One bill proposed for the 2024 legislative session (HB 49) would gut restrictions on the number of hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work, allowing employers to schedule them for full-time hours during the school year. This would give employers, who currently can't schedule minors more than 30 hours per week, the green light to work older teens later hours, and even put them on overnight shifts when they have school the next day.
Another proposal (SB 460) would allow 16- and 17-year-olds to work jobs currently deemed too hazardous for minors in roofing and construction — an industry that accounts for the highest number of workplace fatalities in the state and the largest share of unlicensed activity complaints. The bill outlines certain safety precautions — such as requiring minors to work under the supervision of an adult and to first obtain OSHA certification — but federal data shows there's already a dearth of supervisors available on these worksites anyway.
The new proposals, while not unique to Florida, come at an awkward time to say the least, and demonstrate that Republicans’ favored mantra of “protect the children” only really goes so far.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of U.S. minors employed in violation of child labor law has spiked 88% since 2019, in part attributed to factors such as a tight labor market and an influx of unaccompanied minors coming into the U.S. seeking work to help support their families.
Enforcement and policy experts told Orlando Weekly that the capacity for enforcing child labor protections in Florida — through workplace inspections, investigations and employer training — is already failing to keep kids safe, and that loosening the law will put more vulnerable children at risk.
According to the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation, the agency tasked with enforcing Florida’s child labor law, there are just seven agency employees in the state who are dedicated to child labor enforcement. Just seven to protect the tens of thousands of teenagers in Florida’s workforce from exploitation.
During the 2022-2023 fiscal year, the agency received 257 child labor complaints, a spokesperson confirmed. Only five of those resulting in enforcement action (which, under state law, is a fine of up to $2,500 per offense). During the 2019-2020 fiscal year, the agency received 220 complaints, of which 30 resulted in enforcement action.
A spokesperson for the agency explained that employers found to have broken the law in some fashion can sometimes be brought into compliance through “immediate corrective action.”
“DBPR strives to bring all licensees into compliance when possible. Although there are offenses where enforcement actions must be imposed by the DBPR Child Labor Program, education of both employers and minors on compliance is a top priority,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Orlando Weekly. “When violations are found, training specialists are available to discuss immediate corrective actions and educate employers on child labor laws through management trainings.”
Still, investigative reporting by the New York Times has found that many children, particularly migrant children, are falling through the cracks in both state and federal enforcement, regardless of the laws that are in place to protect them. Under-the-table jobs in roofing and construction and are some of the most common and riskiest jobs in which these unaccompanied minors are found illegally employed, the Times reported.
David Weil, a former head of the federal U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, told Orlando Weekly that in Florida, like the rest of the U.S. South, the federal government is essentially “the only act in town” to protect children in the workforce.
This is a problem, he said, because the federal government’s enforcement arm is already stretched thin. The federal Wage and Hour Division, an agency within the Department of Labor that enforces child labor regulations, has been flat-funded by Congress for years and is carrying on with “historically low staffing levels,” according to a recent agency blog post.
When Weil led the division, during the Obama administration, there were about 1,100 wage and hour investigators in 52 offices around the country, he said. Today, there are about 800 federal investigators in the Wage and Hour Division, with 47 of them based in Florida.
But child labor isn’t their sole focus. The federal investigators are also tasked with enforcing other worker protections under federal law, such as minimum wage and overtime requirements, workers’ rights under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, and H-2 visa programs.
“It's kind of this illusion that if we have the laws on the books, people are going to follow them,” said Weil. But without officials to meaningfully enforce the law, there’s no real deterrent for employers. “People just don't worry about having an investigator showing up because there are so few of them to go around.”
It's worse in states in the South, he said, which have very few, if any, state investigators to help lighten the federal government's load.
“It's kind of this illusion that if we have the laws on the books, people are going to follow them”
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A spokesperson from the federal WHD told Orlando Weekly that child labor enforcement “is among our highest priorities” and that every wage and hour case they conduct in Florida — from alleged minimum wage violations to unpaid overtime — includes an investigation of potential child labor violations.
In 2023, the federal government fined Florida businesses over $100,000 for breaking child labor law, with about half of that levied onto an Orlando-area roofing contractor that illegally employed a 15-year-old to do roofing work. A federal probe into the contractor began after the teen fell approximately 20 feet from a two-story home in February 2022 while on the job, suffering severe head and spinal injuries. The injured boy was left hospitalized for days, according to federal investigators.
A Tampa-area Tropical Smoothie Cafe, a trampoline park in Jacksonville and several skating rinks in the Tampa Bay region were also assessed thousands of dollars in civil penalties last year.
