Organizations urge Biden-Harris Administration to strengthen child labor protections amid rising workplace injuries and violations

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October 16, 2024

Media contact: Rachael Klarman, Executive Director, rachael.klarman@governingforimpact.org

WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Governing for Impact (GFI), the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) released a set of executive action proposals the Biden-Harris administration can take to address the alarming rise in child labor violations and workplace injuries in the United States. The proposals, which are grounded in the Department of Labor’s (DOL) existing authority, include preventing children from working in hazardous occupations like milling operations, prohibiting children from handling toxic chemicals, and banning overnight shifts for kids.

The executive action proposals aim to fill a pressing gap in child labor enforcement. Since 2021, more than thirty states have taken steps to weaken child labor laws, including in Arkansas, Iowa, New Jersey, and Michigan. Extreme, industry-aligned groups like those behind Project 2025 have also proposed weakening federal regulations to let more young people work dangerous jobs, claiming that “young adults show an interest in inherently dangerous jobs.”

“Many assume that child labor is a thing of the past, and that there must already be a robust regulatory system in place to ensure that children are safe,” said Reed Shaw, Policy Counsel at GFI. “But the fact is, more and more children are getting injured every year due to unsafe working conditions. As we show in our analysis, the Department of Labor has the authority to fill the gap.”

Nearly a century has passed since Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which introduced critical protections for child workers in America. Despite this, too many children are still exploited. Injury rates for workers under 18 almost doubled between 2011 and 2020, particularly in agriculture where the risks are highest and the regulations are the weakest.

“At a time when child labor violations are on the rise and many states are simultaneously attempting to weaken child labor laws, there is an urgent need for the U.S. Department of Labor to use its authority to raise federal minimum standards to protect all children who work—no matter what state they live in,” said Nina Mast, Policy and Economic Analyst on EPI’s State Policy and Research team. 

“This release of executive action proposals stands as a call-to-action that more must be done to protect children from occupational dangers,” said Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy for the National Consumers League and coordinator of the CLC. “Recently, we’ve witnessed wildly expanding hazardous child labor in the U.S. with kids working in meat-packing plants and auto-supply factories. Many of them work throughout the night in grave-yard shifts that leave them with no time to sleep before they attend school completely exhausted. We can and must do more to protect our children.”

To develop regulatory recommendations for the Biden-Harris administration, GFI, EPI, and CLC reviewed the DOL’s existing legal authority and identified steps to better protect child workers. Findings and recommended actions were sent to DOL and outlined in a new report, Protecting Children from Dangerous Work. The executive action proposals include:

  1. Making nonagricultural occupations safer: Expanding the list of nonagricultural occupations deemed too hazardous for workers under 18, such as jobs in security services and milling operations.
  2. Making agricultural occupations safer: Increasing protections for child agricultural workers under 16, including prohibiting children from handling toxic chemicals or operating dangerous machinery.
  3. Regulating working hours: Implementing restrictions on working hours, including a ban on overnight shifts for minors and mandatory rest breaks.

Young workers are being harmed every day. This report urges the Biden administration and the DOL to immediately update and enforce regulations and protect children from harm.

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About Governing for Impact

Governing for Impact (GFI) is a regulatory policy organization dedicated to ensuring the federal government works for working Americans, not corporate lobbyists. The policies we design and the legal insights we develop help increase opportunity for those not historically represented in regulatory policy implementation work: working people. For additional information about GFI, please visit https://governingforimpact.org/.

About Economic Policy Institute

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank working for the last 30 years to counter rising inequality, low wages and weak benefits for working people, slower economic growth, unacceptable employment conditions, and a widening racial wage gap. For additional information about EPI, please visit https://www.epi.org/.

About the National Consumers League (NCL) 

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

About the Child Labor Coalition

The Child Labor Coalition (CLC) is chaired and coordinated by the National Consumers League and strives to reduce exploitative child labor in the United States and abroad, bringing together over 35 groups to create a powerful voice that promotes public education, research, and advocacy to reduce the most harmful forms of child labor, as well as end child slavery, child trafficking, and child marriage. For additional information about CLC, please visit https://stopchildlabor.org/.

