to really identify some type of transparent reporting of that data. And that’s, it’s a whole nother issue in itself.

Kristina Cooke  1:05:59

Ron, where do you see any you know, potential policy solutions?

Ron Estrada  1:06:07

Wow, federal level. I mean, that is, that’s, that’s really the question of the R, and because we’re still in really kind of defense mode, and feel like we’ve been defense mode for for years. Here I mentioned farm workforce Modernization Act, and again, this is really the umbrella approach to where, you know, you’re able to ensure that the parents can earn a living wage that will trickle down to, you know, address some of the issues around, you know, children wanting and having to work. But for right now, the, you know, again, we’re, we sign on to read, and I’ll read, read one. I’m taking even standard to the the legislation that reads, and Bill he’s sharing. I know he has a link he’ll share shortly. That’s certainly one, you know, one step, and the other is to, you know, kind of like, double click on Nina’s work on the state level and what Charlie’s doing. I think, you know, one of the things that, FJ, you know, we’re national based. We’re based in DC, but we also see the opportunity to, you know, for specific states and the work, and double down on some of the work there. And what I mean by that is just really find any legislation or policies that we could, you know, again, it’s really about concessions at this stage. You know, that’s something I’m trying to tell our partners too. It’s like, you know, we’re, we’re, let’s, let’s look at some first steps here and and so for us, for the longest time, you know, and it continues to be, legal status is key. But I will also share that the need for for education and public outreach still exists. I’m not going to give up on that. That’s that’s something that we feel, that we still have. And any movement, if you look over the, you know, through history, you know, it’s really the people driven movements have really been the ones that have been able to really largely change and impact legislation and policy. 

Ron Estrada  1:08:08

So that’s something that we’re looking at right now. And there are, you know, where there were a few champions here, as I mentioned here, that that really want to do the right thing here. But it’s unfortunate that, you know, just this day and age and where we live in, it’s something that it’s about on the federal level, but certainly in the state level, we can get some wins on state, maybe even local. Drill down to county and and city would be another option. But again, public education is something that we’re going to you’re going to see a lot coming from us.

Kristina Cooke  1:08:43

Reid, I’d like to ask the same question of you, what opportunities you see currently at the federal level?

Reid Maki  1:08:48

Yeah. So you know, one of the bill, of a bill that Ron was referring to, is a bill called the Children Don’t Belong in Tobacco Farms Act. And you know, kids are working in US tobacco they’re getting sick. They’re getting thing called Green Tobacco Sickness, which is basically nicotine poisoning. And you know, the symptoms include dizziness and vomiting and nausea, fainting. You know, I heard one North Carolina teen describe it as feeling like I was going to die. And they you know, the kids and adults both wear black plastic garbage bags while they work in tobacco fields to try to prevent the nicotine from going onto their skin and making them ill. So we think it’s a great bill. It’s been introduced most recently by Representative DeLauro, Senator Durbin has championed it for over a decade in the house that has 55 co sponsors. So I think we’re going to be providing a link here for people who are listening, who are willing to contact their member of Congress and say, Please, co sponsor this bill, either in the Senate or the House. And you know, it’s a no brainer, really, because some you know, tobacco is an industry that kills 8 million people a year. You know. There really aren’t many allies of tobacco, you know, except for tobacco farmers. And it’s, it’s really, I think, doing damage to kids. So we would love to see everybody, everybody on this call. If you want to take away action item that takes one minute, please go, go online and write to your member of Congress or senator and say, Please, co sponsor the children don’t belong in tobacco farms act. It’s all mechanized, so it’s not hard to do at all.

Kristina Cooke  1:10:29

Nina, you mentioned that some states are going in a different direction and actually trying to strengthen child labor laws. Can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing there? 