But there are limits on the kinds of penalties businesses can face for breaking the law. Unlike cases of minimum wage and overtime violations, damages are not awarded to victims of child labor violations under federal law. Compared to Florida’s maximum penalty of $2,500 per offense, employers found in violation of federal law can be fined up to $15,138 per child — a penalty that some federal lawmakers are trying to increase and strengthen to more effectively deter noncompliance.
There is also no right to private action for violations under state or federal law, meaning child victims or their parents can’t sue employers for child labor violations on their own; the only way to enforce child labor law is through the government.
‘The current regulations are overly restrictive’
The bills in Florida that aim to loosen child labor law are both sponsored by Republicans, although there is bipartisan support for strengthening child labor protections on a federal level.
Florida Sen. Corey Simon of Tallahassee, a first-term politician and former football player, is sponsoring SB 460, the bill that would allow employers to put older teens to work on roofs above six feet (although some illegally do it already). State Rep. Linda Chaney of St. Pete Beach is sponsoring the bill (HB 49) that would scrap restrictions on the number of hours older teens can work.
Under current law, children age 14 and older are legally permitted to work in a wide range of industries. There are restrictions on the number of hours children can work, mandated 30-minute breaks for minors every four hours, and a prohibition on jobs determined to threaten the health and safety of children.
The law, however, does contain exceptions. For instance, the law doesn’t apply to minors in the entertainment industry, minors employed by their parents, minors who are married, minors who have graduated high school, minors employed in domestic jobs like babysitting, or student learner programs.
Minors in Florida can also seek waivers excusing them from child labor protections through the DBPR or the Florida Department of Education. According to the DBPR, over 5,000 waivers were issued to minors during the last fiscal year alone.
But lobbyists for politically well-connected industry groups like the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association say current restrictions on child labor are too burdensome for the businesses they represent and deter employers from hiring minors.
“The current regulations are overly restrictive and can be challenging to manage,” said FRLA lobbyist Samantha Padgett, speaking on behalf of more than 10,000 hotel and restaurant owners at a committee hearing for HB 49 in December. “Additional staffing is desperately needed.”
The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, a state affiliate of the National Restaurant Association, lobbies for the interests of companies like Disney, Universal, the Ritz-Carlton, Outback Steakhouse and Olive Garden — employers in low-wage, largely non-union industries that employ a large share of teens.
These are also industries where labor law violations, ranging from child labor to minimum wage and overtime violations, are already prevalent. And apparently, the child labor rollback proposal from Chaney is popular.
“When we asked our members for their feedback, normally I get a trickle of comments,” Padgett told the House Regulatory and Economic Development subcommittee. “This [received] a flood of positive support from our hoteliers and our restaurateurs.”
Florida Democrats, who wield little power in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature, have tried to push back. “Children and families should not be exploited by restaurants needing more labor,” said Rep. Angie Nixon, a community organizer and mom to a 16-year-old. “We’re sitting here talking about making children adults but they can’t even read Toni Morrison in school.”
Sen. Simon’s bill, SB 460, has similarly garnered enthusiastic support from trade groups like the Associated Builders and Contractors, which literally wrote Simon’s bill, according to public records, in collaboration with the Florida Home Builders Association.
“If you look at who is supporting these efforts to try to weaken child labor laws across the country, it's the same companies who are often leaders in wage theft problems,” said Weil, the former Wage and Hour Division administrator. “So what are they doing? They're trying to find the least-cost way of expanding their labor supply.”
The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative think tank based in Naples, similarly fed Chaney her bill through a lobbyist. The group has been a driving force behind child labor rollbacks in states like Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa and now Florida, the Washington Post reported last year.
The FGA, funded by ultra-conservatives and billionaires, has also lobbied for policies that would undermine the social safety net for low-income families. By, for instance, making it harder for them to access food stamps or qualify for health insurance through Medicaid. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who proudly signed into law a bill to "protect" children from drag last year, has a friendly relationship with the FGA and has even appointed its CEO to his special Government Efficiency Task Force.
Florida is at least the 16th state so far to try and roll back child labor protections in the last two years. Of bills introduced in state legislatures, nine have been signed into law, according to the Economic Policy Institute, which has been tracking the influx of child labor-related bills.
In Arkansas last year, for instance, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law the Youth Hiring Act: The bill effectively repealed a law requiring employers to verify a minor’s age with the state, acquire a work permit for minors, and get parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds before putting them to work. A law in Iowa, signed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds last year, extends allowed work hours for teens and lifted hazardous occupation restrictions for minors as young as 14 — allowing them to work in industrial laundry services, freezers and meat coolers.
Rep. Chaney, sponsor of Florida’s HB 49, disputed the characterization of her legislation as a child labor bill. “This bill is not about children,” she said, speaking to fellow lawmakers last month. “These are youth workers that are driving automobiles. These are not children.”
Protect the children?
