Eighty-six years ago, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act. It outlawed, among other things, the practice of children working in hazardous occupations. 

But today, violations of the FLSA, particularly involving children, are sharply on the rise. And there are those who want to take us back even farther. 

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has been publishing a series of articles about a right-wing project you may have heard of. It’s called Project 2025, and it is a 900-page  blueprint for how government would run under the vision of the Heritage Foundation, which is the chief architect of the project. 

(A sidenote: the Coalition on Human Needs will host a webinar to examine the implications of Project 2025 on human needs programs at 3 p.m. ET (noon PT) Thursday, August 15. You can register for the webinar here.)  

But back to CAP’s analysis , child exploitation in the workforce, and the FLSA. 

Back in 1938, when the FLSA was enacted, childhood injuries in the workforce were common, particularly in places like coal mines or on factory assembly lines. But the “FLSA defined when, where, and how minors could work, ultimately shifting expectations toward making education children’s primary focus,” according to a CAP analysis. 

Today, CAP writes, FLSA prevents children under the age of 18 from working in nonagricultural occupations declared hazardous by the U.S. Secretary of Labor. “This requirement is imperative to protect young workers because it keeps them from engaging in dangerous jobs, such as handling explosives, or working in places where they might be exposed to radioactive substances,” according to the analysis. 

That could change. CAP reports that Project 2025 calls on the U.S. Department of Labor to “amend its hazard-order regulations to permit teenage workers access to work in regulated jobs with proper training and parental consent.” 

“In plain English,” CAP writes, “revising these ‘hazard-order regulations’ means letting teams work in hazardous jobs. Exploiting child labor sounds extreme because it is extreme – and politicians mostly in far-right states have recently worked to institute these changes. In the past three years alone, 28 states have introduced bills to weaken child labor laws, and 12 states have enacted them.” 

One example CAP cites is Iowa, where Republican legislators passed a law (“in direct violation of federal child labor laws”) to permit 14-year-olds to perform assembly line work in factories and meatpacking plants. 

CAP’s disturbing analysis comes as violations of child labor laws are sharply on the rise. In 2023, the Department of Labor found 955 violations of child labor laws involving almost 5,800 children. That same year, a report by the Economic Policy Institute found that the number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws increased 37 percent over the previous year. 

“Children in hazardous occupations drove the Fair Labor Standards Act’s passage in 1938,” Christine Heri, an attorney with the Labor Department, said in a Department of Labor news release. “Yet in 2024, we still find U.S. companies in risky jobs, jeopardizing their safety for profit.” 

CAP’s conclusion: 

“It should go without saying that children don’t belong in dangerous factories and should not work around toxic substances. When they work, they deserve to do so in safe conditions that do not compromise their health and well-being or come at the cost of their education. Dangerous child labor was recognized as a moral and societal failure nearly a century ago. Project 2025 wants to take the United States back to this dark time of child labor.”