Nina Mast  1:10:41

Yeah and, you know, this has actually been really an encouraging sign. I think in the past year, I actually was tracking more bills to strengthen child labor standards at the state level than I was seeing efforts to roll them back. And that is kind of a new trend we’re starting to see. And so that has been really exciting. There are so many things that states can do to strengthen their standards. You know, many states have child labor standards on the books that haven’t been touched in 6070, years or more, but there’s a lot of opportunity there. So you know anything? So I’ll just give an example of Colorado that has, which has really taken several steps in the past few years to strengthen their standards. So first, in 2023 they passed the bill to allow victims of illegal child labor to sue their employer. And then in 2024 they followed that up with a bill to make child labor victims eligible for damages paid by the employer, as well as increased penalties to use them for wage theft enforcement and other types of Labor Standards Enforcement, and they also removed parental criminal liability from state code. And these changes are really important because we know that children and their families are often scared to come forward to report child labor violations, and under many state laws, they really have nothing to gain. They only have something to lose, which is losing their job. And so these types of changes take a really important step forward to actually compensating victims for for child labor violations, and increasing penalties to levels that actually will deter violations. So, and we’re, you know, there’s a range of other policy solutions that we’re seeing in many other states, and you can, you can view them all on our holding the line series, brief on child labor, where we provide pretty comprehensive menu of all the different legislative options available to states. 

Nina Mast  1:12:33

And some states are also doing this through the rulemaking process. You know, you just, you know, there are other options besides legislation to protect child labor or to advance child labor standards, so I encourage folks to check that out. But you know, at the federal level too, and at the state level, we really need to be raising the minimum wage and eliminating harmful sub minimum wages for youth workers and for all workers, because that is really at the root of some of the child labor violations we’re seeing is that, you know, workers need to be paid living wage, and I think that would go a long way in preventing some of the issues we’re seeing at the state level.

Kristina Cooke  1:13:14

We have an audience question, who are unexpected partners in coalitions to defend against backsliding and child labor protections. And who wants to take that? Charlie?

Charlie Wishman  1:13:30

You know, so I would again, it’s hard to find people for this, and they, gosh, let me just say it was a very, very easy thing when we were doing a lot of when labor in the state was doing a lot of events and a lot of press and all over the state, and really raising the profile of this. It was next thing, you know. I mean, the, you know, part of this ended up being the strategy of the League of Women Voters showing up to the like, they don’t care about me as much, hollering at them, because they’re used to that. But like, when the little old ladies from League of voters show up at the forums, then they start to get scared that this is a real issue, right? And it’s like, I don’t know again, I’ll go back to what I said earlier. Is all the policy papers in the world don’t stop this stuff, but politicians being afraid that they’re going to lose their jobs, that is what stops, or at least allows compromise in our favor on this sort of thing. So you have to engage the public whatever coalitions you can build. And it’s hard to find people in favor of sending kids back into packing houses and into mines and things like that. So this was an easy one to find some fine allies on in.

Reid Maki  1:15:00

Our tobacco work, we’ve actually found that some of the companies and some of the industry groups have acknowledged that it’s work that’s not really fit for kids under 16. You know, we’re trying to ban it for kids under 18, and they won’t go that far. But it, you know, it’s interesting that they that, they basically say, Yeah, this, this work is, you know, dangerous, and it’s not that. It’s not that great for for young kids. So that was a bit of a surprise.

Charlie Wishman  1:15:25

JBS I’ll say, in our case, JBS,  Reid. I don’t know if you remember when JBS actually came out with a letter, because the UFCW was very, very active in this, right? And the CEO of JBS was getting ready to go on some oh, gosh, I can’t I think he was doing a press conference with somebody, or going to be on CNBC or something like that. And they said, Well, what would happen if? What happens? How do you answer the question, if they bring up the Iowa child labor law? He’s like, what? I don’t know anything about this. He’s like, Well, what if this bill allows people under 18 to work in your plants. He’s like, I don’t want anybody under 18 working in my plants. So next thing you know, the FCW and JBS, as though we could get Tyson or some of the other ones, but, and by the way, JBS, then later got popped for child labor violations that long ago. So they’re not some heroes, but they were an unlikely suspect when it’s like, Hey, dude, you might have to answer for this on national TV.

Ron Estrada  1:16:29

Yeah, I just want to add to the couple things is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops came up with a statement recently, which was very, you know, some very rare for them to do, I think the previous statement was on ACA, and it was focused, although it was focused on the treatment of immigrants, they too would be, you know, a partner that we, you know, faith based groups and such, to consider looking at. And I would also, too, one of the things that I’ll share with some of our work, that we’ve done with some of our groups in in this public outreach space that I’ve shared is also chambers of commerce. And the chambers of commerce have been, it’s, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been really kind of promoting to expand the network outside of farm worker advocates and such, and non traditional partners that you know will make people scratch their heads, or why are, you know, where the Connect, where’s the connection and such. And so what we’ve been doing is connecting this to, you know, the pocketbooks of consumers, and this was one of the messages and share like, you know, to to the degree where the workforce of farm workers go, so does the cost that you’re going to be spending at a grocer or retailers or grocery store. So the business community here, you know, we all know, again, it’s kind of like that, you know, let’s see if we can find some ways to have them work for us. And these are mainly small businesses, the small grocers, the bodegas and the markets of the world, and get them working for us and and talk about the economic mobility piece to this, and how this could be something that is also key for, you know, for potential solutions and partnerships.

