[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 147 (Monday, December 4, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2112-E2114]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   U.S. CHILD LABOR LAWS NEED REFORM

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 4, 2000

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share with my colleagues an 
article by Thomas Hine which appeared in the November 26, 2000 issue of 
The Washington Post. The article, ``Working at 14--and Paying For It,'' 
deals with teenagers who work too many hours during school, and, 
according to the author, this can result in a higher incidence of drug 
and alcohol abuse and in a failed education. Mr. Hine discusses the 
effects, both positive and negative, of after-school work, and finds 
that working 10-12 hours a week has a positive influence on young 
people, but working more than 12 hours a week can be seriously 
detrimental. Mr. Hine implores parents to take teenage work seriously, 
and stresses the need to place limits on the hours they work. He 
challenges us to ``help young people integrate work into their lives 
and maximize its potential as a tool to help them grow up.''
  Mr. Speaker, employment provides teenagers with valuable lessons 
about responsibility, punctuality, dealing with people, and money 
management, and it increases their self-esteem, encourages independence 
and teaches skills. On the other hand, long working hours are 
associated with all sorts of undesirable teenage behavior. According to 
Hine, working more than 11 hours a week is strongly correlated with 
teenage use of tobacco and alcohol, and working more than 26 hours a 
week shows the same correlation with marijuana and cocaine use. Studies 
have also found that teenagers working more than 11 hours a week have 
an increased rate of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted 
pregnancies.
  Working during the school year has become much more commonplace among 
America's youth over the past decades. Nearly a quarter of 14-year-olds 
and 38 percent of 15-year-olds have regular scheduled employment during 
the school year. When interviewed, eighty percent of high school 
students said that they have held jobs sometime during their high 
school years. Hine points out that young Americans are three times as 
likely to work than young people in Western Europe. Also, American 
youth who work average six times as many hours per work week as their 
European counterparts who are employed. Undoubtedly, those numbers 
reflect some of the reason for the comparative underachievement of 
American high school students.
  Mr. Speaker, young people working more than 20 hours a week are also 
less likely to finish high school. The average employed American high 
school student works 17 hours a week. Link this with 35 hours a week 
spent in school and homework usually suffers. Young people also 
sacrifice sleep and exercise and spend less time with their families. 
When work and school obligations conflict, many students end up giving 
a higher priority to work.
  Hine stresses that working in moderation, can be valuable. Teens who 
work 10-12 hours a week, actually receive higher grades than students 
who don't work at all. They learn important skills such as 
organization, teamwork, and responsibility. They exhibit a more mature 
attitude than their non-working classmates.
  Mr. Speaker, under current Federal law, minors aged 14- and 15-years-
old may not work for more than three hours a day and a maximum of 18 
hours a week, when school is in session. It is also unlawful for 14- 
and 15-year-olds to work before 7 a.m. and after 7 p.m. so that work 
will not interfere with learning. Minors who are 16 and 17, however, 
face no federal restrictions when it comes to the number of hours they 
can work and they can work late into the night.
  Mr. Speaker, teenagers should give education the top priority. This 
is nearly impossible when they are burdened with heavy work 
commitments. Our country is experiencing tremendous economic growth 
with low unemployment, resulting in a robust economy. This economic 
prosperity only creates greater pressures for employers to hire more 
teens and encourage them to work longer hours. We must not promote or 
permit practices that satisfy short-term economic demands without 
giving proper attention to the long-term future consequences of these 
policies.

[[Page E2113]]