Child Labor Coalition lauds Wage and Hour’s Child Labor Enforcement Strategies that includes creating a fund for victims and use of “hot goods” provisions

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March 27, 2024

Media contact: National Consumers League – Reid Maki, reidm@nclnet.org, (202) 207-2820

Washington, DC – The Child Labor Coalition (CLC), representing 37 groups engaged in the fight against domestic and global child labor, expresses support for the innovative enforcement strategies in this week’s enforcement action by the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The action, announced March 25th, involved fines of $296,951 for a Tennessee parts manufacturer, Tuff Torq, and required the company to set aside $1.5 million as “disgorgement” of 30 days’ profit related to the company’s use of child labor. Disgorgement is a legal term for remedy requiring a party that profits from illegal activity to give up any profits that result from that activity.

Tuff Torq, which makes components for outdoor, power-equipment brands such as John Deere, Toro, and Yamaha, illegally employed 10 children, including a 14-year-old, for work that was hazardous—an identified task involved permitting a child to operate a power-driven-hoisting apparatus, which is a prohibited occupational task.

The Department employed several new or recent strategies in the case, including employing the Fair Labor Standards Act’s “hot goods” provision, which was used to stop the shipment of goods made with oppressive child labor.

“The use of the ‘hot goods’ enforcement tool is also an important new strategy, which Wage and Hour announced it would use last year,” said Reid Maki, director of Child Labor Advocacy for the National Consumers League (NCL) and the CLC. “It’s another critical tool in DOL’s arsenal. Once companies realize that the shipment of goods has been stopped, they feel an immediate impact of the violation.”

“This is the first use of victim’s fund that we have noticed in a child labor enforcement action,” added Maki. “Teens employed in factory settings are often unaccompanied minors and typically very impoverished. When enforcement agents find teens working illegally, they are dismissed with no resources to survive, move forward, and reassemble their lives. A victim’s fund is something the CLC and the Campaign to End US Child Labor – the CLC is a founding member – has touted as desperately needed.”

A third innovation involves how DOL calculates child labor fines. DOL recently announced it planned to change formulas for calculating fines, which previously had been capped at $15,000 per child involved in violations at a specific work site. The new strategy involves applying the maximum fines for each violation, not limited to the number of children involved.

“It’s clear they have used the new formula in the Tuff Torq fines,” said Maki. “Fines levels came in at an average of $30,000 per child—almost double what we would have seen under the old formula. With Congress unable, at this point, to pass into law any of several bills that would increase fines by a factor of ten, DOL’s creativity here is most welcome. Fines must be raised to inflict some real pain on corporate perpetrators. We’re not where we want to be yet, but it’s good to inch closer.”

“Wage and Hour also deserves praise for directing its enforcement action at Tuff Torq,” noted Maki. “In the past, corporations that benefited from child labor have often not been held accountable, as they blamed staffing agencies for illegal hires. Holding beneficiaries accountable is something DOL said it would do when it announced its meatpacking investigation results in February 2023—it’s great to see it happening.”

The Wage and Hour Division faces a big challenge in that its inspectorate, estimated at below 750 inspectors, is too small for a country the size of the U.S. The CLC has called for a doubling of the inspectorate over the next five years and is working to help increase congressional appropriations for that purpose.

Wage and Hour has noted a sharp increase in child labor in recent years, having found 5,792 minors working in violation of child labor laws. The Economic Policy Institute indicates the increase in violations is 300 percent since 2015.

“We are especially troubled by the prevalence of children in hazardous work,” said CLC Chair Sally Greenberg, who is also the CEO of the National Consumers League. “Far too many children are working illegally in meatpacking, auto supply factories, and other hazardous work sites. The U.S. can and must do more to protect these vulnerable children.”

