States Toy with Idea of Loosening Child Labor Laws Amid Tight Labor Market
The labor shortage facing businesses across the country has been lingering for years, with some arguing the trend can be traced back to the 2008 financial crisis. Businesses faced with worker shortages have tried a variety of strategies to mitigate the resulting challenges: signing bonuses and increased wages, increased use of automation and customer self-service options, even shortening business hours or suspending operations entirely.
Lawmakers Considering a Shift
Lawmakers in some states are getting into the labor market problem solving business themselves, but some of the policies put forth are raising a few eyebrows and signal just how desperate the situation feels to many decision makers.
“Lawmakers in Iowa and Minnesota have introduced legislation in the last month proposing exceptions to child labor regulations in their respective states, due to the persisting labor shortage hitting them particularly hard,” writes Jason Lalljee in an article for Business Insider. “Minnesota lost 90,000 workers alone during the pandemic, according to state demographers, making it one of the tightest labor markets in the country. Iowa’s not far behind with roughly 75,000 open jobs in December.”
The proposals in Iowa and Minnesota have not been passed into law at this point, and there’s no guarantee they will.
Should Younger People Be in the Workforce?
Nevertheless, they represent a broader interest in some quarters of looking to teenagers as potential sources of critically short labor. At the same time, many employers aren’t waiting for legislation to legalize the increased use of child labor.
Recently, for example, Packers Sanitation Services, Inc.—a Wisconsin-based slaughterhouse cleaning service—admitted that it used child labor as young as 13-years old at its plants around the country, including three in Minnesota, one of the states considering loosening its child labor laws.
Legislators don’t necessarily want to keep young workers entirely out of the workforce. They are concerned, primarily, with the number of hours children are allowed to work as well as ensuring their working conditions are safe.
The bills being considered also indicate concerns with dangerous jobs, generally—specifically construction jobs in Minnesota, and meatpacking jobs in Iowa.
Businesses across the country are considering all available options when it comes to mitigating the impacts of the national labor shortage. Increasingly, businesses and legislators are looking to child labor as an option to help ease the shortage, and the businesses aren’t necessarily waiting for the legislators to pursue that option.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.
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