Kristina Cooke  1:18:17

And we have Yesenia back for the audience question portion of this. So Yesenia, I think you have something to add as well on the question on partners?

Yesenia Cuello  1:18:28

Yeah, absolutely. So we have had some unlikely partners, especially whenever we’ve turned to groups like our faith based communities, I know that they’ve been really helpful. I know that a lot of our environmental justice groups have been really supportive of the work as it relates to just, how do we help other humans? How do we help other people? I think that using the broader definition, especially whenever we look at things like environmental justice, and the reality is that environmental justice is people justice. So I think that expanding it and recognizing that whenever we talk about agriculture, whenever we talk about child labor, we are talking about things like education and health. I was like, There’s interconnectivity between all of those. So it’s kind of hard to address one without addressing the other.

Kristina Cooke  1:19:14

The question about whether the data shows any correlation between modifications to child labor laws and subsequent or lagged changes in educational outcomes across states or regions. Is there evidence? You know, what evidence do we have on how these policies affect schooling over time? Maybe Nina?

Nina Mast  1:19:37

Yeah. I mean, I think unfortunately, because these laws are so new, it’s largely too soon to be able to see what the long range outcomes are going to be, but I think we can be pretty confident that states rolling back child labor laws will be will lead to lower educational attainment for youth in some of these areas, particularly areas that are already struggling with high absentee. Rates, low graduation rates, which obviously come with a range of negative outcomes for these workers into adulthood. But we do have some we have some recent evidence on the importance of employment certificates or youth work permits in preventing violations. So there’s a relatively new paper that we can share after the webinar that shows that states that have Youth Work Permit systems have lower rates of child labor violations, and that when violations do happen, they are there’s there’s more enforcement of those violations compared to states that do not have them. And so we know of some recent research on the protective effects of strong child labor standards, and I think that is really just evidence that we need to continue this work to strengthen standards instead of weakening them.

Kristina Cooke  1:20:52

Another audience question is, what can workforce development organizations, perhaps those particularly serving youth and young adults, do to address address these issues.

Charlie Wishman  1:21:03

And I take that one just real quick. Our in Iowa, the Workforce Development Board, which I missed that meeting because I was on jury duty, doing my civic anyway, and so I missed that they were developing this bill. So let’s start with, can workforce like ideas not actually include this at all, and not hide this stuff under work based learning and and not only that, not give it kids any work comp or any way to if they are injured, being trained or work based learning, or whatever you want to call it. But actually, I have seen around it’s not just that, like, how can you be helpful? Like, don’t come up with the bad ideas to begin with, because this workforce boards are where a lot of this crap starts.

Reid Maki  1:21:57

What I’ve seen, you know, we saw a youth in Washington state who lost parts of both of his legs in a workforce learning program, student learner program. So I really think it’s inherent incumbent on these groups to to not weaken safety protections, to to enhance them, really. I mean, if they’re, they shouldn’t be putting kids in dangerous positions at all. I mean, it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be an entryway for for hazardous work.

Charlie Wishman  1:22:26

So it’s, I mean, one of the things that I’ll say that we did to we advised our neighboring states and so on in the Midwest, our counterparts at AFL CIO, when you have 5060, years worth of mishmash stuff put thrown together in code, it gives the opposition a reason to say, hey, we need that, quote, unquote clean this up, right? And then they go in and they tweak it. And it’s really not a tweak, it’s just terrible stuff, right? So try. We’ve advised folks to try and bring your standards up. And Nina said, You’ve been seeing this, bring your standards up, and probably match FLSA as close as you can, because, if not, be safer, but match that, because don’t give somebody else the opportunity to change a whole bunch of stuff. And they even tried to do this and say, Oh, well, we’re the heroes because we’re cleaning up all there’s some bad language around, you know, street vendors and stuff that doesn’t even exist anymore. So, yeah, try and actually strengthen your laws, but if take a look at the whole thing, because there’s probably a bunch of stuff in your code that doesn’t even make sense anymore.

