A Republican-dominated Florida Senate committee advanced legislation filed on behalf of industry groups that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work jobs in construction that are currently deemed too hazardous for minors under law.
The proposed rollback to child labor laws, filed by Republican state Sen. Corey Simon of Tallahassee, is slyly tucked into a broader bill about career and technical education program. The bill, SB 460, was approved by the Senate’s Pre-K–12 Education Committee Wednesday in a 9-2 vote. Democratic Sen. Rosalind Osgood was the only Democrat on the committee to join Republicans in support of the measure.
This vote of approval came after Simon, a first-term politician and former NFL football player, first amended the legislation to essentially water down the language.
The amendment, filed Tuesday, removed language that would have allowed older teens to work on roofs. The amendment specified that 16- and 17-year-olds would not be allowed to work on roofs, scaffolding, ladders and superstructures above six feet off the ground. Minors would also only be permitted to work on residential building construction, not commercial sites.
This signifies a backing-off of sorts. The initial proposal did not contain a height limit, and would have allowed for older teens to work on nonresidential building construction, roofs, scaffolding, and superstructures. Under current Florida law, minors under 18 are prohibited from working on roofs and scaffolding more than six feet off the ground already.
Simon’s amendment also clarifies that construction and roofing contractors cannot put older teens to work in any manner that violates federal rules enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or any other federal law relating to minors in the workplace.
Critics of the legislation, however, pointed out that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets federal wage and child labor standards, specifically outlaws putting any child under 18 to work on “roofing operations” and “all work on or about a roof.”
“Even if this passes, the federal government will not let Florida employers off the hook for lower standards,” said Dr. Norín Dollard, senior policy analyst for the Florida Policy Institute, who spoke against the measure during public testimony.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor confirmed in a letter to state lawmakers in Iowa that a similar bill passed there, which lifted restrictions on hazardous work for minors, contained provisions that conflicted with federal law.
Federal officials said this could lead to consequences for employers who violate those baseline federal standards. “FLSA-covered employers that violate federal child labor law are subject to various penalties, including civil money penalties,” reads the letter, signed by Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda and Wage and Hour Division administrator Jessica Looman. These penalties “depend on the nature of the violations and the underlying factual circumstances,” they added.
Dollard, with the Florida Policy Institute, said that even with Simon’s amendment, she had concerns about any proposed changes to child labor law that could weaken existing protections, which fail to protect children on the job in Florida as it is.
A local roofing contractor near Orlando was fined over $50,000 in child labor penalties last year after a 15-year-old they put to work fell 20 feet from a home in Orlando, suffering severe head and spinal injuries. Sixteen-year-old Andrés Toma fell to his death while working to replace roofing on a home in Florida last April, the New York Times reported, in what OSHA described as a preventable death. He shouldn’t have been working on that roof at all.
Federal data from the U.S. Labor Department shows that construction is one of the most common industries in which child labor violations occur, and child labor violations in Florida are on the rise. Annual reports from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the state’s enforcing agency, show the construction industry also drives the highest number of unlicensed activity complaints.
Construction is the deadliest industry for youth, behind agriculture, and young workers are more likely to be injured on the job compared to adults.
“Children should not be working on scaffolding or roofs of any height, which is precisely why this is prohibited by federal law,” said Jackson Oberlink, a lobbyist for the left-leaning advocacy group Florida Rising, during public testimony on SB 460.
Florida’s capacity to enforce protections for minors in the workplace is already lacking.
There are just seven state employees dedicated to enforcing child labor law across the state, according to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, covering thousands of Florida businesses. Federal enforcement is also limited, due to agencies being flat-funded by Congress and understaffed. There were just about 75 federal OSHA employees dedicated to Florida as of 2021, and the Wage and Hour division — tasked with enforcing minimum wage, overtime, and child labor requirements — is also operating with near-record-low staffing levels.
Florida relies on federal OSHA regulators to conduct workplace inspections, and has done so since former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush repealed the state’s OSHA program within the state’s labor department in 2000 and abolished the state’s labor department entirely in 2002.
This limits the protections that both teenagers and adults have in the workplace in Florida, where employers are less likely to be concerned about regulatory officials showing up to cite them for failing to meet basic labor standards.
Sen. Simon, a first-term state Senator elected to his seat in 2022, defended his legislation by emphasizing the importance of ensuring opportunities for youth. The proposed child labor rollback makes up just a small section of his bill, which broadly seeks to expand Career and Technical Education programs in schools and offer more recruitment opportunities into the trades.