  Mr. Speaker, my legislation, H.R. 2119, the ``Young American Workers' 
Bill of Rights Act'' would provide tougher restrictions on the hours 
14- and 15-year-olds can work, and would add new restrictions to minors 
aged 16 and 17. This legislation has the bipartisan support of over 60 
Members of Congress. The ``Young American Workers' Bill of Rights Act'' 
would reduce and limit the hours 14- and 15-year-olds would be allowed 
to work from 18 hours a week to 15 hours a week. Also, there are 
currently no restrictions on the amount of hours minors ages 16-18 can 
work. The ``Young American Workers' Bill of Rights Act'' would change 
that. Under our legislation, if a teen aged 16, 17, or 18 and a full 
time high school student, he or she may not work more than 4 hours per 
day or more than 20 hours per week, and cannot work before 6 a.m. or 
after 10 p.m. when school is in session.
  Mr. Speaker, I will reintroduce the ``Young American Workers' Bill of 
Rights Act'' in the 107th Congress, and I will urge that hearings be 
held on that legislation. Adoption of this legislation will reduce the 
problem of children working long hours when school is in session and 
strengthen existing limitations on the number of hours children under 
18 years of age can work on school days. The bill would eliminate all 
youth labor before school, and work would be limited to 15 or 20 hours 
per week, depending on the age of the child. This is critical, Mr. 
Speaker, because the more hours children work during the school year, 
the more likely it becomes for education to be relegated to little more 
than a demanding nuisance.
  Mr. Speaker, too many teenagers are working long hours at the very 
time that they should be focusing on their education. It is important 
for children to learn the value of work, but education, not minimum-
wage jobs, are the key to our young people's future. Our legislation is 
an important step in re-focusing attention upon education.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that Thomas Hine's article ``Working at 14--and 
Paying for It'' from The Washington Post be placed in the Record for 
the benefit of our colleagues and urge this House to support meaningful 
comprehensive domestic child labor reforms and the adoption of H.R. 
2119, the ``Young American Workers Bill of Rights Act.''

               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 26, 2000]

                    Working at 14--and Paying for it

                            (By Thomas Hine)

