Arkansas child labor violations spike; advocates urge restoration of work permit for kids under 16

Members of the Food Chain Workers Alliance protested child labor at Tyson Foods' Springdale headquarters on October 16, 2023. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate)

The number of state-level child labor law violations in Arkansas rose 266%, from 460 to 1,685, between fiscal years 2020 and 2023, according to a report released Monday by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

Additionally, the state Department of Labor and Licensing has opened fewer investigations into child labor violations since the beginning of August 2023, when an employment certificate for companies to hire children under 16 years of age was no longer required by law under the Youth Hiring Act

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act:

Youth under 18 cannot be employed in hazardous occupations.

Children under 16 cannot work more than a certain number of hours per week.

Children under 16 cannot work in manufacturing or mining or during school hours.

However, Arkansas is one of 31 states in which lawmakers have introduced bills that would weaken child labor protections since 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The rollback of these laws has coincided with an increase in child labor violations.

Specifically, just over half of Arkansas' violations during fiscal years 2020 through 2024 have been for employing children beyond the maximum number of hours they can work, according to AACF's report.

The next-largest proportion of violations, 38%, involved a lack of the previously required employment certificate for children under 16. The report states that 85% of child labor cases with employment certificate violations also contain other violations, often regarding excessive hours.

Other violations involved insufficient maintenance of records, employing children in dangerous occupations and failing to adhere to required limits on children working in the entertainment industry.

Some state lawmakers nationwide have pitched child labor policy changes as a way to combat worker shortages . Additionally, members of the Arkansas Senate who supported the Youth Hiring Act emphasized the value of work and said today's children do not take enough initiative.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she signed the Youth Hiring Act, also known as Act 195 of 2023, because a required employment certificate for kids under 16 was "burdensome and obsolete." The policy had been in place since 1914.

The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce criticized the Youth Hiring Act, calling it "a solution looking for a problem," according to The Washington Post

Pete Gess, AACF's policy director and author of Monday's report, called Act 195 "shortsighted" and said state employment certificate mandates result in 43.4% fewer minors involved in labor violations nationwide.

"Part-time work for teenagers leads to hard and soft skill development," Gess wrote in the report. "But such employment should not come at the expense of educational progress. And when children are in the workplace with adults, they deserve protection. Employment certificates and other protections do not take away parental choice, but rather enable parents. We know that parents play the most important role in protecting their children, but parents are not continually present in the workplace."

Recent violations in Arkansas AACF's report found Arkansas often has a higher prevalence of federal child labor violations per million children than five of its six neighboring states, with the exception of Tennessee.

Missouri has a work permit requirement for children under 16 similar to what Arkansas. Lawmakers proposed a repeal of the law in question earlier this year, but the bill did not make it through the General Assembly.

Meanwhile in Iowa , where repeals of child labor protections have been the most substantial, some employers have learned that following state law means breaking federal law, and they are required to follow whichever is stricter.

Kids at work: States try to ease child labor laws at behest of industry

Such employers in Iowa have most often been in the food service industry, which in Arkansas is the industry with the most child labor violations, according to AACF's report. Tim Steppach, a restaurant owner in Benton, faced federal legal action this year after an investigation found he allowed children under 16 to work outside legally permitted hours and did not provide them minimum wage or regular paychecks, the report states.

Steppach was also arrested by local police in January on charges of sexually assaulting two minors employed at his restaurant.

Child labor issues in food service go beyond the restaurant industry. The Legislature's approval of the Youth Hiring Act came less than two weeks after the U.S. Department of Labor announced it had fined Packers Sanitation Services Inc. for violating child labor laws at 13 meatpacking plants in eight states, including Arkansas.

Packers paid $1.5 million in civil penalties for making children as young as 13 work in dangerous conditions. In Arkansas, the company paid a fine of $60,552 for using four minors at a George's Inc. plant in Batesville and $90,828 for using six minors at a Tyson Foods facility in Green Forest.

Protestors urge Arkansas' Tyson to commit to child labor, worker safety protections

AACF's Northwest Arkansas director, Laura Kellams, mentioned these violations in a March 2023 plea to lawmakers not to pass the Youth Hiring Act. She also said the law would make immigrant children who work to support their families more vulnerable to bad outcomes.

The U.S. Department of Labor last month confirmed it has an open and ongoing investigation into claims of underage workers at two Tyson facilities in Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Arkansas lawmakers from both parties cited the Packers violations and the wellbeing of immigrant children as their reasons for voting against the legislation.

Opponents of the bill also expressed concerns that it would put children at risk of human trafficking. A few weeks before signing the bill, Sanders had signed an executive order aiming "to develop an integrated approach" to preventing human trafficking.

Republicans hold supermajorities in both the House and Senate, and the Youth Hiring Act cleared the Legislature with solely Republican support.

Three days after the bill became law, its sponsors — Sen. Clint Penzo, R-Springdale, and Rep. Rebecca Burkes, R-Lowell — introduced a new bill to create misdemeanor and felony criminal penalties for child labor violations. The bill, which Gess said was "partially in response to political backlash" to the Youth Hiring Act, also increased the maximum financial awards for civil penalties in child labor cases.

The eventual Act 687 of 2023 passed with bipartisan sponsorship and support.

Child-Labor-11.18.2024

Proposed policy changes The state saw a decrease in the number of child labor cases, violations, and penalties in fiscal year 2024 compared to 2023, but it is impossible to attribute this solely to the Youth Hiring Act, the report states.

"As the employment certification process provided an important educational touchpoint for parents and employers alike, it is possible that doing away with employment certificates led to fewer complaints and therefore to fewer investigations," Gess wrote in the report. "A decrease in the number of investigators and staffing at the state Labor Department and across all of state government — state employment has not matched Arkansas general population growth — may also explain it."

AACF urges the state to both restore the certificate requirement and employ investigators in the Department of Labor "dedicated to proactively seeking out child labor violators."

Other proposed remedies include:

Allowing restitution for child labor victims.

Enacting whistleblower protection for people who expose violations.

Creating a public database of child labor violations and the associated employers.

Preventing employers with child labor violations, either directly or in supply chains, from receiving state and local government contracts.

Requiring public school curriculum that teaches students about workplace safety, child labor protections and minors' employment rights.

Making all state agency communications about child labor protections available in Marshallese and Spanish so they are accessible to immigrant and migrant communities.

Sanders' office and the Department of Labor both did not respond to requests for comment on the report's findings Monday.