Miserable working conditions including crowded and unclean factories, a lack of safety codes, and long hours were the norm. Children could be paid less and were less likely to organize into unions. Working children were typically unable to attend school, creating a cycle of poverty that was difficult to break. Nineteenth-century reformers and labor organizers sought to restrict child labor and improve working conditions to uplift the masses, but it took the Great Depression—a time when Americans were desperate for employment—to shake long-held practices of child labor in the United States.
According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, legislatures in at least ten states have set out to weaken federal child labor laws. In the first three months of 2023, legislators in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota introduced bills to weaken the regulations that protect children in the workplace, and in March, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law repealing restrictions for workers younger than 16.
Those in favor of the new policies argue that fewer restrictions on child labor will protect parents’ rights, but in fact, the new labor measures have been written by the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a Florida-based right-wing think tank. FGA is working to dismantle the federal government to get rid of business regulations. It has focused on advancing its ideology through the states for a while now, but the argument that its legislation protects parental rights has recently enabled them to wedge open a door to attack regulations more broadly.
FGA is part of a larger story about Republicans’ attempt to undermine federal power in order to enact a radical agenda through their control of the states.
That goal has been part of the Republican agenda since the 1980s, as leaders who hated federal regulation of business, provision of a social safety net, and protection of civil rights recognized that a strong majority of Americans actually quite liked those things and getting Congress to repeal them would be a terribly hard sell. Instead, Republicans used their control of federal courts to weaken the power of the federal government and send power back to the states.
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According to the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, legislatures in at least ten states have set out to weaken federal child labor laws. In the first three months of 2023, legislators in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and South Dakota introduced bills to weaken the regulations that protect children in the workplace, and in March, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a law repealing restrictions for workers younger than 16.
Notes:
https://www.epi.org/publication/child-labor-laws-under-attack/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-ikea-the-new-model-for-the-conservative-movement
https://thefga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FGA-Annual-Report-2021.pdf
https://www.foxnews.com/official-polls/fox-news-poll-voters-favor-gun-limits-arming-citizens-reduce-gun-violence
https://northplattepost.com/posts/3603f063-d69f-43d0-8227-5be82ba4fdfd
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/04/20/cleta-mitchell-voting-college-students/
https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-redistricting-voting-maps-bfe03c47daeca14444f15bc9e6438d4a
