Rolling Back Child Labor Laws--Enabling Child Predators

A glaring oversight in defunding public schools and putting children to work at such an early age? The sexual predators waiting for kids in the workplace...I should know. It happened to me.

Trigger Warning: I speak of unwanted and unlawful touching in this essay.

At the behest of corporations, several states are rolling back child labor laws, opening up a market of cheap labor, as they simultaneously defund public schools—that is by design. One of the goals of the billionaire class is to dismantle the public school system, creating a blueprint for days of old. If you can afford to send your child to school after a rudimentary elementary education, good for you. If you can’t, your kid goes to work.

Here are a couple of states doing the business of corporations:

Governor Sarah Sanders Unveiled Arkansas LEARNS education plan. (Photo: KATV)

In 2023, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill to roll back a number of child labor protections, including a measure that required employers to obtain work certificates for children under the age of 16.

Governor Sanders also championed a bill to defund public schools with vouchers called the LEARNS act.

A measure by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds loosened restrictions on child labor regulations in Iowa. Under the law, minors over 16 can sell and serve alcohol in restaurants while kitchens remain open, 14- and 15-year-olds can work longer hours and more hours a week, and 16- and 17-year-olds can seek exemptions to work in restricted fields with dangerous working conditions as part of employer training.

Governor Reynolds also defunded public schools with a voucher scheme she signed into law.

But, there is something I don’t see folks pointing out—not only does rolling back child labor laws create cheap labor, it also produces situations that put children in danger from sexual predators.

To be truthful, child labor has always been a thing when you’re lower middle-class. I was 12 when I first started to work in the summers. I babysat for a single mom…her children were four and five. I worked from 6am to 6pm Monday-Thursday during the summer. I made $75/week, and back in 1987, I didn’t complain. I was able to buy myself some boots and a few pair of jeans for the new school year.

I got my first real job at Piggly Wiggly when I was 15 years old—I couldn’t wait to start as a cashier. My mom was also a single mom and I needed money for a car, gas, insurance, and clothes. It was 1992 and I was about to learn a few things about the real world with my first real job. A lot of these things turned out to be inconvenient and abusive.

I loved my job at the grocery store, and since I was a natural people-pleaser, my manager liked me. He was a nice man, about my dad’s age, who usually hung out in the back office making schedules and watching ball games. Then he was moved to another store, and that’s when my trouble began. The company hired a much younger man to be the manager and he spotted me a mile a way—let the grooming process begin.

I’ll call him Mike—he worked quickly. Within a few weeks of being hired, he scheduled himself to close the store with me a couple times a week. That meant that it was me, Mike, and a stockboy alone in the store until 10pm. Piggly Wiggly was the run-down store in town. IGA was much newer, but we stayed open an hour later, so we did get a few more customers, yet it was dead most nights. This worked out to Mike’s advantage as he could send the stocker home early and then it was just the two of us in the store.

One of the first occasions that things started to feel off is when Mike questioned me about my personal life. Where did I live? Where did my mom work? He knew my dad lived in another state and asked if I had a step-dad? Did I have a boyfriend? And then he asked if I had sex with my boyfriend?

This felt off, but he was my boss, so I answered his questions.

A week or so later, he started commenting on my hair and makeup. He said he liked girls who wore straight hair (like mine) but told me I wore too much makeup, especially lipstick. I should lighten it up for work. So, I did. I think in his predatory mind, even though I was a teenager, he thought I was trying to appeal to him. In my mind, I was doing what my boss told me to do.

It escalated.

There was an elevated platform when you walked in the front door of Piggly Wiggly and that’s where the customer service worker or the manager worked to sell Western Union, cash paychecks, and count down money in the drawers at the end of shifts. I was training to work in this tight space and my trainer was, you guessed it, Mike. Like I said, it was a tight space and not really created to have two people in it. Ideal conditions for a predator.

You know those scenes of a female golfer attempting a swing and a man will come behind her, without be asked, place his hands where they may not be wanted, to help her “learn” to swing? That feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when it doesn’t feel right or wanted? That’s what my experience in the customer service booth felt like with Mike.

Mike leaned over me a lot. I constantly felt the weight of his body on my back. He put his hands on my shoulders. He went from placing his hand on my lower back when he passed me, to taking it further by put his hands on my hips when he passed behind me. And then, it got worse.

One evening, when it was just he and I, he asked me into the booth to help him count my drawer. I obeyed. He “accidently” brushed my breast, which he apologized for, and then while I was counting money, he grabbed my hips with both hands, and shoved his hips and penis into my backside. I bolted out of the booth.

He again apologized, but I had had enough. I found an ally at work and we made a complaint up the chain of command, but I don’t know exactly what happened. In the meantime, I was terribly embarrassed about turning him in and “ruining his life.” I was 16 by this time—I quit and found another job. I didn’t tell my parents until after I had quit. I only told my dad, because he was angry I quit my first job without having another immediately lined up.

I heard Mike was fired, and I hope he was. I never saw him again.

Could this have happened in another space other than work? Of course. Was I easy prey as a teenager in an adult environment? Absolutely.

We know that rolling back child labor laws and defunding public schools serves the interest of corporations, not children, but I don’t hear much push-back from those who say they stand for children while trying to “save” them from everything from books to pronouns to flags.

If we say we are for the children, seeing what’s happening in state legislatures across the country should give us pause. Children are not only harmed physically in businesses built for adults, but they become easy targets for sexual predators.

~Jess