SDS Condemns Arkansas Youth Hiring Act of 2023, Deregulation of Child Labor

Recently, the state of Arkansas has taken steps to further deregulate child labor laws through the Youth Hiring Act of 2023. This act means that children who are under 16 years old could be sent to work without needing permission from the Department of Labor. This would also preclude the state from having to check how old someone is before they start working. However, this law doesn't change the rules about how many hours kids can work, or what kind of work they can do.

While many children already work in some capacity, further deregulation only serves to allow increased exploitation of an already vulnerable population. Not only should employers be following child labor laws, but they should be ensuring equal workplace protections, pay, and benefits to underage workers as they would for workers above the age of 18.

All across our country, attacks have been mounted against youth through things such as discrimination within sports against trans athletes, threatening to take trans kids away from supportive parents, denying queer children gender-affirming healthcare, and the banning of books. Along with attacking youth, this new law also continues the trend of attacks on Public Education by preventing children from making the most of their education and instead rendering them into a new pool of labor to be exploited, often at minimum wage or illegally paid lower wages.

Therefore, Students For Democratic Society condemns this attack on youth, particularly working class youth, and on public education, otherwise known as the Youth Hiring Act of 2023.