Children Are Not the Answer to a Labor Shortage. Here’s How to Protect Them.

Legislatures could create strict liability — meaning absolute liability, regardless of knowledge or intent — for child labor violations in company supply chains. For example, in Maryland, Nevada, New York and several other states, construction industry general contractors are liable for wage violations by subcontractors, and in Washington, D.C., higher-level entities are liable for wage and paid sick leave violations even if they use a staffing agency or subcontractor.

Lawmakers should also create criminal liability for violations or enhance it where it exists. In Illinois, New York, Utah and Texas, for example, child labor violations are misdemeanors. These crimes should be upgraded, but prosecutors should still bring cases against employers even under current law.

The federal government has pledged to use the “hot goods” provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows it to enjoin the transport of goods made in violation of the law, including child labor laws. States can pass similar laws or replicate a little-known but clever New York law, applicable to the garment industry, that allows the state labor department to attach a tag on unlawfully manufactured apparel labeling them as such, which would no doubt hurt sales. The Department of Health and Human Services audit of how it places unaccompanied migrant children will undoubtedly show the need for better vetting of sponsors and better follow-up after placement. Also, granting work permits to these teenagers would help by allowing them to earn money with aboveboard employers that follow the law.

States and cities can form their own task forces and collaborate closely with local districts. They can also aggressively enforce child labor laws, as Minnesota authorities did this month at a meatpacking plant. And labor enforcement agencies can do what the New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier did: request information from the federal government about where unaccompanied minors were living and stake out sites where children may be working.

Even arguing about whether 14-year-olds should work in meatpacking plants, as though it were an appropriate subject for legitimate political debate, runs the risk of normalizing a practice that should be totally out of bounds. We need higher wages, safer workplaces and all-around better jobs. What we don’t need — and it’s outrageous we’re even discussing it — is more oppressive child labor.

Terri Gerstein is a fellow at the Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and the Economic Policy Institute. She spent more than 17 years enforcing labor laws in New York State, working in the state attorney general’s office and as a deputy labor commissioner.