DES MOINES – Parents and union workers from across Iowa will gather at the State Capitol in Des Moines Monday to protest Iowa lawmakers’ recent shocking proposals to roll back state child labor laws.
WHAT: Our Kids Are Not for Sale: Rally and Press Conference
WHEN: TODAY, Monday, February 27, at 3:15 PM
WHERE: Iowa State Capitol Rotunda, 1007 East Grand Ave, Des Moines, Iowa
State Senator Jason Schultz and fellow Republicans have proposed gutting Iowa’s child labor laws in a bill (SF 167/HSB 134) that includes over 20 sweeping changes. Just a few of the proposals include:
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Allowing youth as young as 14 to work six-hour nightly shifts in industrial laundries or meat freezers during the school year, and even longer hours during summer months
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Allowing 15-year-olds to work on assembly production lines or loading/unloading shipments of items up to 50 pounds
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Allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to serve alcohol
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Allowing employers to recruit teens for “work-based learning” programs in jobs formerly off-limits as hazardous but now open to 14-17 year olds under waivers provided by Iowa Workforce Development
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Providing employers immunity from civil liability if a child is injured, becomes ill, or dies on a job that is part of a “work-based learning program.”
Charlie Wishman, President of the Iowa Federation of Labor, says legislators need to keep their hands off Iowa kids. “These proposals fly in the face of common sense as well as decades of research showing that hazardous jobs and excessive work hours can damage teens’ health, development, and education. Many of these changes would also directly contradict federal laws covering most workplaces that are designed to prevent exploitation of minors,” Wishman said in a statement released Monday.
Many of the extreme measures proposed in the Iowa bill appear intended to allow corporations already profiting from widespread use of illegal child labor to legalize their exploitation of minors. Right now in the Midwest, multiple meatpacking facilities are under investigation for employing children on sanitation crews, exposing them to hazardous cleaning chemicals and equipment during overnight shifts well beyond the work hours allowed by law for children and causing them to miss school. Multiple factories throughout Hyundai-Kia’s supply chain in the state of Alabama are also under investigation for employing children as young as 14 as full-time production employees.
The Iowa bill is being backed by Iowa chapters of employer lobby groups like the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), National Restaurant Association, and Home Builders Association. These groups have supported bills to weaken child labor protections in several states, in what appears to be a coordinated campaign to rewrite child labor laws and other worker protections for the whole country.
Iowa Federation of Labor Secretary-Treasurer Pete Hird called on legislators to “get to work on solving the real problems facing working families and their children, including growing inequality, low wages, wage theft, unsafe work, and increasingly underfunded schools and public services.” Hird says, “We refuse to put any Iowa child’s health and education in danger in order to further boost corporate profits, and we call on Senate and House leaders to show they stand with Iowans by killing this outrageous bill.”
Completely unbelievable to see a law that puts children into danger. Just because the unemployment rate is down, doesn’t mean you should ignore the safety of children and be apathetic to the minimum wage. If you want your business to survive, how about up the wage. It’s extremely unacceptable to see even fast food places pay more than this, let alone kids working in hazardous situations. Not to mention that now children’s lives don’t even matter if they’re under the “work-based learning program.” Not only would this ruin a kid’s sleep schedule and health, but it’ll ruin their education! And although kids aren’t as productive and active as before, that doesn’t mean we should go back to the 1800s. I’m not into politics, and I don’t side with the republicans or the democrats, but this is stupidly one of the worst ideas anyone has accepted before in modern times. We’re a progressed country, yet we’re making laws like this. I love my country and my state, but this is just bizarre. I hope to join the protest, but if I can’t make it, then I’ll spread awareness with this new law implacement.
The politicians dont have to worry because their children wont be the ones working these dangerous jobs. It will be the poor and common folks children.
Just another way to make public education look bad. Let the kids work all night and come to school tired and worn out. Scores drop and Republicans feel justified in saying public schools aren’t doing their job.
Rich Republicans want to take us back to the days of poorhouses, and whole families working all day just to get enough to buy supper. They claim they can’t hire enough people, but what they really mean is that they can’t enough minimum wage employees. They’ll do absolutely anything to avoid paying a living wage. $7.25 an hour isn’t enough for even a kid to live on.