18 Mar David McCall – No Kidding: Some States Prioritize Profits Over Teen Workers
The moment may still be a few years off, but I know the day is coming when my daughter will want to get a part-time job.
She’ll crave the money and independence that go hand in hand with working. I’ll want her to grasp the dignity and empowerment that work provides.
No matter what she does or where she works, I’ll fight to keep her safe on the job. It’s what all of our kids deserve.
But not all young workers have meaningful safeguards. Some states enact strong child-labor laws and hold employers accountable. Other states, pandering to corporations, prioritize profits over the welfare of teenage workers.
Nothing underscores this dichotomy more sharply than what’s unfolding in two neighboring yet diametrically different states: Illinois, which supports working people, and Indiana, which facilitates worker exploitation.Getty Images
Officials in Illinois recently sued the owner of a McDonald’s restaurant, alleging he violated child-labor law more than 550 times in seven months by denying young workers meals and rest breaks and by forcing them to work shifts as long as 17 hours straight.
Now, the state wants to force the business owner to pay millions in penalties.
This kind of enforcement is what we expect in Illinois, where Gov. JB Pritzker signed legislation two years ago that modernized and strengthened protections for young workers. The improvements included increased scrutiny of a workplace’s record before allowing more kids to work there and imposing bigger fines for employers who put young workers at risk.
Indiana, on the other hand, continues rolling back safeguards for young workers at the behest of the money-grubbing class.
Lawmakers there just passed a bill abolishing Indiana’s system for tracking youth employment, meaning businesses will no longer even have to report the hiring of teenagers. The measure’s supporters included a state senator who employs teenagers at her golf course.
Indiana in recent years also passed legislation eliminating required rest breaks for teenage workers while allowing older teens to serve alcohol and work longer hours, evidence that the state is steadily normalizing the exploitation of kids.
While many factors account for the differences in how Illinois and Indiana treat young workers, it’s important here to focus on one of them.
Illinois has a much larger number of unionized workers—people who take no crap from their own bosses and certainly aren’t going to let one hurt their children.
It’s all a reminder of the need for workers everywhere to join unions, fight for pro-worker laws and elect more sensible-thinking union members to public office. We fight these battles for ourselves and for the generations coming behind us.