Editorial: Children shouldn’t be exploited as cheap labor
The history of this nation is regrettably rife with stories of children being exploited, exhausted, injured and robbed of their educational potential by employers who saw them as little more than commodities.
For all too brief a time, Florida leaders viewed that as a bad thing. They voted, often overwhelmingly, for laws that were even stronger than federal protections. Now, however, this state’s lawmakers appear eager to join other states that are abandoning those safeguards one by one. At the start of the 2024 legislative session, a quartet of bills that would tear gaping holes in Florida’s child labor laws drew gasps of outrage at their audacity: One proposed change (HB 49/SB 1596) would have initially allowed children as young as 14 to be recruited into long hours and backbreaking labor in Florida’s restaurants, farms and other businesses. It still strips many of those protections from 16- and 17-year-olds. Another pair of bills (HB 917/SB 460) would knock down safety barriers that keep teenagers out of inherently dangerous work sites, including construction.
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Many draw a line connecting this Dickensian trend to a crackdown on unauthorized immigration, pulling children into jobs once performed by the undocumented workers who are disappearing under punitive new laws and swaggering threats. That’s part of it, but we see an uglier narrative here: Across the nation, states are rolling back child-protection on many critical issues, including the right to a free public education, access to health care and other protections that elevate children’s needs simply because they are children.
Kids in Laborland
It’s hard to find a better example of this than the repeal of child-labor laws. As the bills made their way through committees in the House and Senate, only a handful of child-welfare advocates, such as the Orlando-based Florida Policy Institute, even took them seriously.
There have been amendments, but in their current form, all four bills represent significant, and hazardous, erosions of protective laws and greatly increase the likelihood that children will be enticed (or even forced) to lose their focus on schoolwork to meet the demands of their employers, or the needs of their families.
And any step backward will meet a larger goal, throwing decades of hard-won victories on behalf of child safety into reverse. Once the new direction is set, it will be far easier to pick away at provisions protecting young workers in subsequent sessions.
There’s only one bright spot here: As the bills were amended, the House and Senate versions picked up substantial differences. Now that the House has given its final approval to both, that puts their fate into the hands of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo. She has three choices: She could put her leaders to work reconciling the bills. Or she could let them quietly languish without fanfare, preserving it as a last minute bargaining chip.
Or she could take a stronger stand. The Senate leader has to know the truth:These bills are unlikely to affect the children of affluent families, but stripping protections away will deepen the desperation for low income parents caught between skyrocketing costs and stagnant pay. Forced to grab any lifeline just to stay afloat, they may not realize that the rope is wrapped around their own children’s necks.
So we plead with Passidomo: Be the champion those families need. Reject any chance that these bills will make it through the Senate — and publicly rebuke the possibility that any Florida parent would be forced to bargain away their children’s best shot at a bright future in exchange for survival today.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Krys Fluker, Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. Contact us at insight@orlandosentinel.com
