Biden administration to crack down on child labor

Greater than 3,800 children were found to be working at U.S. corporations last yr in violation of federal law, the Labor Department said Monday in announcing a crackdown on child labor.

The brand new measures, which include the launching of an interagency task force and enhanced tracking of minors who enter the country alone, were announced within the wake of media reports, including by NBC News, on children working grueling jobs within the U.S.

“We see each day the scourge of kid labor on this country, and now we have a legal and an ethical obligation to take every step in our power to stop it,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in a press release.

Since 2018, there was a 69 percent increase within the number of kids employed in violation of labor laws, officials said.

Some 835 corporations were founded to be illegally employing minors last yr, the Labor Department said, and greater than 600 child labor investigations remain ongoing.

The issue has grown worse as increasing numbers of kids fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America have arrived within the U.S. without parents, officials said.

NBC News previously reported that 102 children as young as 13 were found to be working hazardous overnight jobs cleansing slaughterhouses in what the Labor Department called a “corporate-wide failure” by one in every of the biggest food sanitation corporations within the country, Packers Sanitation Services Inc.

Among the children working to wash slaughterhouses within the Midwest who were employed by the corporate are unaccompanied minor children from Guatemala who got here across the Southern border, based on advocates and lawyers.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations division continues to analyze whether the youngsters, largely undocumented migrants, were a part of a human trafficking scheme, DHS officials said. PSSI just isn’t a goal of that investigation and has not been accused of wrongdoing by DHS. 

A PSSI spokeswoman told NBC News that it has a “strong corporate commitment to our zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18, and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance in any respect locations.”

Federal officials confirmed Monday that they’re investigating Hearthside Food Solutions for possible child labor violations, which was the topic of a Recent York Times story over the weekend.

A Hearthside spokesman said the corporate will “work collaboratively with the Department of Labor of their investigation and do our part to proceed to abide by all local, state and federal employment laws.” 

In stepping up its efforts to focus on corporations that use child labor, the Labor Department will use recent strategies to launch investigations where child labor violations are almost definitely to occur. The agency called on Congress to extend the utmost penalty for child labor violations, which is currently $15,000.

“That is not high enough to be a deterrent for major profitable corporations,” the Labor Department said in a press release.