Iowa child labor protections rolled back further with new rules

Iowa started rolling back protections for child workers in 2023, and new rules for child labor were published Wednesday to roll more protections back.

The updates include:

• Lowering the maximum civil penalties for violating time and hour restrictions from the current $10,000 to $2,500 per child per instance.
• Allowing reductions to the penalty according to the size of the business. For example, an employer with 25 or fewer employees could get a 35% reduction.

“Iowa taxpayers shouldn’t pay the price for businesses who knowingly break the law,” State Rep. Sami Scheetz (D-Cedar Rapids) said.

“We’re already seeing the consequences of last year’s law. Children have been found working in dangerous conditions at slaughterhouses, cleaning equipment like band saws and head splitters. We must support Iowa businesses who follow the rules, not reward bad behavior by bad actors.”

The new rules will go to the legislative rules committee in February.

The 2023 law allows businesses to assign child workers more dangerous jobs and longer hours, including in meatpacking and construction. The law violates some parts of the federal 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

Joshua Brown, president of the Iowa State Education Association, said there’s clear evidence that students fall behind if they come to school after working long hours. Only 55% of those students end up graduating high school, he said. That often means students aren’t able to move up in the world and get jobs that pay higher as adults.

“We want to make sure that they are within safe boundaries of getting some work experience while they’re in junior high or high school, but without putting themselves at risk for losing their opportunities of future success,” he said.

Since the bill became law, several Iowa businesses have been investigated and/or fined for violations, including a Subway in Maquoketa.

Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said it doesn’t have to be this way.

“We believe that all kids deserve a quality education and safe opportunities to get work experience. I’ve had that—I’m sure many of you have as well—but we can give them this by restoring Iowa’s common sense child labor guidelines.”

Iowa isn’t the only state that has rolled back child labor regulations, but it has made the most extreme changes, according to Jennifer Sherer at the Economic Policy Institute. Other states, meanwhile, are responding to the reports of children being exploited, killed, and injured working in dangerous jobs like meatpacking.

“We have states all over the country that are beginning to take action and respond to the child labor crisis that they’re seeing in their states and their industries,” she said. “States as diverse in geography and politics as Alabama, Colorado and Virginia all increased their penalty amounts for child labor violations just this past year in their legislatures.”

Sherer also pointed to Nebraska and Illinois as examples of states that have improved their work permit systems and how they enforce their child labor laws.

Iowa, she said, can do the same.

“We have plenty of momentum to address this crisis,” Sherer said. “And of course, we have a model within our own state of a pre-2023 Iowa state law that was very strong and robust to return to and build on.”