“What we’re trying to do is encourage young people that have an interest in those trades to get the work experience needed so that they can go further in their career,” said Simon, who chairs the Education K-12 Committee.
There are already some limited exceptions to child labor laws, including work performed by children through apprenticeship programs and student learner programs in schools.
Child labor law in Florida also offers kids the chance to seek waivers to be exempted from the law, and contains exceptions for children who are or have been married, children who have already graduated from high school, and children who work for their parents.
In light of existing job opportunities for youth in Florida, critics have questioned the real motives behind the proposed child labor rollback. Florida is one of 19 states that has passed or introduced legislation over the last couple of years seeking to weaken regulations. Most have been backed by trade groups representing industries that “routinely” violate child labor law and other labor standards, said Nina Mast, an analyst for the Economic Policy Institute who’s been tracking child-labor law rollbacks across the country.
Public records show the legislation that Simon originally filed was fed to him by a lobbyist for the Associated Builders and Contractors of Florida, a trade group that drafted the legislation in collaboration with the Florida Home Builders Association. The Home Builders Association and other industry groups similarly backed changes to child labor law in Iowa.
Carol Bowen, chief lobbyist for the ABC of Florida, emailed draft “Workforce Education” legislation to an aide for Sen. Simon in late October, copying another ABC lobbyist and a lobbyist for the Florida Home Builders Association.
“The three of us are the point people for this bill and are at your disposal and Senator Simon’s,” Bowen wrote, with a draft of the bill attached. Simon filed the legislation three weeks later.
According to the News Service of Florida, Simon was the second-highest fundraiser in the state Senate over the most recent campaign finance filing period, running from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2023. Simon’s affiliated political committee, Friends of Corey Simon, also shows sizable campaign contributions since November from the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association ($2,500), the Florida Chamber of Commerce ($20,000) and a political committee associated with the Associated Industries of Florida ($10,000), which gets funding from the likes of businesses like Amazon, Publix, TECO and the for-profit hospital system HCA.
Bowen, the ABC of Florida lobbyist, spoke in support of the bill her group helped write during Wednesday’s hearing. She said opportunities for children in Florida to gain experience in the trades are currently limited in some parts of the state, where there is unequal access to student learner programs in certain jurisdictions.
“We want kids to be safe,” she said, speaking on behalf of thousands of building and construction contractors that affiliate with the ABC.
A representative of the Florida Parent Teachers Association (PTA) spoke against the legislation.
But even safeguards added to the bill would likely be insufficient. The bill would require older teens to get OSHA certification through a 10-day training course in order to do roofing and construction work. It would also require them to do that work under the supervision of an adult over 21 who has similarly completed training. The most recent federal data shows, however, that there is only one direct supervisor in Florida available for every seven construction and extraction workers.
And with limited enforcement personnel to make sure employers are following the law, there’s no guarantee that employers would respect these safeguards, anyway. The New York Times has reported extensively on the prevalence of unaccompanied minors in the construction industry, illegally employed in Florida and other states.
Sen. Simon, who sought to downplay the effects of his bill on child-labor law, bemoaned the entrance of “politics” into conversations about the bill, which industry groups have admitted could help employers fill labor shortages that have been exacerbated by a crackdown on undocumented workers.
“Not every kid is going to go on to our traditional post-secondary institutions,” said Simon. “And we do a disservice to them if we don’t offer pathways for them to have the success that they deserve and that they’re willing to work for.”
Never mind that children aged 14 and older can already legally work a variety of jobs in Florida, including jobs in the restaurant industry, which is backing another bill that would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work full-time hours during the school year. The restaurant industry, which employs a large share of the minors in the workforce, is a hotbed for child labor violations, too.
Ultimately, the Republican-dominated Senate committee advanced Simon’s legislation, sending it off to its next committee for consideration, although it’s unclear when exactly they might take it up.
Similar legislation has been filed in the Florida House, by Rep. John Snyder. Snyder has not responded to Orlando Weekly‘s requests for comment on his support for loosening child labor restrictions.
Both the Senate and House chambers must approve the legislation in order for it to be sent to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for his signature. A group of over 100 nonprofit organizations, children’s advocacy groups, and others sent letters to House and Senate Majority leaders Wednesday morning, asking them to reject proposed child labor rollbacks that critics warn could put the health and safety of children on the job at risk.
The 60-day legislative session ends March 8.
This post has been updated to clarify that one Democrat, Sen. Osgood, voted in favor of SB 460. This post previously stated that the vote was 8-3 in favor. The vote was recorded as 9-2.
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This article appears in Jan 17-23, 2024.
