Now, an extraordinary development here in the labor laws of the U.S.

But not for the average worker, but for children.

The foundation for government accountability, a Florida-based conservative think tank, has been convincing Republicans to allow kids as young as 14 to work longer hours and inarguably in more dangerous conditions.

A number of states like Iowa and Arkansas are getting on board.

In his recent article, Washington Post reporter Jacob Bogage highlights the blowback s to the rights and expands why they are willing to put children at risk.

Hari: Thank you so much for joining us.

Your recent piece in the Washington Post was titled "the conservative campaign to rewrite child labor laws."

We are going to unpack that in this conversation.

Give us an overview of what you found during your investigations.

>> When we looked into this issue, this was a piece that started months ago.

When we saw bills popping up in the state legislatures rolling back child labor laws.

They were eerily similar -- A bill that has become law and Arkansas as a carbon copy of a bill moving through in Missouri that is similar to a bill moving through Georgia that a similar to something in Ohio, to Iowa, and we wanted to get a sense of kind of what the origin was behind all these things, and why are Bill's relaxing child labor laws coming back right now?

We started looking into that and we found the origin of a lot of the legislation comes from a think tank and lobbying group in Florida called the foundation for government accountability that's been active in especially Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa, even to the extent of sending lawmakers sample bill texts, here's a bill, please introduce it.

Those went through almost zero vetting process.

What is now the state of play in Arkansas or Iowa?

What is at stake here?

Let's talk about Arkansas.

The bill has become law.

Before this law, if a child wanted to get a job in Arkansas, they needed to get there age verified by the state.

-- their age verified by the state.

They needed to get some sort of permit or verification.

That's gone now.

And that's really important because the way child labor laws in this country are enforced is a collaboration between federal and state officials.

If a federal investigator from the Department of Labor or the Occupational Health & Safety administration wants to come down to a state to do a child labor investigation, their first stop is going to be the state employment office.

And they are going to say, hey, give me all your work permits for the children who have jobs in the state.

And I'm going to check that paper trail.

And then we can go to employers and make sure that kids are working in safe environments, not doing jobs they're not supposed to do, working the proper hours that they are allowed to work.

That paper trail is gone now.

And so, we are seeing that rolled back in a lot of states.

The same bill in Missouri.

In Iowa, it goes a little bit further.

It rolls back prohibitions on jobs that children were previously not allowed to work.

In meatpacking plants, unloading heavy objects from vehicles, in giant freezers.

So this is the kind of regulatory rollback we are looking at in a lot of these states.

And that conforms with the foundation of government accountability's longer term goals, which are, if you can build or shake up the status quo in the regulatory schemes of a lot of states, that gives conservatives national policy openings to try to deconstruct of the regulations.

-- other regulations.

Hari: Tell me a little bit about the think tank here, the foundation for government accountability.

>> This is a group founded by a gentleman who was a state legislator in Maine.

He moved to Florida in the early 2010's.

He started this group because that was kind of the high water of the conservative rallying cry around organizing at the state level.

That is what he wanted to focus on.

He started with $50,000 in seed funding, three years and, he was up to $4 million in revenue.

.

He will have about told -- He will have about $12 million in revenue this year.

They have 115 lobbyists in 22 states.

This is not a secret group.

These guys are all over the place.

They are very successful.

They file amicus briefs in front of the Supreme Court.

They sued the Justice Department and the freedom and information lawsuit recently and won.

They are on Fox News all the time.

This is a successful group.

They practice what they call the ideal model of policymaking which is what we are seeing here, when you go to IKEA and you go, that looks really neat, you go down to the warehouse and pull the box out and it has the cute little how-to guide on how to put everything together, that's basically what FGA does, we will give you the how-to guide for a child labor bill so you can pass it with an Allen wrench.

Hari: Does it speak to you?

>> The group itself did not.

We made repeated attempts to reach out and they kindly provided a statement directing us to some of the resources.

Including an op-ed written for Fox.

But they would not grant us an interview.

One of their lobbyists in Missouri did speak to me.

When I approached him after that conversation and set, we've obtained some records via open records laws that show the opportune solutions project and FGA draft and revise this legislation that was then introduced, he chose not to comment further.

Hari: When I was a kid, I had a paper route and worked in a video store.

Are there exceptions for the type of work the legislation is asking for?

Is this just kind of a blanket loan now that can go all the way up to a meatpacking plant?

>> I'm going to answer your first question about exceptions first.

There is really one big exception, for agricultural work.

What's really important is we focus on the effective these laws on specific types of kids.

They are not going to affect somebody who had a middle-class upbringing like I did, who bussed tables in a restaurant over the weekend or scooped ice cream over the summers were worked as a camp counselor.

We are talking about families who are in economic distress already cooling on their children to help pay the bills and are in work environments that are not what we would consider traditional jobs for kids.

You know, these are kids who are in meatpacking plants, these are kids who are working nearly full time hours in fast food places, who are on assembly lines, who are doing -- not agricultural work, but maybe landscaping work and long hours, and that can be dangerous as well.

When we talk about who is most affected by laws like this, it i s not the kid in the suburbs picking up a job so he can take his date to the movies, or a kid that has money to buy Starbucks with friends.

We are talking about kids who are already vulnerable.

Hari: You mentioned some of these pieces of legislation even make it possible for a child to work night shifts?

>> That's right.

In Iowa, this would allow 14-year-old's to work a six hour night shift.

It would allow a 15-year-old on assembly lines where they previously were not able to.