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About the National Consumers League (NCL)

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

National Consumers League condemns legislation in Florida that preempts local ordinances to protect workers from heat exposure

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March 15, 2024

Media contact: National Consumers League – Melody Merin, melodym@nclnet.org, 202-207-2831

Washington, DC – The National Consumers League is condemning a vote by the Florida House of Representatives to approve legislation that will upend Miami-Dade’s proposed local workplace standards requiring drinking water, cooling measures, recovery periods, posting or distributing materials informing workers how to protect themselves, and requiring first aid or emergency responses. The Florida Senate approved the measure yesterday.

This measure rushed through the state legislature ahead of adjournment on Friday, March 8th and will prevent local governments throughout Florida from requiring water, shade breaks or training so workers can protect themselves from heat illness, injury, and fatality.

Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy for the Child Labor Coalition under the National Consumers League, made this statement:

“Not only is the Florida legislature usurping the duty of local government to protect workers from heat stress in one of the hottest states in America, but by denying workers access to water and protection this Dickensian measure ignores the reality of heat and heatstroke among Florida’s workers. Indeed, hundreds of workers die across the U.S. from heat exposure each year. The legislation also forbids the posting of educational materials to help workers protect themselves from the heat.

NCL has throughout its history worked to eradicate child labor and abusive labor practices, including protecting children in America working in the fields from exposure to heat, dangerous chemicals, and long hours. U.S. law allows children to work at younger ages in the agricultural sector despite its significantly increased danger. It also allows teens to do work known to be dangerous at younger ages—16 versus 18. NCL works to close both of those loopholes and protect children from agricultural dangers and exploitation. These vulnerable teen workers in agriculture are at great risk from heat exposure.

NCL is urging Governor Ron DeSantis to veto this legislation. NCL also urges the United States Congress to enact the Asuncíon Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury and Fatality Prevention Act, which would direct the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to adopt interim heat standards, while the agency continues its years-long slog of adopting a final heat protection rule. NCL is a member of the national Heat Stress Network, which works to protect outdoor works from heat dangers.

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About the National Consumers League (NCL)

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization.  Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad.  For more information, visit nclnet.org.

Is your honey real?

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By Nailah John, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow

Honey is one of my favorite sweeteners. And I’m not alone. The global demand for honey is extremely high with the market size value in 2020 at 9.79 billion. But are we buying the authentic thing?

This high demand has resulted in market fraud and adulteration. Insider has stated that honey is the third-most-faked food in the world behind milk and olive oil. Assessing the quality of honey can be difficult because of the production process or adulteration with cane sugar or other ingredients.

In the United States, 400 million pounds of honey ends up in our food every year. Most of it is adulterated product from China. Manufacturers either dilute real honey by adding syrups derived from plants or they chemically modify the sugars in those syrups so they look like real honey. Honey consumers in the U.S., and across the globe, are being duped and need to be made more aware of how to tell if the honey they purchased is real or fake.

Here are several ways to spot fakes:

  1. Crystallization – real honey crystallizes over a period of time once kept in a cool dark place. Adulterated honey will always retain the same consistency.
  2. Water test – drop a teaspoon of honey in water. If the honey is pure, it will not easily mix with water but will become slightly thicker in texture.
  3. Microwave test/heat test – place a bowl of honey in the microwave and heat it for a minute. If it caramelizes, then it is real honey. If it bubbles, it is not.
  4. Paper test – put 2 teaspoons of honey on a plate and put paper on it. If the paper soaks the honey, then it is adulterated.

As the demand for honey increases, one would expect that the price of honey would increase. However, the opposite has occurred since the supply of adulterated honey has increased and driven global honey prices down. This has resulted in beekeepers barely being able to sell their honey for a profit.

Another major issue that adulterated honey causes is the threat to pollination and our food systems. Vice highlights that bees help produce 90 commercially-grown crops in the U.S. and have brought in over $24 billion to the economy. Without beekeepers, we would have a failed food system.

Consumers should seek out raw, organic, unadulterated honey that will not have negative impacts on our beekeepers, our crop, and our economy. If you buy a plant-based burger, you would like to know the nutritional value and ingredients of the product and it should be the same for honey or any product that we consume.