Child welfare and labor advocates, however, say the dangers are clear. Young workers are more likely to suffer injuries on the job, and they’re less likely to speak up if their boss is stealing their tips or failing to pay them all that they’re owed. Florida doesn’t have a strong mechanism for recovering unpaid wages and tips for workers as it is, for adults or for working teenagers.
Working teenagers more than 20 hours a week can also affect their education and increase their risk for other behavioral problems. Students might have less time to study, may be sleeping less if they’re put on a late shift, and could become more likely to skip school or drop out entirely if they're working too many hours.
“If students are unable to do their work, and are falling further and further behind, then obviously teachers are going to be very concerned for that child,” Andrew Spar, a former music teacher and president of the Florida Education Association, told Orlando Weekly.
Setting baseline restrictions on the kinds of labor children can perform, and how many hours they can work “sends a message that school is the priority,” Spar added.
And there are opportunities for students to safely gain practical experience in the trades already. Florida’s public school system has career and technical education programs, which allow students to gain knowledge, hands-on experience, and even certification ahead of graduation in a wide range of industries, including construction.
According to the Florida Department of Education, there are 1.2 million students involved in some kind of CTE program across the state, representing a 9.5% increase over the last four years.
Eight hundred thousand of those students are in secondary education, while the rest are in post-secondary education, a pre-apprenticeship or an apprenticeship program.
In Central Florida, the Orange County public school system alone has 22 career specialists (one for each high school) — more than double the number of employees the entire state has dedicated to enforcing child labor law.
Safety in these programs, including those that offer supervised instruction in construction and architecture, is a top priority.
“We’re part of the public education system here, so we’re highly regulated in terms of safety, all those types of metrics,” Parker Antoine, director of Orange County Public Schools’ CTE program, told Orlando Weekly. “All our teachers and administrators and everybody takes this stuff very seriously, because we are part of the seventh largest school district in the country as well as an accredited institution,” said Antoine, who coordinates programming through Orange Technical College, a public institution. “We’re extremely buttoned up.”
Middle school and high school students in those programs, he confirmed, develop their skills in labs or classrooms, not on potentially dangerous job sites.
Strengthening child labor enforcement
With or without changes to Florida’s child labor law, the fact remains that violations are a growing problem. From 2019 to 2022, child labor violations nearly tripled, according to federal data analyzed by the Florida Policy Institute, from 95 violations in 2019 to 281 in 2022.
And these are just the cases that are investigated. More cases of child labor violations may go unreported, or may not be fully investigated and therefore included in official counts.
David Weil, the former Wage and Hour administrator, says there’s a number of strategies the local, state, and federal governments could take to strengthen enforcement (and no, it doesn’t involve allowing teens to work longer hours or on high-rise construction projects).
Lawmakers, for instance, could increase penalties for breaking the law, so that fines, particularly for larger companies, consist of more than a slap on the wrist. Even the federal Wage and Hour division admits the maximum civil penalty for law-breaking employers under federal law — $15,138 per child — is "not high enough to be a deterrent for major profitable companies."
But additional funding is also needed for enforcement staffing and other resources to support agency efforts. Otherwise, a steeper penalty is all teeth with no bite.
“People just don't worry about having an investigator showing up because there are so few of them to go around.”
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“This is not simple work. This is very resource- and labor-intensive,” said Terri Gerstein, director of the NYU Wagner Labor Initiative, in a recent webinar hosted by the Economic Policy Institute.
Gerstein spent 17 years enforcing labor laws through positions in the New York Attorney General’s Office and New York State Department of Labor. Prior to that, she worked as a nonprofit lawyer in Miami, aiding immigrant workers.
Effectively enforcing the law, she said, “requires pre-planning, search warrants, sometimes talking to school officials, going on site at all odd hours of the day, talking to minors who may be afraid of talking to the investigators.” It may also require (and best be served by) collaboration with community organizations, schools, and building and health inspectors, she added.
Allowing children or their parents to take private action against a law-breaking employer could also help reduce the burden on government agencies, said Gerstein, and governments could additionally deter violations by publicly posting the names of violators.
New Jersey, for instance, recently passed a law creating an online wall of shame, where they list employers that have failed to satisfy outstanding liabilities for wage, benefit, and tax violations. The state also prohibits these businesses from entering into public contracts and thus receiving taxpayers' money.
A number of other states — including Arkansas, following public pressure — have similarly passed laws to strengthen child labor protections. California, a state that's comparatively labor-friendly, last year passed a landmark law mandating workers’ rights education in public schools. Colorado passed a law that allows injured victims of child labor violations to sue employers for damages.
Florida's HB 49 has already advanced through one of three committee stops it must make before being heard by the full Florida House. The teen roofer bill, SB 460, has not been heard yet by any committee or subcommittee in the state Senate.
Florida’s 2024 legislative session officially kicks off Jan. 9, 2024. Session will last 60 days, concluding March 8.
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