Dear 20/20 and Mr. Stossel:

“Criminal Chores: Are Child Labor Laws Outdated” trivializes our nation’s child labor laws and efforts to enforce the law.  The report presented a one-sided view of an issue that affects 5.5 million working minors in the United States. 

No one is against youth employment – as long as it is limited, appropriate, and legal.  When it is not, tragedies occur.  Every year, between 60-70 minors die in the workplace and 200,000 are injured.  These injuries happen in restaurants, fast-food, grocery stores, construction, and other workplaces, often occurring during illegal employment. 

Stossel reports that child labor laws are not helping kids today.  The reality is that the laws do what they are meant to do.  They ensure that education remains the primary “job” of today’s youth.  Hours restrictions and time of day restrictions keep young people from working too many hours and late night hours in disruption of their education.  These are sensible rules for youth who will become adults in a global marketplace where education means more than whether you were a batboy or flipped burgers as a teenager.

Stossel mentions that labor department enforcement personnel are bureaucrats.  The reality is that they are public servants who work hard at fair enforcement and care about the health and safety of working minors.   State and federal enforcement personnel, with limited resources, educate employers and employees about the law.  They have saved lives through removing kids from hazardous and illegal work situations.

The report said the law gives special breaks to child actors, farmworkers, and wreathmakers.  It’s true, these “special breaks” exist, but they need to be eliminated.  The exceptions are not examples of what’s right with the child labor laws, but what is wrong and must be changed. 

“Many kids are hanging around after school, being bored stiff,” Stossel says.  When has employment become the preferred activity for bored kids?  There are other alternatives.  How about volunteer work?  How about expanding horizons and life experience through extracurricular activities and sports at school or community centers?  How about homework?

Stossel quoted working teens and parents.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t interview those working teens who have lost their lives in 2000 – such as a 16-year-old shot and left to die in a freezer at a pizza shop in Michigan; a 16-year-old ride attendant crushed to death at an amusement park in Connecticut; a 15-year-old electrocuted at a poultry processing plant in Arkansas; a 15-year-old agricultural worker pinned under a tractor in Pennsylvania; and a 16-year-old construction worker who fell to his death in Alabama.  Nor did he interview the parents of children who have been killed in the workplace, not through freak accidents but resulting from illegal and inappropriate employment of youth.

            The Child Labor Coalition urges 20/20 to re-evaluate its position.  Your reputation as a responsible news source should prompt you to present more than a cursory story on this nation’s child labor laws and enforcement.  Three years ago, the Associated Press spent five months, using 28 Associated Press reporters and more than a dozen photographers, to find the real story of working children.  The result: Children for Hire, a five-part series.   In October 1999, 20/20 did impressive work alerting youth and parents about the dangers of youth magazine sales crews.  We hope that the same news organization that brought that very timely and responsible exposé will commit to better research and thoughtful analysis in future child labor stories.

                                                            Sincerely,

                                                            Darlene Adkins

                                                            Vice President, Public Policy

                                                            National Consumers League

                                                            Coordinator, Child Labor Coalition