I would recommend that each consumer watch the Netflix documentary Rotten. The episode called “Lawyers, Guns and Honey” shows the reasons behind low production of authentic honey and the impact of the dwindling bee population on our environment.

What’s the real cost of a banana?

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By Nailah John, Linda Golodner Food Safety and Nutrition Fellow
When we buy a product at our local grocery store, we sometimes do not think of how the product was sourced or what it took to get it to our shopping cart. One such commonly consumed product are bananas. With more than a billion eaten yearly, it’s one of the top five fruits consumed worldwide. Let us ask the question, “what is the real cost of a banana?” by diving deeper into the banana industry and, specifically, its exploitation of child labor.

According to the International Labor Organization, child labor is defined as “work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development.” Globally, 152 million children are trapped in child labor, highlighting the extent of the problem. The banana industry is just one of many industries using child labor. The two regions that are the largest producers of bananas are Asia and Latin America.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2017 Findings of the Worst Forms of Child Labor, 57 percent of child laborers in Brazil were working in agriculture, with high concentration in the North and the Northeast regions. In Brazil, the Government of Brazil’s Household Survey estimated that 2,936 children under the age of 14 were involved in cultivating bananas in 2015. When Oxfam New Zealand interviewed households in banana plantation towns in the Philippines, they found that 22.5 percent reported having a child working.

Banana plantation laborers in the Philippines may be hired by middlemen who deploy them to different plantations or farms owned by corporate growers, Oxfam New Zealand found. On these banana plantations, child laborers are assigned to bagging and stripping of banana leaves. These growers then sell bananas to major global brands such as Dole, Chiquita, or Del Monte.

The U.S. imported over $2.8 billion in bananas which is 17.6 percent of total imported bananas in 2019 according to World Top Exports. As consumers, we have the power to demand that companies create non-exploitative, fair trade, and child labor free products. Consumers need to take a stance against products made with child labor, which would put pressure on companies to implement fair and ethical policies governed by accountability measures. It is an indisputable truth that how you spend your money can literally affect the lives of millions around the world.

As consumers in a country with dominant economic power, it is imperative for us to learn about the origins of the products we use. We all must do our part. One way to start is to download an app called Sweat & Toil—created by the U.S. Department of Labor—which lets you:

  1. check countries’ efforts to eliminate child labor;
  2. find child labor data;
  3. browse goods produced with child labor or forced labor;
  4. review local and international laws and ratifications; and
  5. see what governments can do to end child labor.

The other way consumers can make more responsible decisions is by visiting the Equal Exchange online and via social media. In 1986, Equal Exchange became a pioneer in fair trade coffee by paying mutually agreed upon prices with a guaranteed minimum to small-scale coffee farmers. And in 2006, it began working towards applying this model to bananas. Equal Exchange bananas are grown at three small farmer cooperatives in Ecuador and Peru. Through democratically organized co-ops, farmers leverage collective resources and obtain access to global markets, maintaining agency over their businesses, land, and livelihoods. Consumers can request these bananas from their local grocery stores.

The banana industry continues to engage in unfair labor practices, subject workers to dangerous working conditions, and perpetuate global inequalities. Let us be informed consumers and take action to stop child labor by supporting certified, fair trade organic bananas.

Minimum wage gets a boost in state initiatives

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Did you know that Arkansas will soon have the highest minimum wage in the United States at $9.25 an hour come January 2019? A quarter of the state’s workers will get a raise! Missouri isn’t far behind, with an initiative passing this fall as well.

As Congress and state legislatures remain in gridlock and unable to move progressive legislation, another very hopeful phenomenon is playing out through the initiative process, even in deep red states. Ballot initiatives are allowing citizens to directly support legislative reforms. As the Arkansas example shows, the greatest beneficiaries are those making minimum wages.

The federal minimum wage is stuck at a paltry $7.25;  for seven years, Congress has taken no action to change that. But 29 states, from Maine to Hawaii, and more than a dozen cities have increased their minimum wages. This translates into 60 percent of minimum wage workers making higher than the federal floor, adding $5 billion to the paychecks of 4.5 million low-wage workers.

