Younger Kids Deserve Chance to Work

Gerald L. Zelizer

For two winters, Joey Stokes, Ryan Brady, Cara Boyer and six others worked in the Village Market in Snowmass Village, Colo., bagging groceries and occasionally carrying them to customers' cars. They were employed two or three times a week for three- to four-hour shifts.

Then market manager Jim Schrock fired them after the local newspaper pointed out that federal and state laws prohibit child labor. Stokes, Brady, Boyer and their cohorts all were between 9 and 14 years of age.

Mark Brady, father of Ryan and a town councilman, protested the firing and complained in The New York Times: "Most parents do not question their children's participation in myriad extracurricular activities, like music lessons, sports and clubs that often take two, three or even four hours a day. Doesn't working a few hours a week in a job also have educational value? By giving kids some extra money, doesn't it instill a sense of self-confidence and independence?"

The number of teenagers in the workforce swells in the spring and summer by 30%, as 16- to 19-year-olds secure part-time employment. But those numbers do not include the kind of pre-adolescents that Brady refers to. The Fair Labor Standards Act restricts most jobs to 16-year-olds and limits their hours to after school. States and municipalities can legislate even further restrictions. Very limited allowances are made for a child under 14.

With the tightest labor market since 1970 and ads soliciting employees among retirees, the disabled, teenagers and even former prisoners, it may be time to rethink our child-labor laws on both practical and religious grounds to see whether more exemptions can be granted for younger teenagers, provided that excesses and abuses covered by the rest of the statutes are safeguarded.

The laws to protect children were written in a different work and cultural environment than today. Child-labor laws were legislated in the early 20th century to protect youth from being exploited in factories, not to shelter them from being employed in lighter tasks and chores that many do around the house anyway.

There is no inherent reason to exclude children from all work under all circumstances. Nowhere does the Bible encourage the play and idleness of children. It does, however, exalt the transmission of values from the older generation to the younger, such as industriousness and seriousness, with which to nurture and perfect God's kingdom. If we are serious about inculcating the Protestant work ethic, why not allow a 12- or 13-year-old to carry out part-time work that entails the many lighter tasks that frequently go wanting in today's thin labor market?

Large corporations are reluctant to consider this proposed change. But common sense prevails in local businesses.

Terry Scheller of Buttery Bake Shoppe in Cranford, N.J., believes that children could competently decorate cakes, fill pastries, pack bags and make coffee in her bakery.

"Mostly, they could work the register, because it is computerized and they are more skilled than some older employees," Scheller says.

Non-profits also could make better use of younger employees. Lisa Singer, executive director of Congregation Beth Shalom in Livingston, N.J., believes that "there is much light work around churches and synagogues that 13- and 14-year-olds could do: reception, answering phones, entering data into computers, being aides for the teachers in religious school and babysitting during events."

Singer points out that the benefits could include more than monetary remuneration: "The opportunity to work in a religious institution, which is like a second home, might entice them to become church professionals in their adulthood."

Many children prefer earning the same dollars at work that they would get anyway in an allowance. Joey Stokes missed his work in the market: "I was not working in a sweatshop. I liked the experience of showing up on time and working with friends and not having to ask my parents for $50."

Joey's mother, Staci, corroborated his maturation. "He had an unbelievable pride in his work. He felt like a hero and bought gifts for the family with his earnings."

Of course, not all agree. Ellen Kelnan, a Denver labor lawyer, objects: "Children should be learning the lessons of childhood, not adulthood."

A measure currently before the U.S. Senate, already passed by the House, would waive child-labor protection to allow 14-year-old Amish teenagers to work in sawmills and other woodworking jobs, under adequate adult supervision.

Supporters claim that the measure is a common-sense reform to help preserve values of the sect, which is being driven away from family farms by high costs and shortage of farmland.

Chris Blank, national chairman of the Old Amish Steering Committee, told Congress: "Keeping young hands busy also keeps them out of mischief."

Perhaps, but in this case, inculcating children with a community's values is not worth endangering their young hands with such hard labor.

The obvious hazard in building more exemptions into the labor laws is that what may be a pleasant and educational means of earning some discretionary money for middle-class children could open loopholes through which both farm and lower-class urban children, under greater pressures to earn family money, are exploited in the labor force.

These changes, then, could be effective only if accompanied by greater expenditures for more inspectors to monitor violations and abuses.

If the laws were simultaneously eased and monitoring were tightened , this could be an instance in which good economics and good religious values coincided.