WASHINGTON – The U.S. Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services at this time introduced a Memorandum of Agreement to advance ongoing efforts to handle youngster labor exploitation. 

The department’s Wage and Hour Division and the Health and Human Services Department’s Administration for Children and Families signed the settlement to formalize a partnership between the businesses, and description procedures the businesses will comply with as they work collectively to deepen information-sharing, coordination, coaching and training. The MOA seeks to maximise the division’s enforcement of the kid labor protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act, to reinforce the power to guard youngsters from exploitation and to attach people to wanted advantages and providers. The MOA embrace unprecedented steps for larger collaboration between the 2 businesses to stop and tackle unlawful youngster labor.

The settlement will do the next:

• Help establish geographies and employers the place youngsters are doubtless being exploited.
• Aid investigations by offering data to assist establish circumstances the place youngsters are unlawfully employed.
• Facilitate coordination to make sure that victims or potential victims of kid labor trafficking have entry to essential providers.

The settlement will even help the efforts of the interagency child labor task force announced on Feb. 27, 2023. The process pressure seeks to advertise further collaboration and enhance information-sharing between federal businesses, and to advance the well being, training and well-being of youngsters within the U.S.  

“Our partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services will help us continue to combat illegal child labor and protect the most vulnerable,” mentioned Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda. “Our economy cannot – and will not – rely on the illegal hiring of vulnerable children. We will work across the federal government and with local and state partners to fight child labor exploitation.”

Since 2018, the Department of Labor has seen a 69 % improve in youngsters employed in violation of kid labor legal guidelines. On Feb. 17, 2023, the department announced the resolution of one of the largest child labor cases in its history in opposition to Packers Sanitation Services Inc. LTD. Currently, the division is investigating greater than 600 youngster labor instances.   

“Child labor exploitation can disrupt a youth’s health, safety, education and overall well-being, which are unacceptable consequences for any child,” mentioned Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families January Contreras. “This partnership with the Department of Labor provides further opportunity to carry out our mission of protecting the well-being of children by arming ourselves and our partners – inside and outside of government – with the information and tools needed to help us all be a part of preventing and responding to child labor exploitation.”

In addition to the MOA, the 2 departments have introduced steps to additional strengthen collaboration to fight youngster labor. The Department of Labor is holding employers like PSSI accountable for systemic abuses of kid labor and launched a strategic enforcement initiative on youngster labor, now underway. It can be enhancing scrutiny for all employers to focus on labor violations in any respect steps in a provide chain. Finally, the division is asking on Congress to strengthen protections for all youngster staff and improve civil financial penalties for youngster labor violations.

For its half, HHS is increasing post-release providers for youngsters and sponsors after youngsters have left their care. The departments are collaborating on coaching supplies to be deployed to related HHS packages and companions, and for unaccompanied youngsters and their sponsors to teach them about youngster labor legal guidelines within the U.S. and their rights. Both departments will proceed to collaborate on the creation of supplies which are clear, simply accessible, and out there to youngsters, sponsors and different stakeholders.

Young staff, mother and father, academics, advocates and employers are inspired to visit the department’s YouthRules! website for details about youngster labor legal guidelines. Employers could use its Compliance Assistance Toolkit to make sure they adjust to federal youngster labor legal guidelines.

Learn more about the Wage and Hour Division. Workers can name the Wage and Hour Division confidentially with questions – no matter the place they’re from – and the division can communicate with callers in additional than 200 languages.