Corporate greed is killing children in America. Child exploitation in business started well before the Industrial Revolution but, 100 years ago, labor unions and progressive Democrats compelled Congress to enact worker protections many of us now take for granted. Today, big businesses around the country willfully disregard these protections and Republican legislators at the state and federal level are working to erase them altogether.
In February, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hannah Drier published findings from a year-long investigation into the abuse of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the U.S. The results were damning.
Drier interviewed more than 100 child-workers between ages 12-16 in 20 different states to reveal the invisible labor force supporting some of America’s biggest companies. Needing to support themselves financially, send money home, and often pay sponsors looking to profit from the asylum system, these children end up trapped in grueling, low-paid jobs with no recourse to challenge their abuse. Walmart, Target, JBS, General Mills, J. Crew, Frito-Lay, Ford and many others were found to have underage migrants employed in their factories.
Drier reported on children who had lost arms or legs working unsupervised around fast-moving machinery. Others had their scalps “ripped open” by equipment and another’s spine was shattered on a construction site, to say nothing about the dozens of underage migrants killed on the job every year.
Today, Republican lawmakers are working to repeal what child labor protections remain. If any Republican actually cares about the well-being of children in America, stop terrorizing transgender children and criminalizing teaching Black history and instead address the Dickensian abuses of young people at the hands of big business.
Otherwise, the party will continue to stand for only tax cuts for billionaires, corporate welfare and the former first lady’s famous words: “I really don’t care. Do you?”
Jonathan Strieff
South China
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