       While doing research on teenagers a few years ago, I left a 
     question on an Internet message board, asking young people 
     who work about their on-the-job experiences. The replies were 
     overwhelmingly positive. Compared with school and the rest of 
     their lives, these teens agreed, working gave them a feeling 
     of being grown-up, even when their duties weren't very 
     inspiring. One youngster gave an eloquent testimonial to the 
     sense of freedom and personal satisfaction he felt when he 
     put on a Ronald McDonald costume and entertained children. In 
     the clown suit, he wrote, he was able to both be himself and 
     have a positive impact on others.
       It's easy to understand why young people like to work. 
     First, of course, there's the money, the key to coolness for 
     trend-conscious teens. But even more important is the sense 
     of doing something that matters, of being essential. 
     Adolescents--particularly the 14- and 15-year-olds who are 
     joining the part-time work force in increasing numbers--
     thrive on the sense that somebody is counting on them.
       And the retail and fast-food industries do just that, 
     particularly during the holiday shopping season that began 
     Friday. For the next several weeks, we will witness the 
     ultimate expression of a powerful symbiotic relationship: the 
     one between teenagers and the consumer society. Businesses 
     get a plentiful supply of employees and high schoolers get a 
     paycheck and a feeling of accomplishment. As a bonus, parents 
     tend to give the arrangement almost unqualified approval, 
     endorsing the self-reliance and personal responsibility that 
     they believe comes with a job in the real world.
       But the arrangement has less appealing and sometimes 
     serious consequences, which even the most enthusiastic 
     student-workers and their parents should consider.
       To understand the consequences, you must first realize that 
     for the most part we are not talking about kids picking up a 
     few dollars in their spare time. Rather, we are talking about 
     the majority who are members of a specific and unrecognized 
     class. I call them the pampered proletariat.
       These young people are ``pampered'' because they come 
     largely from families with middle-class incomes or better, in 
     which parents make few demands on their children's earnings. 
     Instead, the youths can spend their wages on cars, clothes 
     and entertainment. The retail industry is more than happy to 
     cooperate: Teens are advertisers' darlings, both because they 
     spend so much (more than $160 billion last year), and because 
     they are assumed to be developing habits that will last a 
     lifetime.
       Nevertheless, they are a ``proletariat,'' because high 
     school students putting in long part-time hours constitute a 
     distinct American working class, one that receives low wages 
     and few benefits. Much like the poorly paid factory workers 
     who make so many of our clothes, shoes and consumer goods in 
     overseas sweatshops, these young people help keep our 
     shopping bills down and our fast food affordable.
       This pampered proletariat starts young. According to a 1999 
     study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly a quarter of 
     14-year-olds and 38 percent of 15-year-olds have regular 
     scheduled employment (as opposed to casual baby-sitting or 
     yard work) during the school year. By the time they are 
     seniors, another BLS study found, 73 percent of young people 
     work during at least part of the school year.
       A few of these young people, the ones who get featured in 
     news stories, are making good money in challenging high-tech 
     and Internet jobs. But their numbers are insignificant. The 
     great majority are working for low wages doing just about 
     what you would expect: The top three jobs for boys, according 
     to the BLS, are cook, janitor and food preparer. For girls, 
     they are cashier, waitress and office clerk. These jobs may 
     help teens understand the value of work, but they have little 
     intellectual content; with electronic cash registers and 
     scanners, even cashiers hardly have to deal with numbers.
       Young Americans work far more than their counterparts in 
     other developed nations. One 1997 study, which compared 
     middle-class students from various countries, found that 
     American students were three times as likely to work as those 
     in Western Europe, and that they work six times as many hours 
     each week. These figures undoubtedly reflect the effects of 
     higher unemployment rates in Europe. But they also provide 
     some context for understanding the comparative 
     underachievement of American high school students.
       The average employed American high school student works 17 
     hours a week during the academic year. (Partly because of the 
     proximity of jobs, the students who work the most tend to 
     come from higher-income areas.) During the holiday season, 
     many young people find themselves under pressure from their 
     supervisors to work extra hours. And since school vacations 
     don't start until the shopping season is nearly over, many 
     students will be juggling final exams, term papers and a 
     heavier work schedule.
       There is ample evidence that when the number of work hours 
     exceeds 15 per week during the school year, the student 
     workers suffer. On average, their grades go down and truancy 
     increases. When work and school obligations conflict, the 
     great majority will give top priority to their jobs. Unlike 
     school, which is preparation for a distant goal, work feels 
     more urgent, its crises are immediate and obvious--and it 
     pays.
       Moreover, a number of studies document that long work hours 
     are associated with all sorts of undesirable teenage 
     behavior. According to a recent study by the Centers for 
     Disease Control (CDC), working more than 11 hours a week has 
     a strong correlation with the likelihood that a teenager will 
     smoke and drink, while more than 26 hours has the same 
     correlation to the use of marijuana or cocaine. An earlier 
     CDC study found that students who worked more than 11 hours a 
     week had significantly higher rates of sexually transmitted 
     diseases and unwanted pregnancies.
       Not all the studies are so dismaying. In fact, there is a 
     growing consensus that a modest amount of paid work--10 to 12 
     hours a week during the school year--has a positive impact on 
     young people. Adolescents who work these kind of hours 
     actually have higher grades than those who don't work at all. 
     They learn to organize their time more effectively. The 
     positive effects are strongest among lower-income students, 
     whose long-term earning performance has been shown to be 
     improved by work experience in their youth.
       After all, even though we commonly think the chief job of 
     teenagers is to go to high school, it really is to figure out 
     how to become successful adults. A highly intensive work 
     experience in a field closely related to their interests and 
     abilities might help many young people reach that goal more 
     effectively than finishing high school. But, for the moment, 
     at least, dropping out carries a heavy economic penalty and 
     social stigma, and most young people don't dare consider it.
       Some companies that employ large numbers of young people 
     thus argue that the low wages they pay are in the public 
     interest because they're not high enough to tempt teens to 
     drop out. But higher wages, if they were accompanied by a 
     common expectation that young people would save a good part 
     of those wages for further education and training, might 
     serve society even better.
       Ironically, there have been earnest murmurings of public 
     concern about the most fortunate of young workers, those 
     earning large salaries doing computer technical support or 
     designing Web pages. I've heard commentators wonder whether 
     these e-employees are in danger of losing their youth, 
     whether they are growing up too fast. The vast low-wage 
     majority seems, by contrast, to be hidden in plain sight, 
     facing just as many adult-like anxieties and conflicts 
     without the money or glamour. And they cope with them by 
     using solutions they see grown-ups using, such as drinking 
     alcohol and buying things they don't need. These are the 
     youngsters we should worry about.
       Young people working is not, in itself, a problem. Rather, 
     problems occur when adults do not take the teenagers' work 
     seriously. Too often we do not recognize its extent in their 
     lives or its economic importance in ours. We do not recognize 
     the difficulties and conflicts it raises for young

[[Page E2114]]

     people. We place few limits on their work; nor do we demand 
     that they use their earnings responsibly. We don't raise 
     enough questions about the cycle of consumption and self-
     indulgence that makes teenagers both a desirable market and 
     an exploited labor force. And we don't help young people 
     integrate work into their lives and maximize its potential as 
     a tool to help them grow up.
       So, when you're stressed out during this shopping season, 
     don't take out your anger on the overworked young people who 
     serve you in the stores. They have troubles of their own.

     

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