EPI’s Nina Mast delivered the following testimony before the Illinois Senate Labor Committee on March 13, 2024, in support of SB3646–A Law Concerning Child Labor.
Good afternoon, Chair Peters and members of the committee. My name is Nina Mast, and I’m a state economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). EPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank created in 1986 to research the economic status of working America and propose public policies that protect and improve economic conditions of low- and middle-wage workers.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today in support of Senate Bill 3646.
First, I want to acknowledge how important it is that Illinois is taking steps to update and modernize its child labor laws in the midst of a growing child labor crisis in the United States. Violations of federal child labor law are on the rise across the country, increasing 88% since just 2019. Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued judgments on dozens of cases involving hundreds of children illegally employed in meatpacking plants, in warehouses, and at fast food franchises. DOL investigated workplace deaths of three 16-year-olds last summer alone. These teens were illegally employed in a sawmill, a landfill, and a poultry plant—their deaths could have been prevented if employers followed the law.
At the same time, we are seeing troubling attacks on child labor protections in states across the country. Thirty states have introduced bills to weaken child labor protections since 2021, with 13 states having introduced rollback bills in 2024 alone.
Rollbacks being proposed include lifting restrictions on hazardous work, extending the number of hours per day or per week that employers can schedule youth to work, eliminating work permit requirements that facilitate compliance with the law, introducing subminimum wages for youth, lowering the age to serve alcohol or to drive a vehicle to/from work or in the course of their work duties, and other changes.
These bills are not being introduced in isolation. This is a coordinated effort being led by a constellation of business lobbying groups and industry associations that would especially benefit from changes in child labor laws, as well as right-wing think tanks and advocacy groups that seek to weaken workers’ rights, erode our social safety net, and threaten the progress we’ve made on equitable access to public education.
However, in the face of these troubling developments, we have seen some encouraging signs. In 2023, 13 states, including Illinois, introduced bills to strengthen child labor protections and six enacted them. In 2024, 16 states have introduced such legislation, with Illinois among them once again.
Proactive changes being proposed across the country include increasing penalties to deter violations, allowing victims of child labor violations to sue for damages or receive enhanced workers’ compensation benefits, restricting work hours or employment in hazardous occupations, educating youth on their workplace rights, and protecting child influencers (an issue on which Illinois has led the charge).
These changes are, in many cases, long overdue. Our landmark worker protection legislation, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, set an important but increasingly outdated floor on basic rights like the minimum wage, overtime pay, and protections against oppressive forms of child labor. States have historically played a key role in areas of child labor enforcement not covered under federal law (such as issuing work permits) and in setting higher standards to protect workers, especially in the absence of federal updates to the FLSA in recent decades.
Senate Bill 3646 proposes three important changes to Illinois’ child labor law. First, it improves the state’s process for issuing youth work permits, both by streamlining the system (for example by making it easy to use current school physicals rather than requiring a new physical exam for work), and clarifying that a minor’s health and welfare should be the primary consideration when reviewing a request for a work permit.
Second, this bill updates the list of hazardous occupations and workplaces where employers are prohibited from placing minors, ensuring that the list reflects all occupations currently designated as hazardous by the federal Department of Labor. These important changes empower the state department of labor to enforce violations of federal hazardous occupation orders and to designate additional occupations as hazardous if necessary. Strengthening state enforcement is especially important at a time when we know federal capacity to enforce child labor laws is being strained by the ongoing nationwide increase in violations.
Third, this bill quadruples civil penalties and then triples the maximum penalty that can be imposed when a child is injured or killed on the job. Many states, including Illinois, are discovering that after decades without review, penalty amounts for violations—such as Illinois’ current maximum penalty of $5,000—are far too low to serve their intended purpose of deterring the exploitation of children. This bill’s proposal to increase the maximum penalty to $20,000, and as high as $60,000 in the case of severe injury or death, is a welcome step in the right direction. As you continue to work on this legislation we would encourage you to consider whether these amounts are high enough to achieve their intended purpose in our current economy and also to consider implementing a minimum required penalty.
To put the proposed maximum penalty amounts in context, these rates are similar to the federal maximums of $15,629 per violation and $71,031 in the case of severe injury or death of a minor. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress agree that these federal rates are far too low and have proposed increasing them by as many as 10 times.
Higher penalties (especially for repeat or severe violations) play an important role in changing an employer’s risk calculus and deterring violations from happening in the first place. Increased penalties are especially important given that currently Illinois workers have no private right of action when their rights at work are violated. Indeed, one more deterrent to consider would be providing Illinois families with a private right of action when a child is injured or killed while employed in violation of child labor law, a reform recently adopted in Colorado.
At a time when child labor violations are on the rise and child labor protections are under attack, we applaud Illinois’ commitment to strengthening and modernizing its child labor law. Changes proposed in Senate Bill 3646 will help solidify Illinois’ role as a leader in standing on the side of young workers and their families by setting standards that protect the rights of children to access safe, age-appropriate work opportunities that safeguard their education and development.
Thank you.