Ten states are boosting their wage floors step by step, including California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington. Automatic cost-of-living increases will kick in in eight other states: Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, Ohio, and South Dakota.

But let’s give credit where credit is due. The “Fight for $15” movement launched a campaign in liberal areas, first winning at Seattle Tacoma Airport in November 2013 with a referendum for $15 an hour. Within two years, New York and California had adopted $15 an hour as their target. The only thing that is slowing this campaign is state legislatures. When Albuquerque, Chicago, Los Angeles, Providence, Kansas City, San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Fe each adopted their own minimum wage laws, 18 state legislatures passed laws preempting cities from increasing minimum wages.

Even the liberal DC City Council overruled Initiative 77, which would have done away with tipped wages and ensured all workers in the District earn the minimum wage.

The takeaway here is that increasing the minimum wage turns out to be very popular when placed on the ballot by initiative, even in red states like Arkansas. But reactionary state legislatures, bowing to pressure from the business community, too often work to undo these laws.

We are also cheered by Amazon’s announcement that it will pay all its workforce a base $15 minimum wage and JPMorganChase will pay $18 as a base wage.

Things are looking up for hourly workers. Florence Kelley, NCL’s General Secretary for our first 33 years and drafter of the first minimum wage laws in the United States, is surely smiling down upon us!

NCL’s experiences with Initiative 77, DC’s repealed One Fair Wage attempt

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Earlier this month, DC City council voted to repeal Initiative 77 in an 8-5 vote. The initiative, which was supported by DC residents by a 55-44% vote, would have eliminated the gap between the “tipped credit” and minimum wage for restaurant workers and ensure that all tipped workers get the minimum wage that other workers are entitled to.

As it stands, tipped workers in Washington DC get a base tipped wage of $3.89 per hour plus tips. If workers don’t get the minimum wage—which is currently $13.25 an hour in DC—employers are supposed to make up the difference. Initiative 77 was intended to shift the burden of ensuring wage equality from consumers to employers, where we believe it actually belongs.

National Consumers League took a personal interest in this issue because of our extensive history with raising the minimum wage over the decades. We testified before the DC City Council in support of Initiative 77 in what was a marathon hearing that started at 11 am and ended at 3 am. In our testimonies, we emphasized the extensive history of the minimum wage laws unfairly carving out tipped workers, while stressing the importance of ensuring that DC’s most vulnerable make an equitable wage. Our testimonies also included the personal experiences of a staff member that has worked in various front-of-house and back-of-house restaurant positions at businesses in Oregon, a one fair wage state, and Georgia, a non-one fair wage state.

Supporters of the Initiative were, by and large, people of color or professionals with extensive experience in labor law or wage policy. The most vocal opponents of the bill were restaurant employees or small restaurant owners in DC’s most affluent neighborhoods. Opponents followed what seemed to be scripted testimony, arguing that Initiative 77 was a bad bill because it came from “outside of DC” or that implementing it would be the first step of a “grand plan” to eliminate tipping.

In our view, the public hearing showed a clear bias for those opposed to Initiative 77. DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson—an avowed opponent—led the hearing. Witnesses in favor of repeal were stacked onto the beginning of the hearing, while key supporters of Initiative 77 spoke much later—well after many of the councilmembers had left. Sadly, the council showed a lack of understanding about Initiative 77 and its potential impact on DC as a whole.

Opponents on the Council also expressed opposition to any type of compromise to Initiative 77. At no point during the hearing, did Chairman Mendelson or Councilmember Jack Evans—also an avowed opponent—suggest that they were open to a compromise or that they were willing to meet with groups to address concerns about the plight of tipped workers in DC. Mendelson went so far as to attack one witness from the Restaurant Opportunities Center’s DC office (ROC-DC) when he called the woman back on the stand and suggested she was a plant used by ROC to gather support for the bill. Despite this, ROC-DC and other advocates appeared more than reasonable, suggesting potential compromises; offering an extended timeline for wage increases, tax cuts, and others. Many of the council members that voted for the repeal—most notably Councilmembers Jack Evans (Ward 2), Phil Mendelson (Chairman), Kenyan McDuffie (Ward 5), and Anita Bonds (At-Large)—kept saying that 77 used deceptive language to sway voters. “The language in [Initiative 77] was misleading at best, dishonest at worst,” said Mendelson shortly before the October vote. Why? He didn’t say.

