Child Laborers Still Exploited, Study Finds

Fifty years after child labor laws were enacted in the United States, America’s children continue to be exploited, injured and sometimes killed in jobs, according to a report released Saturday.

An estimated 5.5 million children between ages 12 and 17 were working in 1990, many for long hours under dangerous conditions, said the National Safe Workplace Institute, a private research and education organization in Chicago.

The study estimated that at least 139 children were killed and 71,660 were injured in work-related accidents in 1990, based on federal and state reports, which government officials say underestimate child labor violations and injuries.

While farm accidents accounted for a third of deaths, the report also found high rates of injuries in nursing homes, grocery stores, department stores and other workplaces that children and their families assume to be safe.

By far, the largest number of injuries--an estimated 17,830--happened in restaurants and fast-food chains, where most of the nation’s children and teen-agers find employment, the study concluded.

“Too many adults today assume that work has the same value from generation to generation,” said the report’s author, labor advocate Joseph A. Kinney. “Unfortunately, many of the jobs that kids can get today leave them brain-dead and with their lives in danger.”

Although few employers have seen the study, many said their companies were trying to respond to mounting concerns over children’s work safety.

After the death of a 17-year-old delivery boy in a car accident in 1989, Domino’s Pizza stopped hiring anyone under 18, said Michael Jenkins, a company spokesman.

Since 1990, Burger King Corp. has discontinued employment of 14- and 15-year-olds in its company-owned restaurants and has urged all of its franchise operations to monitor closely the activities of its young workers in accordance with federal and state laws, said spokesman Michael Evans.

McDonald’s Corp., one of the nation’s largest employers of young people, has initiated a variety of programs to improve working conditions for children, including on-the-job studying time for student employees and video materials to train managers in safety regulations. “We agree with the general issues (raised in this and other reports) about the need for tough regulations on youth employment,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Ann Connolly.

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Despite these efforts, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chairman of the Department of Community Medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, said: “Most people don’t even know there is a child labor problem in this country, but there is, and it’s growing.”

Landrigan and other child labor specialists who convened a New York conference on the subject this spring concluded that today’s working conditions for children are reminiscent of the 1930s and ‘40s, when there was widespread exploitation of children on farms and in factories.

Violations of federal child labor laws have more than tripled over the past decade, according to the Department of Labor. But officials said it is unclear whether the increase is a result of worsening job conditions or more aggressive enforcement.

Because child labor violations often go unreported, officials said they do not have accurate annual figures on the number of children injured in the workplace.

The proportion of working teen-agers has been growing steadily since 1964, said a report by the William T. Grant Foundation in New York. By 1985, the report said, 16-year-old male students were five times more likely to be working than in 1940, and females of the same age were 16 times more likely to be employed.

The latest report on child labor by the National Safe Workplace Institute is regarded by many labor specialists as the most comprehensive national survey of child labor programs in more than a decade.

This fall, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and nine other state agencies are scheduled to release a study showing the problems faced by children, as well as adults, who work in California’s $18-billion agricultural industry.

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But like federal officials, California safety regulators have never conducted a detailed analysis of child labor problems, said Ellen Widess, a former Cal/OSHA attorney who is director of health policy for the nonprofit Children’s Advocacy Institute in San Francisco.

“It’s incredible. . . . We don’t know the magnitude of the injuries, illnesses and diseases that kids are experiencing as a result of work,” Widess said. “We don’t even know for certain how many children are working.”

California laws regarding child labor are more stringent than in many states, according to some experts. Here, students who want to work are required to obtain work permits from their schools. Employers who want to hire minors must obtain permits to do so. There are also restrictions on the number of hours and the time of day that minors can work.

The National Safe Workplace Institute survey ranks California third in the nation, behind Wisconsin and New York, in terms of work standards and enforcement of them. Ranking lowest are Idaho, South Dakota, Texas and South Dakota. Four states--Colorado, Kansas, Maryland and Mississippi--do not have child labor programs, the study said.

The report identifies “many villains” in the nation’s child labor problems: Students often do not know their rights; parents rarely report problems their children face on the job; schools almost never work closely enough with families and employers to remedy school and work conflicts; employers do not feel compelled to follow regulations because penalties under federal and state laws are small and enforcement is lax.

Congress recently authorized the federal agencies that oversee child labor laws to increase their maximum penalties from $5,000 to $10,000, but critics say the maximum fine in rarely imposed. In California, the maximum state penalty for a child labor violation is $5,000.

Despite relatively low fines, “some of the violations are very serious,” said California labor Commissioner Victoria Bradshaw.

Recent cases in California have involved children who have been poisoned by pesticides and whose arms and legs have been cut and crushed by heavy equipment.

One case under investigation, Bradshaw said, involves an employer who has recruited inner-city children to sell candy and cookies in the suburbs. The children have been driven hundreds of miles from their homes and left to find their way back if they do not sell their quota. One driver, now in jail, is a convicted child molester.

“Most of the cases we find involve children who are working longer hours than they are supposed to or who do not have work permits or whose employers do not have permits to hire them,” Bradshaw said. “But there are many others cases where children are working in hazardous situations,” such as next to boilers in garment factories or deep-fat fryers in fast-food outlets.

In its report, the National Safe Workplace Institute calls for more state and federal child labor investigators and higher penalties.

The report also calls for stricter limits on the hours a child can work--15 hours a week for those under 16, and 20 hours for 16- and 17-year-olds. Children should not be permitted to work after 8 on school nights, the study said.

Such limitations sometimes do not sit well with working children and their parents.

Social scientists are divided over the issue, said Ronald D’Amico, senior social scientist at SPR Associates, a research organization in Menlo Park.

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While some research has confirmed the notion that part-time work enhances a child’s sense of responsibility, other studies suggest that work results in “premature affluence,” a tendency of working teen-agers to spend their earnings on luxuries rather than save for college or help their families.

While some studies show that working students get better grades and are less likely to drop out of school, other studies indicate that students who work, especially for more than 20 hours a week, do worse in school.

The report released Saturday does not state which industries are safest. But Kinney said it often is not a question of where a child works, but whether the child is properly trained and supervised.

That so many children work at all concerns Kinney.

“Until we--as a society--begin to understand that German and Japanese children are at home studying while American kids are flipping hamburgers, we will not be providing a large percentage of our children with a reasonable opportunity to be successful students of higher mathematics, science and foreign language--courses that require regular study and homework,” Kinney said.

Children at Work

The number of children in the U.S. work force has risen steadily since the mid-1960s, researchers say. Here are estimates of the number and percentage of children who worked in 1990, the latest year for which statistics are available:

TOTAL IN EST. NUMBER AGE POPULATION WORKING % of TOTAL 12-13 6,762,450 672,245 10 14 3,243,107 486,466 15 15 3,321,609 930,050 28 16 3,304,890 1,685,494 51 17 3,410,062 1,739,132 51 TOTAL 20,042,118 5,513,387 28

Source: The National Safe Workplace Institute, based on studies by the U.S. Census and the General Accounting Office.