Child Labor

In 1990 Congress authorized the Department of Labor to raise the maximum civil monetary penalty for child labor law violations from $1,000 to $10,000. The Senate has been considering legislation that would establish an additional civil penalty for child labor violations, require the use of certificates of employment, and allow the names of violators to be posted in schools. In addition, it would require collection of death and injury information on employed minors, define several additional occupations as hazardous for children, and prohibit the employment of minors under age 14 in agriculture except on family farms. This fact sheet answers eight questions relating to the bill and the Department's Wage and Hour Division.

GAO noted that: (1) the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) does not have a formal policy to publicize the names of child labor law violators in the media and schools, although it sometimes does so; (2) WHD does not have a formal policy that requires district offices to target a number of investigations at previous violators; (3) of the 11 districts reviewed, 9 were in states that had work permit systems and 7 states used the permits to detect child labor violations; (4) WHD does not include information on repeat violations in its national investigation database; (5) several regions and two districts are independently developing their own tracking systems, but none of the systems are compatible with the national investigation database; (6) employers contested 18 percent of child labor cases in fiscal year (FY) 1989, 24 percent in FY 1990, and 29 percent in FY 1991; and (7) detected illegal employment in agriculture is a small part of total detected illegal employment.