Yet the campaign slogan for those opposed to 77 was “Save Our Tips” despite there being no restriction of the tipping practice in the Initiative 77 bill. We believe that voters were not duped and that the bill passed in every ward, besides Ward 3, because DC’s residents wanted to better the lives of tipped workers. As Councilmember Robert White Jr. said in the public hearing, “[we] cannot assume that voters were ignorant after a campaign of fierce campaigning on both sides.”

Nevertheless, the DC Council voted in favor of repealing the bill. In spite of the sensible wage protection policy offered, the repeal of a measure that reflected the will of the people in the District Of Columbia, which is exactly what 77 was. Initiative 77 is another example of hardworking employees losing to big money—the National Restaurant Association spent millions to defeat 77 and when they lost that battle, persuaded the DC Council to overturn it—and ultimately being ignored. Voters showed up and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Initiative 77, yet the council responded by telling voters that their vote doesn’t matter and their voice is not important. What a sad day for democracy in our nation’s capital.

Thank you to the  DC City Council members that respected the votes of DC residents and supported the remedying of wage inequality by voting for Initiative 77.

Charles Allen (Ward 6)

Mary M. Cheh (Ward 3)

Brianne K. Nadeau (Ward 1)

Elissa Silverman (At-Large)

Robert White, Jr. (At-Large)

Labor Day reflections: Challenging time for U.S. workers – National Consumers League

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As another summer winds down, and we plan for one last extended weekend before turning the page onto fall, Labor Day offers a time to reflect on the increasingly challenging environment that working families face securing fair wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Currently 16,000 members of the United Steelworkers union are waiting to hear whether they’ll be going on strike when their employment contract with U.S. Steel expires in just days. Union and management are reported to be at a near-stalemate over a new contract that the union has described as “extremely insulting” and would offer marginal wage increases for workers, who would be locked into a proposed 7-year term.

For the first time, incarcerated workers are courageously raising their voices, and are in the middle of a multi-week, nation-wide strike organized in response to the slave-labor wages they are forced to accept as further punishment for their lives behind bars. It’s shameful that we treat prisoners like chattel.

And the courts continue to batter workers, spurred on by a Chamber of Congress and a business community that attack working folks’ right to organize at every turn. Earlier this summer, a narrow 5-4 anti-worker and anti-union ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME, found hat unions cannot collect “fair share fees” from workers who have not joined the union but receive the benefits of organizing—a major blow to unions in their efforts to improve working conditions for all employees.

In Washington, DC, where NCL is headquartered, we are fighting alongside restaurant and other hourly workers to preserve Initiative 77 from being rescinded by the D.C. City Council. Initiative 77, a worker-led campaign that passed by a 56 percent to 44 percent margin, would raise the paltry $3.89 hourly tipped wage by $1.50 a year until it reaches $15 by 2025. After its passage, seven members of D.C. City Council pledged to overturn the initiative, undermining the 46,000 DC voters who supported it.

Wage theft, misclassification, and other employer abuses continue to plague our workforce, but at the National Consumers League, which was founded by a group of Progressive-era women concerned about factory conditions for workers—including children’s—we will continue to fight for worker protections alongside our allies to ensure that protections for America’s working families are strengthened, not eroded.

Earlier this year, we observed the 80th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act with a national conference. This landmark legislation—which NCL helped to pass in 1938—provided our nation’s basic minimum wage and overtime pay laws, lifted wages, and improved working conditions. But advocates agree that the FLSA is in dire need of updating, and many of the problems facing workers today could be addressed by an FLSA for the 21st Century.

