News & Commentary March 5, 2023

[Omaha Steve]

https://onlabor.org/march-5-2023/

By Will Ebeler

Will Ebeler is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s news and commentary, a new Washington Post report highlights the impact of child labor investigations on the children involved; the Department of Commerce imposes childcare requirements on companies seeking microchip subsidies; a New York City Starbucks worker is reinstated after being fired without cause; and the NLRB rules that Google is the employer of subcontractors hired through a staffing agency.

We continue to learn about the fallout from the Department of Labor’s investigation into child labor violations by Packers Sanitation Services Inc. On Friday, the Washington Post reported on the impacts the investigation has had on the children in one Nebraska town. After the DOL raided the meatpacking plant, some children employed at the plant skipped school for several days; others dropped out of school; and two fled the town entirely. Many of the children that PSSI employed are migrants, and one school employee concluded that “when the authorities came, the kids thought they would be taken away or deported.” The children’s families face their own consequences; the Post highlighted one girl whose mother pled guilty to child abuse for allowing the girl to work at PSSI, and whose stepfather faces deportation after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor for driving her to work at the slaughterhouse.

David Weil, a professor at Brandeis University and the former head of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, explained some of the causes of the recent surge in child labor violations. Brand-name companies like Tyson Foods or Hyundai have increasingly subcontracted parts of their operations to outside companies like PSSI, which outsource their own hiring to staffing agencies. That fissuring decreases the incentives for the brand-name companies to ensure compliance with labor and employment laws and makes it more complex and costly for regulators to investigate potential violations. Unaccompanied minors are particularly vulnerable. After they arrive in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services sends them to live with sponsors and, although the sponsors are supposed to be vetted, HHS has been failing to perform adequate vetting. The sponsors then often pressure the children to take jobs and Professor Weil argued that HHS should increase its support for the sponsors to ensure those sponsors have the resources to provide adequate care. Professor Weil also argued that DOL needs more funding to crack down on child labor violations and the authority to impose more severe penalties on companies that violate these laws.

FULL story at link above.