Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday approved a bill eliminating a requirement for children under 16 to obtain state documentation in order to work. The Arkansas law is now just one of a number of state bills loosening child labor restrictions, despite evidence that young children are already engaged in dangerous and exploitative labor throughout the country.
State GOP legislators have used the rhetoric of protecting children and giving parents more choice over their children’s lives to justify extreme policies like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s drag show ban and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on any instruction about gender identity or sexual orientation in elementary schools. Sanders’ spokesperson, Alexa Henning, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, ”The Governor 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.”
The new law, called the Youth Hiring Act, will eliminate the requirement that children aged 14 and 15 seeking a job acquire a document issued by the director of the Division of Labor, which includes the child’s work schedule and a description of their work duties, as well as proof of age and parent or guardian consent.
Sanders signed the bill just weeks after the Department of Labor released the results of an investigation that found 102 children aged 13 to 17 illegally working dangerous jobs like cleaning meat processing equipment. Ten of those children were working at facilities in Huckabee’s Arkansas, according to the investigation, and 25 were working in Minnesota, another state considering looser child labor laws.
Many children working in dangerous and illegal jobs are migrants from Central America who come to try and earn money to send home to their families who are struggling due to the economic downturn precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, a recent New York Times investigation…
Read the full article here