This Labor Day, we are grateful for the improved quality of working conditions for many of our nation’s employees, but we lament the constant attacks on unions, workers’ rights, and fair and equitable working conditions for so many. The struggle continues, and we are proud to be part of it.

Trump and Undermining Public Sector Unions – National Consumers League

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By NCL Public Policy intern Melissa Cuddington

This summer has been rife with razor-thin 5-4 Supreme Court rulings. Many of these have been one-vote margins because of the newly added conservative justice and Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch.

For example, a 5-4 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME at the end of June delivered the dreaded but anticipated blow to public sector unions and the Trump Administration’s goal of weakening the bargaining power and influence of working men and women. Janus, an employee at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, asked the court to overrule a 40-year-old Supreme Court decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, requiring public sector workers to contribute to union dues toward collective bargaining costs, such as contract negotiations, but excuses them from paying dues to support political advocacy. Janus argued his $45 monthly fee to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees was unconstitutional. He said that the fees infringed on his First Amendment rights, and that, in the case of public employees whose contract negotiations are with the government, the fees were a form of political advocacy.

The Court agreed with Janus and reversed the requirement.

In the wake of the very unfortunate Janus decision, the Administration has issued several executive orders to restrict union activity in the federal government. These include restricting the time that employees can spend on union activity, implementing rules about day-to-day operations and changing government policy at the agency level.

Union leaders at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) have objected loudly, filing a lawsuit against the Trump Administration to protest his executive order regarding “official time.” Trump’s executive order addresses the use of “official time” to compensate union workers for time spent on representational work.  

Why is it okay for a worker to benefit from better wages, working conditions, benefits like time off and sick leave and not have to help pay for the costs of negotiating those benefits?  Janus and the subsequent Executive Orders have understandably sparked outraged from federal government unions and other advocacy groups like NCL that support working families. One strategy could be, per the OpEd in the New York Times, having state and local governments directly pay unions for their expenses.

Unions are critical to the smooth operations of the federal government, effectively fighting for worker benefits and increased bargaining power for the many hardworking federal employees. The NCL has a long history of fighting for consumers, workers and public sector unions. We regret the Janus decision and its effect of undermining union bargaining power. We join with AFGE and all federal workers in supporting their voice in the workplace.

Event: Addressing Forced and Child Labor in Agricultural Supply Chains – National Consumers League

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On Tuesday, June 26, 2018, the Fair Labor Association and the National Consumers League will host an event in Washington, DC to inform key industry and civil society stakeholders about the outcome of a recent pilot project, and to provide lessons learned in implementing the USDA Guidelines for Eliminating Child and Forced Labor in Agricultural Supply Chains.

Co-hosted by the National Consumers League and
the Fair Labor Association

Addressing Forced and Child Labor in Agricultural Supply Chains

Washington, DC

DATE: Tuesday, June 26, 2018
VENUE:  Hall of the States, 444 North Capitol St., Washington, DC
TIMING: 10 AM – 12 PM
RSVP: Please send acceptances/regrets to dcevent@conecomm.com

On behalf of the Fair Labor Association and the National Consumers League, you are invited to attend an event on Tuesday, June 26, 2018 that will inform key industry and civil society stakeholders about the outcome of a recent pilot project, and provide lessons learned in implementing the USDA Guidelines for Eliminating Child and Forced Labor in Agricultural Supply Chains.

The pilot, made possible through the support of the U.S. Department of Labor International Labor Affairs Bureau (UDOL-ILAB), Nestlé, and two of its suppliers, Olam and Balsu, is aimed at testing the implementation of USDA guidelines that outline best practices for eliminating child and forced labor in agricultural supply chains. The event will feature:

  • An overview of lessons learned related to child labor and ethical supply chain recruitment
  • Keynote addresses from Nestlé, the Fair Labor Association, National Consumers League, and Balsu
  • A premiere screening of the pilot program documentary film shot during the 2017 hazelnut harvest season in Turkey

A light breakfast will be provided.

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For more information

We hope that you will join us! To register, please send an email to DCEvent@conecomm.com.