Kristina Cooke  1:23:44

This is for a question for anyone, what does a good job for a youth look like, and how do we start building policies and practices to support that?

Reid Maki  1:23:57

Well, I think, you know, on the hours front, I think you know, the federal standard of 18 hours per week during the school week is something to not make sure you do not exceed that. You know, definitely don’t go over 20. But you know, that’s, that’s a real cause of concern. And you know, safety, safety consciousness is absolutely critical. We’ve seen kids get hurt. I saw a kid in talk to his parents in Wisconsin who was working in a factory. His parents thought he was sweeping the floor of this warehouse, but he ended up losing half his hand when he moved over to a manufacturing stamp metal stamping machine. And so it’s, yeah, it’s, you know, safe, total, safety conscious. Hours restricted. We don’t want to see kids working past 7pm on a school night. Follow, follow the federal law where it’s strong, and don’t be trying to exploit vulnerable teens and. And, you know, and use them as a cheap labor workforce.

Yesenia Cuello  1:25:05

And then if I can add anything to that, so I completely also agree with Reid. I think also whenever we talk, like, if we were to broaden it, I was like, definitely thinking about safety here, right? I was like, How can we was a good job for you? Well, you know, start off with making sure that that place is safe, making sure that you know that they are fairly paid, making sure that they are actually receiving skills and experience that can help contribute to long term opportunities for youth. You know, we need things that respect our time, respect our dignity, respect our health. I was like, We need to stop relying on a lot of child labor to fill in a lot of like the systemic poverty that we know is the root cause for why we see a lot of child labor. I think one of the other things that we also needed is pathways. You know, we need something that at the very end of the day ensures that families have the ability to have economic stability, so that the youth don’t feel forced to work and can focus on learning and their growth. I think that at the date that whenever we think of a vision, whenever we think about the legacy that we want to build, whenever we think of you know why people are here in the first place? It is to create a better future for their families.

Charlie Wishman  1:26:17

School’s their job. That’s a lot you said it a lot nicer you’re seeing, yeah, but I just want to tell my kids, it’s like, you know what? You get all this stuff for free, and it’s from a very privileged place. Look, I know not everybody’s there, but honestly the just having the ethos of like, okay, your job is to do well in school and finish school, and that will help you the rest of your life. That’s the best youth job, in my opinion, is to focus on school. But again, that’s a I don’t know. I’m a single dad, white guy, and I’m not in the middle of a lot of situations that a lot of other people are. So it’s easy for me to say that, but if you can make school your kids first job,

Ron Estrada  1:27:11

Yeah, the key, the key there is, if you can, I don’t disagree with that. Charlie and again, unfortunately for farm workers, or majority are seasonal migrant workers, and they they have to, you know, go, move with the crops and such. So their schooling is doesn’t have a luxury. I think those of us on this panel have had in our families. I just want to echo reading, yes, and, you know, it starts with safety. I think, unfortunately, we have to sit, we have to go with safety here first. And that’s, that’s something to where it’s such a there’s the opportunities, there the opportunities, you know, at least for when we were all growing up. And I’m going to, I’m speaking in general terms, you know, I think you could say it was fairly safe to be a paper board, deliver newspaper nowadays. You know, that may not even be me safe here. So, so I think you really got to look and start with safety here.

Kristina Cooke  1:28:04

Well, thank you everyone. This is such a massive topic, and I’m sure we haven’t touched on so many things, but we really appreciate you all taking the time, and I’m going to turn it back over to Matt. Kathy,

Matt Helmer  1:28:24

Thanks everyone. Thanks Yesenia, Charlie, Kristina, Ron, Reid and Nina for such a great conversation and for covering so much ground on a really important and timely topic. And thank you to all the audience. I heard the chat was super active. A lot of conversation going on there, which is always great to see… our our next event is going to be in January. We’re going to take December off to let our team rest a little bit. So stay tuned for more information about upcoming events in this series and our other series, Job Quality in Practice. A huge thank you to my team at the Economic Opportunities Program, including Max and Finny, who really led the development of today’s event, who did all the research behind it, who found these amazing speakers that you all heard from today. Special thanks also to Maureen Conway, Sinin and Colleen for their support and leadership on this as well as our comms team, Nora Frances and Tony and Architex for the production of today’s event. Yeah, we’re wishing you all a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and we’ll see you hopefully in 2026 but thank you again to our speakers and you all for joining us. We’ll see you next time.Matt Helmer 00:05