In a pre-dawn session on Tuesday, the Iowa state senate voted to allow children to work longer hours and serve alcohol, the latest move by Republican-controlled statehouses to combat a labor shortage by loosening child labor laws.
The Iowa bill would expand the number of hours that children under 16 can work from four to six a day, allow minors to work in previously prohibited industries if they are part of a training program, and allow 16- and 17-year–olds to serve alcohol with a parent’s permission.
It passed the state senate by a vote of 32-17, two Republicans joining every Democrat in opposition. The vote took place just before 5am, after protests and delay tactics by Democrats.
“We do know slavery existed in the past but one place it doesn’t exist, that’s in this bill,” said Adrian Dickey, the Republican responsible for shepherding the bill to passage, according to the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
“It simply is providing our youth an opportunity to earn and learn, at the same timeframe as his classmates do, while participating in sports and other fine arts.”
Democrats and labor advocates decried the bill, which they say will endanger children by allowing them to work in dangerous fields such as roofing, excavation and demolition.
“No Iowa teenager should be working in America’s deadliest jobs,” said Zach Wahls, the senate minority leader. “Iowa Republican politicians want to solve the … workforce crisis on the literal backs of children.”
Labor unions have held protests against the bill. Charlie Wishman, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, said efforts to loosen child labor laws around the US were “a lazy way of dealing with the fact that certain states don’t have enough workers”.
In March, the Arkansas governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, signed legislation to roll back child labor protections. Lawmakers in Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin are also considering loosening regulations.
“Can we let kids be kids?” Wishman asked. “It was about 120 years ago when we decided that we wanted to make sure that kids spent the majority of their time in school and not in a workplace, and especially not in a dangerous workplace.”
Wishman cited research that has found serious adverse effects for teenagers working more than 20 hours a week.
“These legislators don’t care about that because it’s not their kids,” he said. “This law is intended for somebody else’s kids.”