A huge part of these bills -- Something I think our reporting needs to keep diving into his the conflict between state law and the federal law.

Federal law governs a bear minimum for workplace safety -- bare minimum for workplace safety requirements for kids.

These estate laws in a lot of cases directly conflict with that and allow children into jobs the federal government would not necessarily allow them to do.

Allows employers to pay subminimum wage in some cases.

Where federal law has assured a window of one that is allowed.

Expands the amount of hours kids can work in these jobs.

So that is another -- Arkansas is a great example.

Iowa is a great example of that.

With two governors, Kim Reynolds and Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas who have made part of their policy portfolios to draw distinctions between the regulations of laws in their states and protections and try and better federal government -- enshrined by the federal government.

Hari: When we think about child labor laws, I remember reading Upton Sinclair, there were these horrible accidents.

And that is why we got these protections so children would not have to work in factories.

That was what, the 1930's?

Here we are almost 100 years later and you are saying there is a concerted effort to enable children to work in factories?

I understand factories are safer today than 100 years ago.

But it just seems like a giant step in the opposite direction for sure.

>> Let's paint a large economic picture here in which we can identify child labor.

The fair labor standards act among other things codifies bare minimum protections for child labor, it was passed in 1930.

The reason for it was because in the immediate aftermath of the Great Depression, employers needed to cut costs.

They did not want to work with unionized workforces.

So, who doesn't unionized?

Children.

Who can you pay less?

Children.

Who doesn't complain?

Children.

Who will question authority, if they have to do a dangerous job that may be an adult would identify as dangerous?

Children.

So that was driven, that legislation was driven as a reaction to corporate America seeing opportunities to cut costs for their workforce, if there workforce was significantly younger.

What are we seeing today?

We are seeing a historically low unemployment rate.

Historic inflation.

Though that is starting to cool a little bit.

We are seeing another environment where businesses across the country need to cut costs.

Hari: Besides the economic reality of a tight labor force, what else is playing into this movement?

Is there any residual effect from the pandemic?

>> yes.

Absolutely.

That is a great question.

I think we see that directly in the foundation for government accountability, the think tank and lobbying group we wrote about pushing a lot of this legislation.

Directly ties government regulation around the public health emergency and the conservative backlash to those regulations, to wanting to roll back of especially around children.

You can place this in the same universe as Amazon books and library funding and whether children can be around folks who dress in drag.

This is all part of that same universe.

School openings and school closures during the pandemic.

Race curricula and primary school and even in secondary schools.

This is all part of that same ecosystem of arguments that I think is in direct response to the government regulation that we now know likely saved untold numbers of lives during the pandemic.

Hari: Jacob, how are these pieces of legislation kind of marketed or wrapped?

Because when you mention -- I could call that book bans, and some can call that parental rights, right?

>> Entirely packaged as parental rights, down from the FGA's white papers that say parents, this is a parents' rights issue, to the way state legislators talk about it.

The talking points around this are, the government should not be in the middle of the decision about whether your child is allowed to take a job, what job that is, and how long they can work.

I think it is important to point out that that is a disingenuous argument.

And it is not a matter of interpretation.

That is looking at the bills that are passed.

In Missouri, the bill that the FGA submitted to the bill sponsor who was the chair of the educational workforce committee in the Missouri Senate did not include language that required parental permission for a child to take a job.

That Bill went in front of a hearing -- a hearing in the committee.

Lawmakers talked about it and heard testimony and said, you know what's missing here?

A parental rights provision.

So they added the section.

Arkansas totally stripped it out and added an optional provision.

Iowa, same thing.

The idea that these were originally intended to be parents' rights issues is disingenuous.

Hari: What are regulatory muscles in terms of looking out at a plan and say, this is a 12-year-old, not a 19-year-old.

>> The department of labor is severely outgunned here.

Between state labor inspectors and federal labor inspectors, there are about 1800 of them across the country.

There are tens of millions of businesses across the country.

It would take about a decade to inspect every single business across this country for all sorts of labor violations.

Not just child labor violations which are extremely difficult to police, because you are dealing with children who don't necessarily know what their rights are who maybe don't realize they are being excluded.

-- being exploited.

Many of them even in those circumstances want the job because they need the wages.

So the Labor Department and regulatory framework is just severely outgunned.

And under resourced.

Hari: How often are these incidents happening?

>> Too often.

Between 2018 and 2022, the department of labor has reported a 69% increase in child labor violations.

There were something like 3800 children employed in violation -- in violation in 2022.

That is almost certainly an undercount.

Hari: What's been the response as the piece of legislation worked its way through the state legislatures?

Is there a concerted effort trying to oppose this?

>> There is.

Not to cast dispersion, but is not very robust.

I say that because look at the states where this legislation is making considerable inroads.

It is Iowa, which Republicans hold a super majority in both houses, plus the governor's mansion, Arkansas, same thing, Missouri, same thing, the FGA in their annual report states the super states where they see the biggest opportunities to make policy inroads.

Does have consistently been states with Republican super majorities.

That's where the efforts have been.

And though there is resistance of these bills, there is nowhere -- it is nowhere near the scale that's been able to stop them in the legislative process.

We should note there's only been one that's been signed into law right now.

We have eyes -- We will look into reporting on the others.

I'm sure your viewers know the success of some of these bills is not necessarily getting signed into law or getting past the first year or the second year they are introduced, it is moving the window on these issues and FTA has been successful in doing that.

Hari: Thanks so much.

>> Thanks for having me.