“’This Ancient Atrocity:’: The Return of Child Labor in the United States: Why Now? What Can be Done?.”

We tend to think of child labor in factories as a thing of the past. However, child labor in the US is

surging with recent investigations and reporting finding violations in meat processing, automobile,

packaged food and seafood manufacturing. In several cases, children as young as 14 have been exposed

to chemicals, dangerous machinery and long hours (often working in the middle of the night). I

examine the causes for this upsurge and connect it to the confluence of three forces: the presence of a

large pool of unaccompanied minors in the US awaiting asylum decisions; labor shortages arising from

the post-pandemic recovery; and the widescale use of “fissured” business models relying on contracted

workforces in all of the recent cases. Given these causes, I review steps that can be taken under the

federal law (the Fair Labor Standards Act) that regulates child labor as well as review potential revisions

of that law to prevent future violations.