Study finds sharp rise in Arkansas child labor violations in years before state rolled back work permit law – Arkansas Times

Child labor violations in Arkansas more than tripled over the last few years, according to a new study by Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families — but a new law passed by the state Legislature in 2023 may have made it harder to track the exploitation of children in the workforce. 

The AACF report, released Monday, is based on an analysis of state and federal data. AACF found the number of child labor violations in Arkansas increased 266% between fiscal years 2020 and 2021 and fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The nonprofit advocacy group also found that, when compared to six neighboring states, Arkansas ranks among the worst, “whether that be the prevalence of cases, violations, minors involved in violations or penalties assigned.” 

Child labor violations have also been on the rise nationally. From 2014 to 2023,  the number of minors involved in U.S. Department of Labor violations increased by 400%, AACF said. 

Arkansas has seen multiple high profile child labor investigations recently, including a recent labor department investigation into whether Tyson Foods or one of its subsidiaries employed children in two of its plants in Northwest Arkansas. Tyson said it does not employ minors or participate in child labor. In 2023, the labor department fined a sanitation contractor for employing minors who worked in 13 meat processing plants across the country, including two in Arkansas — a George’s Inc. facility in Batesville and a Tyson facility in Green Forest. 

Though child labor appears to be a growing problem, Arkansas passed a new law in 2023 that loosened state restrictions on hiring young teenagers. Act 195 of 2023 removed the mandate for employers to obtain a permit, signed by a parent or guardian, to hire a worker younger than 16. The law also changed state requirements to document a child’s age, hours worked and parental permission. 

The AACF study found that the Arkansas Department of Labor and Licensing reported a drop in the number of cases, violations and penalties from July 2023 to June 2024, the first fiscal year in which the new law took effect. 

While AACF cautioned that it’s “impossible” to correlate the drop with the implementation of Act 195,  it is cause for closer monitoring, the nonprofit said. 

“As the employment certification process provided an important educational touchpoint for parents and employers alike, it is possible that doing away with employment certificates led to fewer complaints and therefore to fewer investigations,” the AACF report said. “A decrease in the number of investigators and staffing at the state Labor Department and across all of state government … may also explain it. Since we can’t yet be sure, it’s important to continue to monitor state child labor investigations going forward.” 

Researchers at the University of Maryland who examined policies across 13 states found those with work permit mandates for minors have significantly fewer child labor violations, the report said.

Over the past several years, more than a dozen states have rolled back child labor laws, passing bills that extend the hours children are permitted to work or loosening restrictions on hazardous working conditions. 

AACF also pointed to data from the Arkansas Labor Department as a warning sign  that child exploitation may be harder to track in Arkansas with the passage of the 2023 law. 

Before the law went into effect, the largest category of violations was employing minors without a work permit. Since this is no longer a violation, the decline in child labor violations for fiscal year 2024 is likely connected. 

But the AACF study said that many workplaces that violated the work permit requirement when it was still in effect were also found to be breaking other child labor laws, making the work permit an important tool to uncover other abuses. “Importantly 85% of child labor cases with employment certificate violations also contain other violations,” AACF said. 

Here are more details from the report: 

Employment Certificate Violations are Often Paired with Other Child Labor Violations 

• 100% of Hazardous Occupation cases also involved Employment Certificate violations 
• 81% of cases involving children under 16 working too many hours also involved Employment Certificate Violations
• 50% of cases of improper record keeping also involved Employment Certificate violations

“We’re now seeing an increase in the same problems we faced more than a century ago, with young people, particularly low-income children of color, including immigrant children, employed in dangerous conditions and not participating in school,” AACF said. “With the recent high-profile child labor cases and dramatic increases in child labor violations, now is the time to strengthen child labor laws, not weaken them.”